Teaser: foundtosh.doc AKA toshanto AU (WARNING: WIP)
WARNING: There are no promises that this will be finished or even continued. I am a bad person, etc.
I have been holding off on posting this for months because I have some modicum of integrity, at least. Alas, I haven't written in three weeks, so I feel antsy and guilty and you get a WiP dump as a result.
My problem with this story is the problem I have with *all* of my longer projects: an overly complicated backstory with no frame narrative (no *current* narrative) to filter it through. In other words, I have lots of background but no plot.
To be fair, I actually have the shape of the rest of this. There's just a gap in the middle that I need to bridge and I'm worried that the style is driving the narrative rather than vice versa. I'm perfectly fine with style determining plot, I'm just worried that the readers will feel the *lack* of the plot. In other words, I'm worried that this moves too slowly. I feel like I'm teasing a lot of interesting things but I'm not setting up to follow through ( the partial cause of this is that I started writing within minutes of getting the idea, and so most of the juicier details and twists hadn't been formed yet.)
Anyway. I'm going to post (most) of what I have, and maybe I can work out some issues through comments, or just get reassured, or, I dunno. I just don't want you guys to think I've been slacking off (even though I totally have.)
Working title: foundtosh.doc AKA toshanto AU
Rating: PG-13
Setting: post-S2
Word Count: 4,243
foundtosh.doc AKA toshanto AU
It happens, Jack says. Time and space is a fabric, and the universe is a shirt, or dress, or wedding tent made out of the fabric and sometimes it circles in the wash with lots of other universes, hopefully without reds mixed in with whites. Normally this is ok, because a shirt is still a shirt even if it gets washed with a muumuu, but every once in a while two universes can... melt into each other. Like vinyl in a too-hot dryer, or maybe it's more like a thread snagging on a button, or-this is where his metaphor falls apart and he stands in front of Gwen and Ianto with his hands spread open. He can't explain it. He turned a corner this morning and found Tosh.
She gaped at him and shrank against the filing cabinet, shivering in a soaked-through sundress and a pinstripe suit-coat, much too big. Jack's belly coiled hard around his spine.
"Where am I?" she asked, and his lower lip twisted suddenly because he'd forgotten her voice and here it was again, pulsing soft into his ear. He could almost see the sound waves, coloured mauve.
"You're at Torchwood," he said.
Tosh stopped looking worried long enough to look exasperated. "I know this is Torchwood, Jack," she said. "But you're not supposed to be here. Or I'm not. One of us, at any rate."
Jack looked at her, blinked away the blur, and whispered, "It's you."
o
Jack won't let them ask about circumstances; universes create parallels at specific moments, he says, dovetailing, but sometimes they converge again, or lag, or lead. Tosh could know an event that they haven't had yet but will, and vice versa. So no-one talks about the differences in their universes but there are accidental hints: Tosh has to be introduced to Gwen, and is strangely casual to Jack. She accepts a hot shower and change of clothes (her sundress, Ianto says, is deteriorating; soaked and stained by something mildly caustic) but she hangs onto the suit-coat, smoothes the sleeves beneath her fingers. When she speaks to Ianto, it's as if she's tasting every word before she says it. Being careful.
They are not surprised when Ianto shows up in a supply closet. Another Ianto, no coat, soaked wet and skin clammed pale, back slit cleanly from shoulder down to hip. There's not enough blood, as if the wound has been licked clean.
He's still breathing.
Jack does the stitching. Gwen doesn't trust herself, and Ianto, cautiously, is keeping far away. Toshiko heaps a blanket over the neck and arms as soon as Jack cuts off the shirt and waistcoat. She pillows it beneath his head and wraps her fingers gently around Other-Ianto's arm. She tells him quietly to please wake up.
"He should probably wait until I'm done to wake up," Jack says, "or this might get awkward." He grins at Tosh and waits carefully until the corner of her mouth turns up, just a tiny bit.
He slips the sickle-needle in and out.
Gwen wraps her fingers around the metal railing and wavers back and forth. Leaning forward to look at miraculous Tosh, hair flashing in the sterile lighting. Watching Jack, sleeves rolled up, fingers brown and large against the white, soft swelling of the flesh. When Gwen leans back, it is to look at the Ianto in the kitchenette where he is drying the insides of their coffee cups with a yellow towel.
o
When Ianto wakes up, Ianto is the only one in the main Hub. Gwen is investigating anomalous energy spikes; just a poke around a factory block, with a quick nip over to the Harwood's Haulage offices to see Rhys, to press her palms to his chest and say she can't tell him yet what's happened, but.... Rhys slips his hands into her hair and doesn't ask for details. He smells like raspberry Danish and despite herself, Gwen smiles.
Jack took Tosh into the archives to let her pick out some tech to play with, to keep her fingers from convulsing against her Ianto's brow and shoulder. They're only gone for a few minutes, they think, but time stretches out longer in the dim and sloping tunnels they creep along.
Ianto springs up from the computer. Ianto watches him, ribs flexing raggedly.
"This is a parallel universe," Ianto blurts out, low and urgent. "Tosh-Toshiko is in the archives. She's fine. I'll-" he taps his earpiece. "Jack. He's awake."
Jack is racing up. Ianto couldn't hear Tosh in the background but he bets she's running, too.
Ianto sways and falters for the nearest chair. Ianto jerks forward, pauses, says, "I can't touch you."
Ianto nods and waves him off. He leans sideways against the chairback, stitches bristling down his back. He curls himself forward, belly spilling, then arches back and shivers.
Ianto says, "I'll get you a blanket," and the look Ianto gives him is so queer, so lost and disturbed that Ianto decides not to speak very much. Looking at his own face is strange enough; how much worse will it be to hear his voice from across the room, saying words he didn't choose?
The blanket has just been retrieved from the autopsy table when Tosh skitters across the Hub, Jack loping in behind her. Ianto rises, left hand still unsteady on the back of the chair, and Tosh is hooking her arms carefully over his shoulders and his one free arm is curling around her ribs, hidden underneath the coat that she's still wearing. "Oh thank God," says Tosh, and Ianto presses his mouth to the crest of her forehead with his eyes shut tight.
Jack drifts over to Ianto and the blanket; he's part curious, part surprised, and mostly mushy. "I love happy reunions," he whispers.
"This is very weird," Ianto whispers back.
Ianto leans back in a curve to look at Tosh's face. "Parallel universe?" he asks and Ianto was right; hearing his own voice is much worse. Ianto smiles wryly at Tosh. "What are the odds of that?"
"I don't know," says Tosh. "There's too many variables, but I think if I-" She bites her lip. "You meant that rhetorically," she says.
Ianto huffs a laugh and brings up his other hand-he quivers only slightly, depending on small Tosh to keep him steady-and taps her nose. "That was my clever way of confirming your identity," he murmurs. Tosh opens her mouth to grumble something back at him but Ianto shudders and they nearly topple; he bites down on a hiss.
Ianto steps forward but Jack stops him, takes the blanket and rushes to grab Ianto's elbow with a steady arm. "Careful," he says, lowering Ianto into the chair again. "It's not that cold in here, but you've lost a lot of blood. Another shiver like that and you'll pull your stitches."
Ianto blinks at Jack, bewildered. He looks to Tosh and she smiles a Kewpie smile at him, settling the blanket around him loosely. "Your back is injured," she says, folding the blanket up around his neck and ears. "The anesthetic is probably starting to wear off."
Ianto searches up and down her body, his eyes washed hazel by the blanket's green-brown plaid. "Are you hurt?" he asks.
Tosh shakes her head and Jack worms two fingers inside the blanket to check Ianto's pulse. "We gave her a full examination when we found her," Jack says. "A few minor bruises, and we're keeping an eye out for any skin conditions that might develop. You guys got doused with something pretty special." He looks away from his watch and pulls his hand away from Ianto's slowly warming neck. "Which reminds me. We didn't want to jostle you too much when you were unconscious, and they're too nice to cut, but we really need to get you out of those damp trousers."
"Jack is the head of this Torchwood Three," Tosh puts in suddenly.
"Captain Harkness," says Ianto as if that explains something, and looks at him in a way that Jack doesn't really like. He splays a palm against Jack's belly and pushes.
Jack steps back. He clears his throat. "I'm sure we can find something dry that'll fit you," he says, and nods over his shoulder.
Ianto is standing at the steps to the autopsy bay, his eyes reflecting silver in the light. "Of course," he calls, nodding. "I have some denims down in the locker room, but if you would prefer something more formal-"
"Jeans are fine," says Ianto. He pulls the blanket close around himself and looks up and up at Tosh. "How are we getting back?" he asks, but she sighs and dips her head until her hair slides down across pinstriped lapels.
"I don't know," she says, and Ianto curls three fingers softly around her wrist.
o
Things spool out for a while and develop their own sense of normal. Tosh has discovered Toshiko's station and scattered it with biros, post-its, trinket-bits of computer tech and weaponry. A naked motherboard snakes a plastic ribbon deep into the computer's glinting belly. Something's ticking.
Tosh spends hours there, but wanders out at intervals to the indigenous Ianto-not her Ianto-at the espresso machine. She sips his coffee with a sense of wonder and looks at him, half unsettled. Ianto isn't dealing well with that. He smiles, he pulls her favorite cup out from the corner of the cupboard. He bows his head when coaxing fat streams of coffee from the metal udder.
He later walks into Jack's office to find Gwen with her face pressed into Jack's chest. Ianto stands near them switching stacks of paperwork, setting down Jack's coffee, rearranging paperweights. He offers Gwen his hankerchief. Jack grips a palm to Ianto's neck to make him stay. Gwen tries not to spot his tie with tears but doesn't care about his shirt; her fists leave starburst wrinkles on both her boys, and both of them come away with red knuckles from clasping hands too tight.
All Tosh and her Ianto ever talk about is going home.
o
Ianto has been sleeping off the blood loss on the sofa. Jack worries that it's more than that. He catches Ianto when awake, sitting crosslegged on the middle cushion.
"We don't have a medic on hand," Jack says, "but I can call in a UNIT doctor to have a look. This may have something to do with the fluid you and Tosh were covered in."
Ianto blinks groggily, shifts inside the blanket shell that warms his legs and hands, and mumbles, "I just need sleep. We know what this is." Jack doesn't move for a moment, trying to get the measure of him, and Ianto slips from bleary-eyed to keen. He looks like a hatching crocodile, the blanket splintered open like an egg. His mouth curls up in just the perfect way for it. "Some beef broth would be nice, however," he says. "To help with the anemia."
Jack grins like he's being paid to do it. "No problem," he says. He puts his hands in his pockets and wanders off to find his Ianto, the one that doesn't bare his teeth unless asked nicely.
o
Ianto brings the broth once he's finished snapping clean white sheets out over barrack beds.
"Everything is ready for you and Toshiko for the night," he says, setting the tray (bowl of broth, red napkin, a spoon and then a fork for the dish of fresh steamed broccoli) down on the coffee table. "The barracks are left over from a less luxurious time, but they are clean and near the bathrooms."
"I knew that," says Ianto, pulling the blanket off his shoulders. The t-shirt that he's wearing is somewhat reddish-plum; Ianto can't remember what color it was before Owen used it to mop up a spill of viscous, rainbow liquid. It's tinting turquoise on the sleeves.
"Of course you knew that," he replies. He glances over the Hub, at the supplies still strewn across the autopsy bay and Tosh's growing piles. She's investigating everything. "I'll just be-"
"So tell me about yourself, Ianto," Ianto says casually, with an ironic twist to his mouth. "What do you do here?" He reaches for the broth, arms moving gingerly and still cocooned inside the blanket.
Ianto pauses, hands jerking toward his hips then hanging down in studied calm.
Ianto catches the nervous tell and smiles. He sips casually, lips wet and red against the wide, round silver of the spoon. He's holding the spoon left-handed. "I'm asking because as far as I can tell, you're the housekeeper," he says with a mildness meant to sting. The broth is trembling in the bowl.
Ianto tilts his head to the side. Oh yes, his own voice is strange and startling (he sounds more clear and higher toned, sound waves sent through air instead of meat and bone), but more unsettling still is recognizing that, if he were out of place and feeling sore, he'd swallow his own unease to make another squirm. Ianto is not known for going easy on himself. "General administration," he says. "I make the coffee, answer the phone, and scrupulously file my nails."
Ianto gives him a long considering look, and then an oh-so-subtle quirk of eyebrows. "Tell me," he asks solicitously. "Did you actually study in university?"
"Not really, no," says Ianto airily. "Did you?"
"Of course," says Ianto. "When I wasn't busy with my internship at 10 Downing Street, that is." His eyes are round, the eyebrows lifted. "Were you busy with internships, as well?" he asks with perfect blankness.
"I was busy getting pissed," says Ianto. "And bite me."
Ianto grins and swallows down the broth.
o
There's no need to stay past dinner. No threats, no Rift disturbances; just two extra bodies in the world. Gwen stays because she saw something significant that afternoon, although she can't remember what. Her photographs and scans are splashed across the viewscreen in the conference room; Chinese is scattered on the table. With just the three of them in that closed off room, it feels like the world is back on kilter again. There's no ghostly boxcar sending rattles down the tracks.
"Take the bean sprouts, too," Jack is saying urgently.
"I don't want the bean sprouts," Ianto mutters, lifting carrots from Jack's plate like usual. "Are you going to take my snowpeas?"
"Yes, but I hate bean sprouts," Jack says.
"So do I," says Ianto.
Gwen is staring at the rapid flicker of the evidence: crumbled building corners, grass shooting up through cracks. An oil stain across a factory floor. The conference room is suddenly pregnant with silence and suspicion and Jack and Ianto are looking far too casual.
The bean sprouts slump dejectedly on top of Gwen's fried rice.
Gwen glances at them without peevishness; she is the compassionate one, she will welcome them with open lips. "I think there was something in the courtyard of the textiles plant," she says, and glides the stylus on the pad. The jpeg she brings up is useless: slightly grainy and innocuous.
"You've been staring at it too long," says Ianto.
"Go home," says Jack. "If it's something really important, you'll remember it later."
Gwen breathes slow and heavy from her nostrils. "I think I just need another soda," she says. "Either of you need anything?"
Jack shakes his head and Ianto waves his nearly empty beer bottle, mouth too full to talk. The glances they give each other when she gets up are fond, exasperated, amused at her expense. Gwen doesn't care, and walks from the room with her back held straight.
Four feet from the fridge she sees the autopsy bay and her belly rolls over like a bloated swan. Tosh is sitting on the table, legs and Gwen's old trainers dangling. Ianto is busy with a pressure sleeve, some vials, a chart and pen. He glances up at her.
"Heya," says Gwen, smiling politely. It requires a painful shift inside her head but these are strangers; she should be distant and make small talk. It is almost easy to think of them as separate people because they are so strangely underdressed: Tosh is rumply in an oxford shirt of Gwen's, too big and wearing thin. Ianto's bandage peeks out from the collar of his t-shirt. He found a shirt with sleeves to layer underneath, rolled up just above the wrist.
"Hello," he calls back. "Do you know where the long-handled swabs are?"
"Oh!" says Gwen. "Yes, they're-it's hard to explain." She hurries down and rattles at a drawer, the one with a skudded dent across the front. "There's a trick to opening the cabinet sometimes," she says. The drawer shrieks open and she hands over a fat plastic ziplock.
Ianto nods his thanks and has the ziplock open in a tick, burping supplies across the table. Tosh opens her mouth without being asked, and he swipes the swab inside her cheeks, along the bottom of her gums. He steadies himself with fingers soft and slant against her jaw. Maybe it's an automatic reaction to opening her mouth, or maybe it's the lights: Tosh's eyelids settle shut.
Gwen feels herself start to waver back and forth again. "Is there anything wrong?" she asks.
Tosh opens her eyes when Ianto takes the swab away and smiles at Gwen. "Just collecting information," she says. "We have no idea what kind of effect trans-universal travel has on the human body, not really."
"Oh, right," says Gwen. "Makes a lot of sense, that does." She shoves her hands into her pockets and gestures at Ianto with her shoulder. "You look like you know what you're doing."
"I always know what I'm doing," Ianto says lightly, and when he winks at her Gwen is sanded raw for just a moment; she's absolutely sure she cannot do this. Ianto is a bit the same in every universe, it seems, except in this one he is not her friend. Gwen remembers the months it took before she felt allowed to fling her arms around his neck in joy and feels like screaming something lonely.
She chuckles. She is being polite.
"Actually," Ianto says, "Suzie thought it would be a good idea to have someone on the team certified as a paramedic. As the least specialized person, it fell to me."
"Suzie-" Gwen stops herself and bites her lip. Tosh and Ianto give her careful looks and she thinks, this is casual conversation. Jack isn't here and he won't notice if she asks. "Suzie is your boss, then?" she lilts, her tone as light as she can make it.
Ianto twists away to mark something on the chart in wet black ink.
"Suzie died a few months ago," Tosh says quietly. "Ianto is the head now."
"I'm sorry," Gwen says. "About Suzie, that is."
"Just part of the job, isn't it?" Ianto says too blithely, and goes back to touching Tosh and making sure she's well. Gwen wonders if he's seen the drawer with Tosh's name on it, if he's held out his palm to feel the cryogenic cold.
Gwen fiddles with a blister pack and blurts out earnestly, "Did you ever get a full-time doctor, then?" What she means is, Where is Owen? Is he a nothing in the Realm of Never-Met like I am?
Ianto runs his fingers through the pile of miscellany. "We have a doctor on contract, but that's for research only," he says. "She doesn't notice the staff unless it's something exciting."
"Such as bright blue pustules," Tosh murmurs, leaning into Ianto with a growing smile. "Ear tentacles, flourescent hair growth...."
"Never happened," Ianto says sternly. "I've wiped it completely from my mind."
"I remember it perfectly," says Tosh, teeth wicked. Ianto counters with a tongue depressor and makes Toshiko squeak. There is a brief conversation via eyebrows and subtle quirks of lips which ends when Toshiko gently kicks a black-streaked sneaker toe into his calf and Ianto flicks open a button on her shirt.
Tosh narrows her eyes and bats away the tongue depressor. "Was that entirely necessary?" she asks.
Ianto's smile is slow and unrepentant. "I need to check your heart rate," he says, and presses the stethoscope to the curve above her breast. His wrist is paling pink, his fingers dusky in the shadow, and behind them both her bra is lavender with yellow plumes. Tosh's neck is a perfect stretching curve.
Gwen holds her breath. She murmurs something empty and polite, then goes back to the conference room without her soda or the beer.
o
Ianto scuffles through the Hub at 3am wearing an undershirt of Jack's and the silk blend boxers he bought himself for Christmas, red and purple striped. Tiny stripes that shimmer nicely in dim lighting; nothing tacky.
Ianto is hunched at Tosh's station with the brown-green blanket wrapped around him, eyes squinched thin and puffy in the blue-white flicker.
"Oh," says Ianto, and wishes he were wearing more clothing, although that's ridiculous. Nothing the other hasn't seen before, and vice versa.
Ianto barely looks at him, left hand tapping at the keyboard in a sleepy stuttered rhythm. The other hand is holding the blanket shut and Ianto wonders if he's still feeling the blood loss, still worn down and cold. His voice is croaky: "Tosh woke up talking about vertices," he mumbles. "Points of incidence and temporal... whatsits. She wanted some print-outs."
"Jack wanted biscuits," says Ianto.
Ianto nods and taps the keyboard again, then snaps his head around. "What?" Shock, suspicion, an undercurrent of revulsion. Something wistful.
Ianto smirks to himself all the way to the kitchen.
o
Gwen phones the next morning to say that she remembers what she saw. She'll be late; she's at the textiles plant collecting samples. Jack does not remind her they have no doctor to analyze the samples. There's a machine that does it mostly automatically but it broke sometime last year and was on Toshiko's fix-it list. They were careless not to have a spare machine but now they have a spare Toshiko, and didn't that work out just great.
Jack says none of this. He tells Gwen that he'll see her soon, and to watch out for those textile workers because they've all got one thing on their minds (and he should know; there was this one time....) Jack sees something on the CCTV and forgets to finish his innuendo. Gwen doesn't notice. She laughs her way into hanging up.
One of the Iantos is giving the coffee maker a thorough wash: mechanical carcass flayed open on the counter, components (organs) floating in the stoppered sink. He's suds and water all the way up to his elbows, where his shirt sleeves have been primly rolled. His tie is flung over his shoulder and out of the way. His jacket's hanging elsewhere.
"Hi," says Jack.
"Good morning," says Ianto, and sluices soap through something twisty and inscrutable. Jack thinks it might be a miniature catalytic converter, but what it might be doing in a coffee machine he cannot say. Except the machine in question makes damn fine coffee so who knows what's in there?
Jack leans against the driest bit of counter-top and folds his arms. "Here's my problem," he says. "I'm not entirely sure which one you are."
Ianto's eyebrow is in fine form this morning. "I'm wearing a suit," he says. "And washing the coffee maker."
"Sure thing," says Jack. "Only problem with that is, if you weren't this universe's Ianto but you wanted me to think you were, that's exactly what you'd do."
"Or I'd do something even more clever that you wouldn't catch on to," Ianto says.
Jack stares at him, fear growing. Ianto relents.
"It'd be too much of a fuss to check for the stitches, but you could look for the hickey you left last night easily enough," he says, and steps back from the sink with his arms held out and dripping.
Jack moves into his space, careful of the sudsy hands, and unbuttons the middle few buttons of Ianto's shirt. He rubs a thumb along the bruise. "I'm relying on your immense affection for me that you won't be offended by what I'm about to say," he murmurs. His fingers tap along the edge of Ianto's clavicle. "You are devious and loyal. Good with problem solving and lateral thinking. Fantastic poker face, and you're quick at getting out of ropes."
Ianto's head is tilting slightly to the side; he's waiting for the point.
Jack presses his cheek to Ianto's jaw and thrums, "I like those qualities when you're on my side. But otherwise? They scare the shit out of me."
"Keep an eye on him then," says Ianto, right into Jack's ear.
Jack pulls back to look at Ianto's face, to watch his reaction when he says: "He's in the archives."
Ianto's eyes slit dark and glittery. "Keep a closer eye on him," he says.
"On my way," says Jack, and pushes off.
"Jack!"
Jack looks back and Ianto gestures in frustration at his gaping shirt-front. Jack grins. "You look nice like that," he says.
"My hands are wet," says Ianto with the corners of his mouth sloped downward.
Jack laughs and saunters back to button Ianto up again, to nibble at his lower lip. Ianto sighs and for a moment in Jack's mind, he's the only Ianto that there is.
________________
Feel free to rip this apart, comment on style, narrative, response, etc. etc. Where do you think this fic is going? What do you want to know? What are you unsure about? What are you getting bored with? How does this fic make you feel? etc. etc. etc.
I have been holding off on posting this for months because I have some modicum of integrity, at least. Alas, I haven't written in three weeks, so I feel antsy and guilty and you get a WiP dump as a result.
My problem with this story is the problem I have with *all* of my longer projects: an overly complicated backstory with no frame narrative (no *current* narrative) to filter it through. In other words, I have lots of background but no plot.
To be fair, I actually have the shape of the rest of this. There's just a gap in the middle that I need to bridge and I'm worried that the style is driving the narrative rather than vice versa. I'm perfectly fine with style determining plot, I'm just worried that the readers will feel the *lack* of the plot. In other words, I'm worried that this moves too slowly. I feel like I'm teasing a lot of interesting things but I'm not setting up to follow through ( the partial cause of this is that I started writing within minutes of getting the idea, and so most of the juicier details and twists hadn't been formed yet.)
Anyway. I'm going to post (most) of what I have, and maybe I can work out some issues through comments, or just get reassured, or, I dunno. I just don't want you guys to think I've been slacking off (even though I totally have.)
Working title: foundtosh.doc AKA toshanto AU
Rating: PG-13
Setting: post-S2
Word Count: 4,243
foundtosh.doc AKA toshanto AU
It happens, Jack says. Time and space is a fabric, and the universe is a shirt, or dress, or wedding tent made out of the fabric and sometimes it circles in the wash with lots of other universes, hopefully without reds mixed in with whites. Normally this is ok, because a shirt is still a shirt even if it gets washed with a muumuu, but every once in a while two universes can... melt into each other. Like vinyl in a too-hot dryer, or maybe it's more like a thread snagging on a button, or-this is where his metaphor falls apart and he stands in front of Gwen and Ianto with his hands spread open. He can't explain it. He turned a corner this morning and found Tosh.
She gaped at him and shrank against the filing cabinet, shivering in a soaked-through sundress and a pinstripe suit-coat, much too big. Jack's belly coiled hard around his spine.
"Where am I?" she asked, and his lower lip twisted suddenly because he'd forgotten her voice and here it was again, pulsing soft into his ear. He could almost see the sound waves, coloured mauve.
"You're at Torchwood," he said.
Tosh stopped looking worried long enough to look exasperated. "I know this is Torchwood, Jack," she said. "But you're not supposed to be here. Or I'm not. One of us, at any rate."
Jack looked at her, blinked away the blur, and whispered, "It's you."
o
Jack won't let them ask about circumstances; universes create parallels at specific moments, he says, dovetailing, but sometimes they converge again, or lag, or lead. Tosh could know an event that they haven't had yet but will, and vice versa. So no-one talks about the differences in their universes but there are accidental hints: Tosh has to be introduced to Gwen, and is strangely casual to Jack. She accepts a hot shower and change of clothes (her sundress, Ianto says, is deteriorating; soaked and stained by something mildly caustic) but she hangs onto the suit-coat, smoothes the sleeves beneath her fingers. When she speaks to Ianto, it's as if she's tasting every word before she says it. Being careful.
They are not surprised when Ianto shows up in a supply closet. Another Ianto, no coat, soaked wet and skin clammed pale, back slit cleanly from shoulder down to hip. There's not enough blood, as if the wound has been licked clean.
He's still breathing.
Jack does the stitching. Gwen doesn't trust herself, and Ianto, cautiously, is keeping far away. Toshiko heaps a blanket over the neck and arms as soon as Jack cuts off the shirt and waistcoat. She pillows it beneath his head and wraps her fingers gently around Other-Ianto's arm. She tells him quietly to please wake up.
"He should probably wait until I'm done to wake up," Jack says, "or this might get awkward." He grins at Tosh and waits carefully until the corner of her mouth turns up, just a tiny bit.
He slips the sickle-needle in and out.
Gwen wraps her fingers around the metal railing and wavers back and forth. Leaning forward to look at miraculous Tosh, hair flashing in the sterile lighting. Watching Jack, sleeves rolled up, fingers brown and large against the white, soft swelling of the flesh. When Gwen leans back, it is to look at the Ianto in the kitchenette where he is drying the insides of their coffee cups with a yellow towel.
o
When Ianto wakes up, Ianto is the only one in the main Hub. Gwen is investigating anomalous energy spikes; just a poke around a factory block, with a quick nip over to the Harwood's Haulage offices to see Rhys, to press her palms to his chest and say she can't tell him yet what's happened, but.... Rhys slips his hands into her hair and doesn't ask for details. He smells like raspberry Danish and despite herself, Gwen smiles.
Jack took Tosh into the archives to let her pick out some tech to play with, to keep her fingers from convulsing against her Ianto's brow and shoulder. They're only gone for a few minutes, they think, but time stretches out longer in the dim and sloping tunnels they creep along.
Ianto springs up from the computer. Ianto watches him, ribs flexing raggedly.
"This is a parallel universe," Ianto blurts out, low and urgent. "Tosh-Toshiko is in the archives. She's fine. I'll-" he taps his earpiece. "Jack. He's awake."
Jack is racing up. Ianto couldn't hear Tosh in the background but he bets she's running, too.
Ianto sways and falters for the nearest chair. Ianto jerks forward, pauses, says, "I can't touch you."
Ianto nods and waves him off. He leans sideways against the chairback, stitches bristling down his back. He curls himself forward, belly spilling, then arches back and shivers.
Ianto says, "I'll get you a blanket," and the look Ianto gives him is so queer, so lost and disturbed that Ianto decides not to speak very much. Looking at his own face is strange enough; how much worse will it be to hear his voice from across the room, saying words he didn't choose?
The blanket has just been retrieved from the autopsy table when Tosh skitters across the Hub, Jack loping in behind her. Ianto rises, left hand still unsteady on the back of the chair, and Tosh is hooking her arms carefully over his shoulders and his one free arm is curling around her ribs, hidden underneath the coat that she's still wearing. "Oh thank God," says Tosh, and Ianto presses his mouth to the crest of her forehead with his eyes shut tight.
Jack drifts over to Ianto and the blanket; he's part curious, part surprised, and mostly mushy. "I love happy reunions," he whispers.
"This is very weird," Ianto whispers back.
Ianto leans back in a curve to look at Tosh's face. "Parallel universe?" he asks and Ianto was right; hearing his own voice is much worse. Ianto smiles wryly at Tosh. "What are the odds of that?"
"I don't know," says Tosh. "There's too many variables, but I think if I-" She bites her lip. "You meant that rhetorically," she says.
Ianto huffs a laugh and brings up his other hand-he quivers only slightly, depending on small Tosh to keep him steady-and taps her nose. "That was my clever way of confirming your identity," he murmurs. Tosh opens her mouth to grumble something back at him but Ianto shudders and they nearly topple; he bites down on a hiss.
Ianto steps forward but Jack stops him, takes the blanket and rushes to grab Ianto's elbow with a steady arm. "Careful," he says, lowering Ianto into the chair again. "It's not that cold in here, but you've lost a lot of blood. Another shiver like that and you'll pull your stitches."
Ianto blinks at Jack, bewildered. He looks to Tosh and she smiles a Kewpie smile at him, settling the blanket around him loosely. "Your back is injured," she says, folding the blanket up around his neck and ears. "The anesthetic is probably starting to wear off."
Ianto searches up and down her body, his eyes washed hazel by the blanket's green-brown plaid. "Are you hurt?" he asks.
Tosh shakes her head and Jack worms two fingers inside the blanket to check Ianto's pulse. "We gave her a full examination when we found her," Jack says. "A few minor bruises, and we're keeping an eye out for any skin conditions that might develop. You guys got doused with something pretty special." He looks away from his watch and pulls his hand away from Ianto's slowly warming neck. "Which reminds me. We didn't want to jostle you too much when you were unconscious, and they're too nice to cut, but we really need to get you out of those damp trousers."
"Jack is the head of this Torchwood Three," Tosh puts in suddenly.
"Captain Harkness," says Ianto as if that explains something, and looks at him in a way that Jack doesn't really like. He splays a palm against Jack's belly and pushes.
Jack steps back. He clears his throat. "I'm sure we can find something dry that'll fit you," he says, and nods over his shoulder.
Ianto is standing at the steps to the autopsy bay, his eyes reflecting silver in the light. "Of course," he calls, nodding. "I have some denims down in the locker room, but if you would prefer something more formal-"
"Jeans are fine," says Ianto. He pulls the blanket close around himself and looks up and up at Tosh. "How are we getting back?" he asks, but she sighs and dips her head until her hair slides down across pinstriped lapels.
"I don't know," she says, and Ianto curls three fingers softly around her wrist.
o
Things spool out for a while and develop their own sense of normal. Tosh has discovered Toshiko's station and scattered it with biros, post-its, trinket-bits of computer tech and weaponry. A naked motherboard snakes a plastic ribbon deep into the computer's glinting belly. Something's ticking.
Tosh spends hours there, but wanders out at intervals to the indigenous Ianto-not her Ianto-at the espresso machine. She sips his coffee with a sense of wonder and looks at him, half unsettled. Ianto isn't dealing well with that. He smiles, he pulls her favorite cup out from the corner of the cupboard. He bows his head when coaxing fat streams of coffee from the metal udder.
He later walks into Jack's office to find Gwen with her face pressed into Jack's chest. Ianto stands near them switching stacks of paperwork, setting down Jack's coffee, rearranging paperweights. He offers Gwen his hankerchief. Jack grips a palm to Ianto's neck to make him stay. Gwen tries not to spot his tie with tears but doesn't care about his shirt; her fists leave starburst wrinkles on both her boys, and both of them come away with red knuckles from clasping hands too tight.
All Tosh and her Ianto ever talk about is going home.
o
Ianto has been sleeping off the blood loss on the sofa. Jack worries that it's more than that. He catches Ianto when awake, sitting crosslegged on the middle cushion.
"We don't have a medic on hand," Jack says, "but I can call in a UNIT doctor to have a look. This may have something to do with the fluid you and Tosh were covered in."
Ianto blinks groggily, shifts inside the blanket shell that warms his legs and hands, and mumbles, "I just need sleep. We know what this is." Jack doesn't move for a moment, trying to get the measure of him, and Ianto slips from bleary-eyed to keen. He looks like a hatching crocodile, the blanket splintered open like an egg. His mouth curls up in just the perfect way for it. "Some beef broth would be nice, however," he says. "To help with the anemia."
Jack grins like he's being paid to do it. "No problem," he says. He puts his hands in his pockets and wanders off to find his Ianto, the one that doesn't bare his teeth unless asked nicely.
o
Ianto brings the broth once he's finished snapping clean white sheets out over barrack beds.
"Everything is ready for you and Toshiko for the night," he says, setting the tray (bowl of broth, red napkin, a spoon and then a fork for the dish of fresh steamed broccoli) down on the coffee table. "The barracks are left over from a less luxurious time, but they are clean and near the bathrooms."
"I knew that," says Ianto, pulling the blanket off his shoulders. The t-shirt that he's wearing is somewhat reddish-plum; Ianto can't remember what color it was before Owen used it to mop up a spill of viscous, rainbow liquid. It's tinting turquoise on the sleeves.
"Of course you knew that," he replies. He glances over the Hub, at the supplies still strewn across the autopsy bay and Tosh's growing piles. She's investigating everything. "I'll just be-"
"So tell me about yourself, Ianto," Ianto says casually, with an ironic twist to his mouth. "What do you do here?" He reaches for the broth, arms moving gingerly and still cocooned inside the blanket.
Ianto pauses, hands jerking toward his hips then hanging down in studied calm.
Ianto catches the nervous tell and smiles. He sips casually, lips wet and red against the wide, round silver of the spoon. He's holding the spoon left-handed. "I'm asking because as far as I can tell, you're the housekeeper," he says with a mildness meant to sting. The broth is trembling in the bowl.
Ianto tilts his head to the side. Oh yes, his own voice is strange and startling (he sounds more clear and higher toned, sound waves sent through air instead of meat and bone), but more unsettling still is recognizing that, if he were out of place and feeling sore, he'd swallow his own unease to make another squirm. Ianto is not known for going easy on himself. "General administration," he says. "I make the coffee, answer the phone, and scrupulously file my nails."
Ianto gives him a long considering look, and then an oh-so-subtle quirk of eyebrows. "Tell me," he asks solicitously. "Did you actually study in university?"
"Not really, no," says Ianto airily. "Did you?"
"Of course," says Ianto. "When I wasn't busy with my internship at 10 Downing Street, that is." His eyes are round, the eyebrows lifted. "Were you busy with internships, as well?" he asks with perfect blankness.
"I was busy getting pissed," says Ianto. "And bite me."
Ianto grins and swallows down the broth.
o
There's no need to stay past dinner. No threats, no Rift disturbances; just two extra bodies in the world. Gwen stays because she saw something significant that afternoon, although she can't remember what. Her photographs and scans are splashed across the viewscreen in the conference room; Chinese is scattered on the table. With just the three of them in that closed off room, it feels like the world is back on kilter again. There's no ghostly boxcar sending rattles down the tracks.
"Take the bean sprouts, too," Jack is saying urgently.
"I don't want the bean sprouts," Ianto mutters, lifting carrots from Jack's plate like usual. "Are you going to take my snowpeas?"
"Yes, but I hate bean sprouts," Jack says.
"So do I," says Ianto.
Gwen is staring at the rapid flicker of the evidence: crumbled building corners, grass shooting up through cracks. An oil stain across a factory floor. The conference room is suddenly pregnant with silence and suspicion and Jack and Ianto are looking far too casual.
The bean sprouts slump dejectedly on top of Gwen's fried rice.
Gwen glances at them without peevishness; she is the compassionate one, she will welcome them with open lips. "I think there was something in the courtyard of the textiles plant," she says, and glides the stylus on the pad. The jpeg she brings up is useless: slightly grainy and innocuous.
"You've been staring at it too long," says Ianto.
"Go home," says Jack. "If it's something really important, you'll remember it later."
Gwen breathes slow and heavy from her nostrils. "I think I just need another soda," she says. "Either of you need anything?"
Jack shakes his head and Ianto waves his nearly empty beer bottle, mouth too full to talk. The glances they give each other when she gets up are fond, exasperated, amused at her expense. Gwen doesn't care, and walks from the room with her back held straight.
Four feet from the fridge she sees the autopsy bay and her belly rolls over like a bloated swan. Tosh is sitting on the table, legs and Gwen's old trainers dangling. Ianto is busy with a pressure sleeve, some vials, a chart and pen. He glances up at her.
"Heya," says Gwen, smiling politely. It requires a painful shift inside her head but these are strangers; she should be distant and make small talk. It is almost easy to think of them as separate people because they are so strangely underdressed: Tosh is rumply in an oxford shirt of Gwen's, too big and wearing thin. Ianto's bandage peeks out from the collar of his t-shirt. He found a shirt with sleeves to layer underneath, rolled up just above the wrist.
"Hello," he calls back. "Do you know where the long-handled swabs are?"
"Oh!" says Gwen. "Yes, they're-it's hard to explain." She hurries down and rattles at a drawer, the one with a skudded dent across the front. "There's a trick to opening the cabinet sometimes," she says. The drawer shrieks open and she hands over a fat plastic ziplock.
Ianto nods his thanks and has the ziplock open in a tick, burping supplies across the table. Tosh opens her mouth without being asked, and he swipes the swab inside her cheeks, along the bottom of her gums. He steadies himself with fingers soft and slant against her jaw. Maybe it's an automatic reaction to opening her mouth, or maybe it's the lights: Tosh's eyelids settle shut.
Gwen feels herself start to waver back and forth again. "Is there anything wrong?" she asks.
Tosh opens her eyes when Ianto takes the swab away and smiles at Gwen. "Just collecting information," she says. "We have no idea what kind of effect trans-universal travel has on the human body, not really."
"Oh, right," says Gwen. "Makes a lot of sense, that does." She shoves her hands into her pockets and gestures at Ianto with her shoulder. "You look like you know what you're doing."
"I always know what I'm doing," Ianto says lightly, and when he winks at her Gwen is sanded raw for just a moment; she's absolutely sure she cannot do this. Ianto is a bit the same in every universe, it seems, except in this one he is not her friend. Gwen remembers the months it took before she felt allowed to fling her arms around his neck in joy and feels like screaming something lonely.
She chuckles. She is being polite.
"Actually," Ianto says, "Suzie thought it would be a good idea to have someone on the team certified as a paramedic. As the least specialized person, it fell to me."
"Suzie-" Gwen stops herself and bites her lip. Tosh and Ianto give her careful looks and she thinks, this is casual conversation. Jack isn't here and he won't notice if she asks. "Suzie is your boss, then?" she lilts, her tone as light as she can make it.
Ianto twists away to mark something on the chart in wet black ink.
"Suzie died a few months ago," Tosh says quietly. "Ianto is the head now."
"I'm sorry," Gwen says. "About Suzie, that is."
"Just part of the job, isn't it?" Ianto says too blithely, and goes back to touching Tosh and making sure she's well. Gwen wonders if he's seen the drawer with Tosh's name on it, if he's held out his palm to feel the cryogenic cold.
Gwen fiddles with a blister pack and blurts out earnestly, "Did you ever get a full-time doctor, then?" What she means is, Where is Owen? Is he a nothing in the Realm of Never-Met like I am?
Ianto runs his fingers through the pile of miscellany. "We have a doctor on contract, but that's for research only," he says. "She doesn't notice the staff unless it's something exciting."
"Such as bright blue pustules," Tosh murmurs, leaning into Ianto with a growing smile. "Ear tentacles, flourescent hair growth...."
"Never happened," Ianto says sternly. "I've wiped it completely from my mind."
"I remember it perfectly," says Tosh, teeth wicked. Ianto counters with a tongue depressor and makes Toshiko squeak. There is a brief conversation via eyebrows and subtle quirks of lips which ends when Toshiko gently kicks a black-streaked sneaker toe into his calf and Ianto flicks open a button on her shirt.
Tosh narrows her eyes and bats away the tongue depressor. "Was that entirely necessary?" she asks.
Ianto's smile is slow and unrepentant. "I need to check your heart rate," he says, and presses the stethoscope to the curve above her breast. His wrist is paling pink, his fingers dusky in the shadow, and behind them both her bra is lavender with yellow plumes. Tosh's neck is a perfect stretching curve.
Gwen holds her breath. She murmurs something empty and polite, then goes back to the conference room without her soda or the beer.
o
Ianto scuffles through the Hub at 3am wearing an undershirt of Jack's and the silk blend boxers he bought himself for Christmas, red and purple striped. Tiny stripes that shimmer nicely in dim lighting; nothing tacky.
Ianto is hunched at Tosh's station with the brown-green blanket wrapped around him, eyes squinched thin and puffy in the blue-white flicker.
"Oh," says Ianto, and wishes he were wearing more clothing, although that's ridiculous. Nothing the other hasn't seen before, and vice versa.
Ianto barely looks at him, left hand tapping at the keyboard in a sleepy stuttered rhythm. The other hand is holding the blanket shut and Ianto wonders if he's still feeling the blood loss, still worn down and cold. His voice is croaky: "Tosh woke up talking about vertices," he mumbles. "Points of incidence and temporal... whatsits. She wanted some print-outs."
"Jack wanted biscuits," says Ianto.
Ianto nods and taps the keyboard again, then snaps his head around. "What?" Shock, suspicion, an undercurrent of revulsion. Something wistful.
Ianto smirks to himself all the way to the kitchen.
o
Gwen phones the next morning to say that she remembers what she saw. She'll be late; she's at the textiles plant collecting samples. Jack does not remind her they have no doctor to analyze the samples. There's a machine that does it mostly automatically but it broke sometime last year and was on Toshiko's fix-it list. They were careless not to have a spare machine but now they have a spare Toshiko, and didn't that work out just great.
Jack says none of this. He tells Gwen that he'll see her soon, and to watch out for those textile workers because they've all got one thing on their minds (and he should know; there was this one time....) Jack sees something on the CCTV and forgets to finish his innuendo. Gwen doesn't notice. She laughs her way into hanging up.
One of the Iantos is giving the coffee maker a thorough wash: mechanical carcass flayed open on the counter, components (organs) floating in the stoppered sink. He's suds and water all the way up to his elbows, where his shirt sleeves have been primly rolled. His tie is flung over his shoulder and out of the way. His jacket's hanging elsewhere.
"Hi," says Jack.
"Good morning," says Ianto, and sluices soap through something twisty and inscrutable. Jack thinks it might be a miniature catalytic converter, but what it might be doing in a coffee machine he cannot say. Except the machine in question makes damn fine coffee so who knows what's in there?
Jack leans against the driest bit of counter-top and folds his arms. "Here's my problem," he says. "I'm not entirely sure which one you are."
Ianto's eyebrow is in fine form this morning. "I'm wearing a suit," he says. "And washing the coffee maker."
"Sure thing," says Jack. "Only problem with that is, if you weren't this universe's Ianto but you wanted me to think you were, that's exactly what you'd do."
"Or I'd do something even more clever that you wouldn't catch on to," Ianto says.
Jack stares at him, fear growing. Ianto relents.
"It'd be too much of a fuss to check for the stitches, but you could look for the hickey you left last night easily enough," he says, and steps back from the sink with his arms held out and dripping.
Jack moves into his space, careful of the sudsy hands, and unbuttons the middle few buttons of Ianto's shirt. He rubs a thumb along the bruise. "I'm relying on your immense affection for me that you won't be offended by what I'm about to say," he murmurs. His fingers tap along the edge of Ianto's clavicle. "You are devious and loyal. Good with problem solving and lateral thinking. Fantastic poker face, and you're quick at getting out of ropes."
Ianto's head is tilting slightly to the side; he's waiting for the point.
Jack presses his cheek to Ianto's jaw and thrums, "I like those qualities when you're on my side. But otherwise? They scare the shit out of me."
"Keep an eye on him then," says Ianto, right into Jack's ear.
Jack pulls back to look at Ianto's face, to watch his reaction when he says: "He's in the archives."
Ianto's eyes slit dark and glittery. "Keep a closer eye on him," he says.
"On my way," says Jack, and pushes off.
"Jack!"
Jack looks back and Ianto gestures in frustration at his gaping shirt-front. Jack grins. "You look nice like that," he says.
"My hands are wet," says Ianto with the corners of his mouth sloped downward.
Jack laughs and saunters back to button Ianto up again, to nibble at his lower lip. Ianto sighs and for a moment in Jack's mind, he's the only Ianto that there is.
________________
Feel free to rip this apart, comment on style, narrative, response, etc. etc. Where do you think this fic is going? What do you want to know? What are you unsure about? What are you getting bored with? How does this fic make you feel? etc. etc. etc.