Merinda and I were talking about this, and after we’d recovered sufficiently from the giggles, she recommended posting it. So here it is.
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It all started with Ianto’s well-intentioned failure of a Christmas gift for the team. Well, holiday gift, he insisted, as none of them ever really exchanged religious affiliation information. They could all be Jewish, for whatever he knew. Though he assumed Gwen wasn’t, due to the overall Protestant nature of her wedding.
Toshiko jokingly mentioned that they ought to have staff shirts, sometime in September. It was after they’d all become aware of how non-clandestine their little clandestine operation really was. Owen wasn’t the only one to blame for that – he might have ordered the pizza, but there was the bloody big logo on the fenders of the SUV. Plus Jack certainly never hesitated to introduce them by name. By now, if someone came round raving about aliens, Cardiff folk would wave vaguely towards the Plass and tell them to yell at a security camera.
The shirts were right out. Ianto wouldn’t be caught dead in a polo, and he wore tee shirts for the occasional banging about on a Sunday, or to bed. He wasn’t about to give Jack the satisfaction of seeing him in bed in a Torchwood shirt – the man’s ego already had enough power to fill the electrical needs of Splott. Right. Mugs it was. Ianto ordered a crate of them, thinking that all matching mugs at the Hub would give an air of unification to anyone who blundered in.
They never arrived.