Disambiguation: In These Stones (Part 1/7)
Title: Disambiguation: In These Stones (Part 1/7)
Rating: R-ish to light NC-17 for smut.
Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto with mention of Ianto/Ianto and bouts of Ianto/Owen. Occasional mention and hints of other pairings.
Notes/Summary: Disambiguation is an AU that follows the exploits of a parallel Torchwood where the events of "End of Days" didn't go as smoothly as they do in canon. Features Andy Davidson as a member of the team. Picks up where the original Disambiguation one-off story leaves off, so you'll probably want to give it a look. Betaed by riftugee, whose advice I took much more often than not, and without whom this piece wouldn't be nearly as shiny as it is now.
Part One, in which Ianto's homecoming doesn't go exactly to plan.
Ianto moaned as Owen’s lips worked their way up his spine.
Less than four hours ago he’d stepped through a controlled tear in the fabric of reality and into the grateful arms of his team. The debriefing had taken nearly two hours. Afterward, they’d all insisted on finishing up early and dragged him out for a celebratory trip to Buffalo Bar. From there he’d gone home with Owen, who was presently welcoming him back personally.
Very personally.
Smooth hands ran up his thighs. Ianto strained and arched, his body begging for more contact. Owen’s hard-on pressed insistently into his back as the other man writhed up against him.
“Please,” Ianto rasped.
The doctor growled and pressed him down into a mess of purple sheets. It was good, being near his Owen again. Sex with himself had been good, but this was all the sweeter for having nearly been lost.
“Missed you,” he gasped into the pillows as Owen’s fingers probed and slid, seeking out the places that sent Ianto over the edge. Advantages of shagging a doctor, he thought to himself.
A year ago, if anyone had suggested to Ianto that he was destined to end up in Owen Harper’s bed, he’d have dismissed it as some sort of sick joke. The two had always been passionate in one another’s presence, certainly, but that had been channeled into a long-running mutual antipathy. Owen, being naturally confrontational, had seized upon every opportunity to snipe and undermine him. Ianto, meanwhile, had relied on more subtle means and, to a certain extent, karma. More often than not, Owen was more than happy to hang himself with the rope he was given. Ianto was quiet, but he played his strengths and resolved not to let some scrawny git upend him.
And then Bilis Manger ruined everything.
They’d saved the world of course - that’s what Torchwood did - but at the cost of two of their own. Ianto had found Jack’s twisted body, arms spread wide, sprawled in the gravel. Gwen’s was further out, face down between Jack and the SUV. It was Toshiko who’d guessed that Gwen tripped over a piece of scrap metal while fleeing the scene, landing in Abaddon’s shadow. They couldn’t guess at what Jack had done to stop the beast, but whatever it was, he’d sacrificed himself to do it.
The clean-up effort was on a scale with Canary Wharf, except there were only three of them to manage it. The material aspect - civilian deaths, massive property damage, structural failures in the Hub, etc. - tested them, but it had paled in comparison to the diplomatic fallout. Every organization or public figure who knew what Torchwood was took turns raking them over the coals. Two incidents in less than a year? It was a disaster.
Brilliant as Owen was, nothing could have prepared him for that sort of pressure. When Ianto found him one morning with the barrel of a gun in his mouth, he’d carefully disarmed the doctor and spent the next several hours simply listening. The next day, Owen invited him out for a drink. The rest was, well, history.
Owen’s teeth grazed his shoulder, bringing Ianto back into the moment. This was good. Amazing. Owen’s breath hitched in his throat as he passed the point of no return, and he squeezed Ianto’s shoulders almost hard enough to bruise. That tang of pain was all Ianto needed to finally lose control, and before he knew it the two of them were coming in a grunting, panting heap.
Afterward, they dozed. Ianto woke at one point to find Owen’s arms wrapped around him almost possessively, and he wondered what it meant that cuddles were increasingly part of the package with Owen. He smiled and snuggled closer, and then went back to sleep.
* * *
When he awoke again, the bed was empty, and the flat smelled of chilies. The sounds of Owen clanking about in the kitchen echoed off of the bare walls as Ianto rubbed his eyes and sat up. He felt good. He was glad to be home.
He staggered across the bedroom and into the bath. He checked his hair in the mirror (messy, but in good ways), had a piss, and washed his hands and face. He gathered up his trousers and put them on, unconsciously shoving his hands in the pockets.
He tensed. He’d forgotten about the note.
Ianto took a nervous glance down the hall before sitting back down on the bed and beginning to read. The note was written in a hand that was at once familiar and alien, and the words tumbled over one another and into him like a roiling storm of year-old-pain. It recounted the details of their encounter with Bilis Manger, their mutiny, the way they’d torn open the Rift. He processed the data with a sort of practiced detachment until the third page, when his other’s missive stopped his heart.
Unless I miss my guess, Gwen’s death is a point at which our realities diverge. In ours, she lived. She kept vigil over Jack’s body and kept trying to revive him when the rest of us wrote him off. She simply refused to give up. I hated myself for months because I lacked the faith to hang on like that. I can only think that this is my opportunity to set things right. Jack may be alive and can’t find his way back. You have to help him.
“Oi! Ianto! ,” Owen yelled. “You getting up or what?”
“Yeah, sorry. Out in a minute,” Ianto choked. He folded the note back up and clenched it in his fist. He fought down the mess of nausea and emotions and strode out into the front room, where he flopped onto the sofa and gazed out through the plate glass windows.
“You want this hot like last time?” Owen shouted from the kitchen as he dumped a bowl of rice noodles into the wok.
“Yes, please.”
The other man snorted. “Your funeral.”
Funny words, those, Ianto thought bitterly. Leave it to Owen to wander too close and say the wrong words at the right time by mistake. Or the right ones at the wrong time. Or possibly even the right ones at precisely the right moment. Something like that.
"Right. One perfectly sane pad thai for me, and one for the masochist." Owen handed Ianto a plate and sat down next to him. The doctor took a hasty forkful of noodles into his mouth and chewed. When Ianto didn’t follow suit, Owen gave him a curious look. His eyes lit on the note.
"What's that?"
Ianto turned the note over in his hands. "Someone else's funeral."
Owen carefully pried the paper from Ianto’s fingers and examined it. He read in silence, letting each page drop to the floor as he finished it.
“You didn’t tell us about this.” Owen whispered, still staring at the pages near his feet.
“I only just read it myself.”
They sat in silence, perfectly still until Ianto spoke again.
"I should tell you, Owen, that Jack and I were --"
"Involved. Yeah, I know. We all did."
The corner of Ianto’s mouth twitched. "Was it so obvious?"
Owen thought for a moment. "No, not really. I mean, we'd all sort of guessed, but you two were so bloody professional about it all. Not like me and Gwen were. And afterward,” Owen said, his voice wavering a bit, “the way you grieved him, the way you’d reacted to Tosh’s news about the other Jack Harkness, the way you went to visit the morgue when Andy and Tosh left for the night... All of it made sense after a while.”
Ianto nodded and turned back toward the window. He could feel the start of tears in his lashes. He didn’t trust himself to speak without his voice breaking. He watched Owen’s reflection in the window and noticed Owen’s mouth drawing tight, the way it always did when pain put him on the knife’s edge between rage and despair. He turned and watched as the other man stood and walked into the bedroom. A moment later he returned, fully dressed and holding Ianto’s clothes. He threw them into the younger man’s lap.
“I’m relieving you of your duty as interim Director.”
“What?” Ianto gaped in disbelief.
“As your doctor, I’m putting you on indefinite medical leave for emotional and psychological fatigue. I’ll be assuming any and all administrative and supervisory duties in your absence.” Owen made no attempt to mask the anger in his voice. Instead, he’d drawn himself up to his full height and crossed his arms.
Ianto dumped the clothes onto the cushions next to him and stood up. “Owen, you have no right,“ he growled as he closed the gap between them. If Owen wanted a fight, Ianto would give him one.
“I was Jack’s second in command, and I’m the team’s physician. I have every bloody right. Furthermore, your return is contingent upon my assessment, both of your mental and emotional well-being and your overall physical health. That assessment can be as formal or informal as I like, and my opinion can’t be appealed.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Ianto warned.
“Been telling myself that for months. Now get the fuck out of my flat.”
Ianto gave Owen one last hard look. When the smaller man didn’t budge, Ianto snatched up his things and stormed out, slamming the door to Owen’s flat behind him. When he was certain of being out of earshot, he shook his mobile from his jacket pocket and speed-dialed Andy Davidson.
* * *
Andy was sitting on the Hub sofa, leafing through an old copy of The Daily Mirror when the cog door rolled open. He had the Rift monitor up, projecting on one of the walls. He dropped the paper and stood as a slightly bedraggled Ianto walked in.
“Did you do as I asked?”
Andy nodded. “Yep. I started the internal diagnostics and shut down the CCTV about five minutes ago. The whole thing should take about two hours. I don’t get why you wanted me to shield the comms system, though.”
Ianto checked the readouts on Andy’s workstation console, then entered a few keystrokes. “Tosh has a pet theory that incoming transmissions spike the data. It’s a slow night, so it’s an ideal opportunity to see if we get different readings.”
“Oh.” Andy shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Oh, Andy? Can you do me one more favor?”
“Sure, boss. What’cha need?”
Ianto pointed up at the Rift monitor readout. “What do you think that value up there means?”
Andy turned around. “Looks normal to me. Nice low numbers. Minimal wobble. Why, does it look bad to y--“
Ianto jabbed the tranquilizer dart into Andy’s bicep. Andy whipped around, a look of shock and confusion on his face. He stumbled back and grasped clumsily at the dart with his other hand before crumpling into a heap in Ianto’s arms.
“I’m really sorry about this, Andy.” Ianto murmured as he hauled his now-drooling teammate over to the sofa. He draped a blanket over Andy as an afterthought and then checked his watch. Chances were Owen was already on his way over to investigate the base’s sudden silence. He’d have to be quick.
Ianto snatched a couple of guns and some supplies from the armory, and then raced down toward the morgue. He’d get a gurney out of storage on the way, and then haul Jack up to the carpark using the dumbwaiter system. If Ianto had timed it right, he’d be leaving just as Owen arrived and the lockdown triggered.
“I’d better be right about this,” he whispered under his breath. This was not going to look good in his file.
---
Next Chapter
---
Rating: R-ish to light NC-17 for smut.
Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto with mention of Ianto/Ianto and bouts of Ianto/Owen. Occasional mention and hints of other pairings.
Notes/Summary: Disambiguation is an AU that follows the exploits of a parallel Torchwood where the events of "End of Days" didn't go as smoothly as they do in canon. Features Andy Davidson as a member of the team. Picks up where the original Disambiguation one-off story leaves off, so you'll probably want to give it a look. Betaed by riftugee, whose advice I took much more often than not, and without whom this piece wouldn't be nearly as shiny as it is now.
Part One, in which Ianto's homecoming doesn't go exactly to plan.
Ianto moaned as Owen’s lips worked their way up his spine.
Less than four hours ago he’d stepped through a controlled tear in the fabric of reality and into the grateful arms of his team. The debriefing had taken nearly two hours. Afterward, they’d all insisted on finishing up early and dragged him out for a celebratory trip to Buffalo Bar. From there he’d gone home with Owen, who was presently welcoming him back personally.
Very personally.
Smooth hands ran up his thighs. Ianto strained and arched, his body begging for more contact. Owen’s hard-on pressed insistently into his back as the other man writhed up against him.
“Please,” Ianto rasped.
The doctor growled and pressed him down into a mess of purple sheets. It was good, being near his Owen again. Sex with himself had been good, but this was all the sweeter for having nearly been lost.
“Missed you,” he gasped into the pillows as Owen’s fingers probed and slid, seeking out the places that sent Ianto over the edge. Advantages of shagging a doctor, he thought to himself.
A year ago, if anyone had suggested to Ianto that he was destined to end up in Owen Harper’s bed, he’d have dismissed it as some sort of sick joke. The two had always been passionate in one another’s presence, certainly, but that had been channeled into a long-running mutual antipathy. Owen, being naturally confrontational, had seized upon every opportunity to snipe and undermine him. Ianto, meanwhile, had relied on more subtle means and, to a certain extent, karma. More often than not, Owen was more than happy to hang himself with the rope he was given. Ianto was quiet, but he played his strengths and resolved not to let some scrawny git upend him.
And then Bilis Manger ruined everything.
They’d saved the world of course - that’s what Torchwood did - but at the cost of two of their own. Ianto had found Jack’s twisted body, arms spread wide, sprawled in the gravel. Gwen’s was further out, face down between Jack and the SUV. It was Toshiko who’d guessed that Gwen tripped over a piece of scrap metal while fleeing the scene, landing in Abaddon’s shadow. They couldn’t guess at what Jack had done to stop the beast, but whatever it was, he’d sacrificed himself to do it.
The clean-up effort was on a scale with Canary Wharf, except there were only three of them to manage it. The material aspect - civilian deaths, massive property damage, structural failures in the Hub, etc. - tested them, but it had paled in comparison to the diplomatic fallout. Every organization or public figure who knew what Torchwood was took turns raking them over the coals. Two incidents in less than a year? It was a disaster.
Brilliant as Owen was, nothing could have prepared him for that sort of pressure. When Ianto found him one morning with the barrel of a gun in his mouth, he’d carefully disarmed the doctor and spent the next several hours simply listening. The next day, Owen invited him out for a drink. The rest was, well, history.
Owen’s teeth grazed his shoulder, bringing Ianto back into the moment. This was good. Amazing. Owen’s breath hitched in his throat as he passed the point of no return, and he squeezed Ianto’s shoulders almost hard enough to bruise. That tang of pain was all Ianto needed to finally lose control, and before he knew it the two of them were coming in a grunting, panting heap.
Afterward, they dozed. Ianto woke at one point to find Owen’s arms wrapped around him almost possessively, and he wondered what it meant that cuddles were increasingly part of the package with Owen. He smiled and snuggled closer, and then went back to sleep.
* * *
When he awoke again, the bed was empty, and the flat smelled of chilies. The sounds of Owen clanking about in the kitchen echoed off of the bare walls as Ianto rubbed his eyes and sat up. He felt good. He was glad to be home.
He staggered across the bedroom and into the bath. He checked his hair in the mirror (messy, but in good ways), had a piss, and washed his hands and face. He gathered up his trousers and put them on, unconsciously shoving his hands in the pockets.
He tensed. He’d forgotten about the note.
Ianto took a nervous glance down the hall before sitting back down on the bed and beginning to read. The note was written in a hand that was at once familiar and alien, and the words tumbled over one another and into him like a roiling storm of year-old-pain. It recounted the details of their encounter with Bilis Manger, their mutiny, the way they’d torn open the Rift. He processed the data with a sort of practiced detachment until the third page, when his other’s missive stopped his heart.
Unless I miss my guess, Gwen’s death is a point at which our realities diverge. In ours, she lived. She kept vigil over Jack’s body and kept trying to revive him when the rest of us wrote him off. She simply refused to give up. I hated myself for months because I lacked the faith to hang on like that. I can only think that this is my opportunity to set things right. Jack may be alive and can’t find his way back. You have to help him.
“Oi! Ianto! ,” Owen yelled. “You getting up or what?”
“Yeah, sorry. Out in a minute,” Ianto choked. He folded the note back up and clenched it in his fist. He fought down the mess of nausea and emotions and strode out into the front room, where he flopped onto the sofa and gazed out through the plate glass windows.
“You want this hot like last time?” Owen shouted from the kitchen as he dumped a bowl of rice noodles into the wok.
“Yes, please.”
The other man snorted. “Your funeral.”
Funny words, those, Ianto thought bitterly. Leave it to Owen to wander too close and say the wrong words at the right time by mistake. Or the right ones at the wrong time. Or possibly even the right ones at precisely the right moment. Something like that.
"Right. One perfectly sane pad thai for me, and one for the masochist." Owen handed Ianto a plate and sat down next to him. The doctor took a hasty forkful of noodles into his mouth and chewed. When Ianto didn’t follow suit, Owen gave him a curious look. His eyes lit on the note.
"What's that?"
Ianto turned the note over in his hands. "Someone else's funeral."
Owen carefully pried the paper from Ianto’s fingers and examined it. He read in silence, letting each page drop to the floor as he finished it.
“You didn’t tell us about this.” Owen whispered, still staring at the pages near his feet.
“I only just read it myself.”
They sat in silence, perfectly still until Ianto spoke again.
"I should tell you, Owen, that Jack and I were --"
"Involved. Yeah, I know. We all did."
The corner of Ianto’s mouth twitched. "Was it so obvious?"
Owen thought for a moment. "No, not really. I mean, we'd all sort of guessed, but you two were so bloody professional about it all. Not like me and Gwen were. And afterward,” Owen said, his voice wavering a bit, “the way you grieved him, the way you’d reacted to Tosh’s news about the other Jack Harkness, the way you went to visit the morgue when Andy and Tosh left for the night... All of it made sense after a while.”
Ianto nodded and turned back toward the window. He could feel the start of tears in his lashes. He didn’t trust himself to speak without his voice breaking. He watched Owen’s reflection in the window and noticed Owen’s mouth drawing tight, the way it always did when pain put him on the knife’s edge between rage and despair. He turned and watched as the other man stood and walked into the bedroom. A moment later he returned, fully dressed and holding Ianto’s clothes. He threw them into the younger man’s lap.
“I’m relieving you of your duty as interim Director.”
“What?” Ianto gaped in disbelief.
“As your doctor, I’m putting you on indefinite medical leave for emotional and psychological fatigue. I’ll be assuming any and all administrative and supervisory duties in your absence.” Owen made no attempt to mask the anger in his voice. Instead, he’d drawn himself up to his full height and crossed his arms.
Ianto dumped the clothes onto the cushions next to him and stood up. “Owen, you have no right,“ he growled as he closed the gap between them. If Owen wanted a fight, Ianto would give him one.
“I was Jack’s second in command, and I’m the team’s physician. I have every bloody right. Furthermore, your return is contingent upon my assessment, both of your mental and emotional well-being and your overall physical health. That assessment can be as formal or informal as I like, and my opinion can’t be appealed.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Ianto warned.
“Been telling myself that for months. Now get the fuck out of my flat.”
Ianto gave Owen one last hard look. When the smaller man didn’t budge, Ianto snatched up his things and stormed out, slamming the door to Owen’s flat behind him. When he was certain of being out of earshot, he shook his mobile from his jacket pocket and speed-dialed Andy Davidson.
* * *
Andy was sitting on the Hub sofa, leafing through an old copy of The Daily Mirror when the cog door rolled open. He had the Rift monitor up, projecting on one of the walls. He dropped the paper and stood as a slightly bedraggled Ianto walked in.
“Did you do as I asked?”
Andy nodded. “Yep. I started the internal diagnostics and shut down the CCTV about five minutes ago. The whole thing should take about two hours. I don’t get why you wanted me to shield the comms system, though.”
Ianto checked the readouts on Andy’s workstation console, then entered a few keystrokes. “Tosh has a pet theory that incoming transmissions spike the data. It’s a slow night, so it’s an ideal opportunity to see if we get different readings.”
“Oh.” Andy shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Oh, Andy? Can you do me one more favor?”
“Sure, boss. What’cha need?”
Ianto pointed up at the Rift monitor readout. “What do you think that value up there means?”
Andy turned around. “Looks normal to me. Nice low numbers. Minimal wobble. Why, does it look bad to y--“
Ianto jabbed the tranquilizer dart into Andy’s bicep. Andy whipped around, a look of shock and confusion on his face. He stumbled back and grasped clumsily at the dart with his other hand before crumpling into a heap in Ianto’s arms.
“I’m really sorry about this, Andy.” Ianto murmured as he hauled his now-drooling teammate over to the sofa. He draped a blanket over Andy as an afterthought and then checked his watch. Chances were Owen was already on his way over to investigate the base’s sudden silence. He’d have to be quick.
Ianto snatched a couple of guns and some supplies from the armory, and then raced down toward the morgue. He’d get a gurney out of storage on the way, and then haul Jack up to the carpark using the dumbwaiter system. If Ianto had timed it right, he’d be leaving just as Owen arrived and the lockdown triggered.
“I’d better be right about this,” he whispered under his breath. This was not going to look good in his file.
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Next Chapter
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