Mirror, Mirror [40/?]
Title: Mirror, Mirror
Rating: R [language and sexual situations]
Characters: Torchwood team, Torchwood team, PC Andy, Martha, Ten
Spoilers: Exit Wounds/Journey's End
Advisories: BDSM, polyamory, children, dark themes, MPreg references
Disclaimer: if you think this is even vaguely recognisable at this point...
Summary: A slip of the rift strands the Torchwood team... in Cardiff with the Torchwood team. There's nothing worse than getting on your own nerves.
**********
The last unexpected obstacle to getting the rag-tag gaggle of Torchwood personnel safely under cover for another evening was an inconvenient neighbour inconveniently standing in his front garden, walking a hideously ugly cat on a lead. At least, Gwen thought it was a cat. "Hello, Mr Lloyd," Tosh Harper greeted him with a resigned sigh.
Mr Lloyd squinted at Jake's pink bibshort. "I told Nerys no good would come of letting Andrew's sisters dress him up in their party frocks."
"It was the last clean thing in the drawer this morning," Tosh's Owen replied with what Gwen thought was remarkable patience. "We've decided we're not going to worry about it until they're old enough to complain for themselves. No, Marley, leave Mrs Snuffles alone --"
Tosh Sato had ducked into the Harpers' house. Gwen decided that the wiser course was to follow whilst the toddlers were still providing a diversion. She slipped out of the side of the car opposite Mr Lloyd and his cat and made a run for it as the bickering began in earnest, leaving Ianto to shift for himself as he saw fit. (With any luck he'd find some way to discreetly get DNA samples, despite what Owen had said that man just couldn't be from Cardiff originally --)
Andy came out of the kitchen as Gwen shut the door, blinking at her from behind the shield of spectacles that managed to be a bit less antique than his Owen's but still far too breathlessly retro to be meant any way but ironically. She hoped. "Erm, your Junior's fallen asleep watching telly and I didn't want to try to lift him. His dad's gone to bed already."
Or to have a wank in peace, Gwen reckoned. "Not used to seeing you in the Clark Kent kit."
"Well, you know," and he made a gesture towards his face with his bandaged hand that might have been meant to illustrate the awkwardness of putting in contacts in his present state. "And going without is increasingly not an option."
Gwen didn't realise that the tears had begun to fall until his face crumpled into a look of puzzled worry. "No, I'm all right, it's just..." Ten years. Time for hair to thin and eyes to dim, if one had the chance to live them. "In my head you'll always look the way you did the day that I met you, I suppose."
Andy gave her a wry grin. "Well, in my head I'll always look like a film star, yeah? Film star with more bloody hair."
He'd been complaining about that since the day she'd met him as well, halfhearted moan about genetic destiny as familiar and banal as it was cruel irony after the fact. But to hear it again, now... How many times she'd rung into voicemail for that last Yeah, 's me, we should be on for Thursday, talk to you about it when you come on before she'd lost it to a careless keypress. She'd thought that had been that. That should have been that. But Torchwood couldn't even let you leave the dead lie, could it. Gwen turned and pulled open the door into the telly room, where as advertised Junior was rolled up in the colourful knitted blanket from the back of the settee. She touched his shoulder to see how far down he was, and got a muzzy blink in response; "Oi, Junior, do you need me to carry you up?"
Junior scrubbed the back of a hand across his nose; "'M'okay," he protested, and unwound himself from the blanket. "Had my bath already."
Which was probably a lie, but it wasn't worth fighting him over at this hour. "Didn't mind watching him, we put on a vid he liked," Andy said from the doorway as Junior pushed past. "He's a good kid."
Gwen picked up the discarded blanket and started to fold it. "This is lovely, has your Tosh learnt to knit then? I tried when I was carrying Junior, the little baby things are so cute, but I could never quite manage it --"
Andy shook his head. "No, it's, Owen made it, he... had some time on his hands, for a while there."
Must have done, it wasn't a small blanket. Gwen tried to picture what it must have taken to keep Owen still for that long and decided it would have to have been some combination of breaking all the bones in both legs and possibly on bedrest for a pregnancy of his own as well. "Looks like it'd take him a year?"
Andy shrugged, as if he'd not really given it much thought at the time. "Dunno, I know he was working on it when I was in hospital but I didn't notice when he'd finished. Photo somewhere of Em lying on it when she was just starting to be able to hold her head up, best I could really tell you."
Completely useless information without more data-points to connect, like so much else in their ongoing trials. "What were you in hospital for?"
A shadow crossed Andy's eyes. "Flu," he said.
They'd had a worrying swine strain winter before last on their own side of the rift, sort of thing always had the news clucking anxiously about slaughtered livestock and the risks of air travel, but it hadn't amounted to much, like it never did. Maybe this one thing had gone the tiniest bit better for her world. Out in the kitchen an Owen was now moving about, rummaging through the cupboards as if in search of something for his tea. Andy brightened at the sight of a beard and went out to meet him; "That's a face."
Owen came out of the cupboard with a box of pasta. "She worked it out about the rats," he said, looking as if this were outside a reasonable person's expectation. "Already bloody dissected Nibbles, I spent half my day at a fucking rat funeral."
"The service was very moving," Gwen added at Andy's growing look of amused horror.
"Now I have a grieving rat widow in critical-care and I'm expected to work out how to 'make her all better' or the boss's daughter will be very cross with me," Owen went on, running a hand through his hair as he slumped back against the fridge. "Spare me from telepathic six-year olds. Have you eaten?"
Andy shook his head, and the two fell to a discussion of available options in a way that somehow had managed to entirely leave Gwen out of the forming equation. Ah, well, she'd not been the one to work straight through Torchwood's take-away order, either; Gwen left them to it and went up the stairs to see what had become of Junior, or for that matter her so-called husband. Maybe she'd be lucky enough he'd finally taken his chance to bugger off altogether.
No such fortune tonight, though. In the middle of the big bed in another Owen's room lay the one she was married to, dead to the world, and curled up beside a smaller lump cast from the same mould, already quite out for the night. Gwen squared her shoulders against the sight and went to sort herself on the truckle in the nursery.
Rating: R [language and sexual situations]
Characters: Torchwood team, Torchwood team, PC Andy, Martha, Ten
Spoilers: Exit Wounds/Journey's End
Advisories: BDSM, polyamory, children, dark themes, MPreg references
Disclaimer: if you think this is even vaguely recognisable at this point...
Summary: A slip of the rift strands the Torchwood team... in Cardiff with the Torchwood team. There's nothing worse than getting on your own nerves.
**********
The last unexpected obstacle to getting the rag-tag gaggle of Torchwood personnel safely under cover for another evening was an inconvenient neighbour inconveniently standing in his front garden, walking a hideously ugly cat on a lead. At least, Gwen thought it was a cat. "Hello, Mr Lloyd," Tosh Harper greeted him with a resigned sigh.
Mr Lloyd squinted at Jake's pink bibshort. "I told Nerys no good would come of letting Andrew's sisters dress him up in their party frocks."
"It was the last clean thing in the drawer this morning," Tosh's Owen replied with what Gwen thought was remarkable patience. "We've decided we're not going to worry about it until they're old enough to complain for themselves. No, Marley, leave Mrs Snuffles alone --"
Tosh Sato had ducked into the Harpers' house. Gwen decided that the wiser course was to follow whilst the toddlers were still providing a diversion. She slipped out of the side of the car opposite Mr Lloyd and his cat and made a run for it as the bickering began in earnest, leaving Ianto to shift for himself as he saw fit. (With any luck he'd find some way to discreetly get DNA samples, despite what Owen had said that man just couldn't be from Cardiff originally --)
Andy came out of the kitchen as Gwen shut the door, blinking at her from behind the shield of spectacles that managed to be a bit less antique than his Owen's but still far too breathlessly retro to be meant any way but ironically. She hoped. "Erm, your Junior's fallen asleep watching telly and I didn't want to try to lift him. His dad's gone to bed already."
Or to have a wank in peace, Gwen reckoned. "Not used to seeing you in the Clark Kent kit."
"Well, you know," and he made a gesture towards his face with his bandaged hand that might have been meant to illustrate the awkwardness of putting in contacts in his present state. "And going without is increasingly not an option."
Gwen didn't realise that the tears had begun to fall until his face crumpled into a look of puzzled worry. "No, I'm all right, it's just..." Ten years. Time for hair to thin and eyes to dim, if one had the chance to live them. "In my head you'll always look the way you did the day that I met you, I suppose."
Andy gave her a wry grin. "Well, in my head I'll always look like a film star, yeah? Film star with more bloody hair."
He'd been complaining about that since the day she'd met him as well, halfhearted moan about genetic destiny as familiar and banal as it was cruel irony after the fact. But to hear it again, now... How many times she'd rung into voicemail for that last Yeah, 's me, we should be on for Thursday, talk to you about it when you come on before she'd lost it to a careless keypress. She'd thought that had been that. That should have been that. But Torchwood couldn't even let you leave the dead lie, could it. Gwen turned and pulled open the door into the telly room, where as advertised Junior was rolled up in the colourful knitted blanket from the back of the settee. She touched his shoulder to see how far down he was, and got a muzzy blink in response; "Oi, Junior, do you need me to carry you up?"
Junior scrubbed the back of a hand across his nose; "'M'okay," he protested, and unwound himself from the blanket. "Had my bath already."
Which was probably a lie, but it wasn't worth fighting him over at this hour. "Didn't mind watching him, we put on a vid he liked," Andy said from the doorway as Junior pushed past. "He's a good kid."
Gwen picked up the discarded blanket and started to fold it. "This is lovely, has your Tosh learnt to knit then? I tried when I was carrying Junior, the little baby things are so cute, but I could never quite manage it --"
Andy shook his head. "No, it's, Owen made it, he... had some time on his hands, for a while there."
Must have done, it wasn't a small blanket. Gwen tried to picture what it must have taken to keep Owen still for that long and decided it would have to have been some combination of breaking all the bones in both legs and possibly on bedrest for a pregnancy of his own as well. "Looks like it'd take him a year?"
Andy shrugged, as if he'd not really given it much thought at the time. "Dunno, I know he was working on it when I was in hospital but I didn't notice when he'd finished. Photo somewhere of Em lying on it when she was just starting to be able to hold her head up, best I could really tell you."
Completely useless information without more data-points to connect, like so much else in their ongoing trials. "What were you in hospital for?"
A shadow crossed Andy's eyes. "Flu," he said.
They'd had a worrying swine strain winter before last on their own side of the rift, sort of thing always had the news clucking anxiously about slaughtered livestock and the risks of air travel, but it hadn't amounted to much, like it never did. Maybe this one thing had gone the tiniest bit better for her world. Out in the kitchen an Owen was now moving about, rummaging through the cupboards as if in search of something for his tea. Andy brightened at the sight of a beard and went out to meet him; "That's a face."
Owen came out of the cupboard with a box of pasta. "She worked it out about the rats," he said, looking as if this were outside a reasonable person's expectation. "Already bloody dissected Nibbles, I spent half my day at a fucking rat funeral."
"The service was very moving," Gwen added at Andy's growing look of amused horror.
"Now I have a grieving rat widow in critical-care and I'm expected to work out how to 'make her all better' or the boss's daughter will be very cross with me," Owen went on, running a hand through his hair as he slumped back against the fridge. "Spare me from telepathic six-year olds. Have you eaten?"
Andy shook his head, and the two fell to a discussion of available options in a way that somehow had managed to entirely leave Gwen out of the forming equation. Ah, well, she'd not been the one to work straight through Torchwood's take-away order, either; Gwen left them to it and went up the stairs to see what had become of Junior, or for that matter her so-called husband. Maybe she'd be lucky enough he'd finally taken his chance to bugger off altogether.
No such fortune tonight, though. In the middle of the big bed in another Owen's room lay the one she was married to, dead to the world, and curled up beside a smaller lump cast from the same mould, already quite out for the night. Gwen squared her shoulders against the sight and went to sort herself on the truckle in the nursery.