"Hey, Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"How'd you feel about getting dinner later?"

"Absolutely." A pause as Jack looked up from his paperwork and grinned. "Rift permitting."

"Of course."

Ianto smiled to himself as he left the office threshold and walked back down the stairs to his desk. He needed to reserve a table.

"I'm just saying," Tosh's voice came from the cog door as the alarm stopped, "it's never going to happen."

"You can't know that! You're a scientist, you know alternate universes exist." Owen interrupted himself to grunt as he threw something heavy down. "And if you didn't believe it before, Torchwood's got to have proven that to you."

"I knew about alternate universes long before Torchwood, Owen," Tosh said with disapproval in her voice. "And pick that up. All I'm saying is that the chances of something falling into our universe from a parallel one is infinitesimally small."

"And how do you know that?"

"Common sense."

"Ugh." Another bang as Owen put something else down; Ianto was sure that the coffee table creaked in protest. "But—wait, you've never calculated it?"

"No, never."

"Well, then, you can't know anything! It's just a guess." Owen whirled around quickly and fixed his finger on Ianto. "You!"

"What?"

"What's the likelihood of something from a parallel universe falling through the Rift?"

Ianto shrugged. "I dunno. Really small, probably, if at all. Parallel universes are completely sealed."

"How'd you know that?"

Ianto shrugged again. It had come up in conversation with Jack, once, and while it hadn't been told in confidence, he wasn't sure if he should reveal it. "It's in the records. Anyway, why'd you want to know?"

"Just curious."

"He wanted to know if there was a universe where Star Wars is real," Tosh piped in.

"Oi! But… you know… she's not wrong. Besides," Owen gave Ianto a significant look. "You can't say you haven't thought the same about James Bond."

"It has crossed my mind, yes," Ianto agreed. "And so has the possibility of the Star Wars universe."

Tosh tilted her head. "But?"

"If it was possible or in any way common, it would have happened by now. Torchwood has existed for over a hundred years."

Owen huffed. "That's true."

"That doesn't mean it's never going to happen," Tosh hastened to say. "Just that it's not likely."

Ianto nodded. "Exactly."

He turned away from them back to his computer, finally settling on a restaurant. It was nice, reasonably priced, and had an empty table for the night that he hastened to reserve.

"Ah, well," Owen sighed, looking slightly disappointed. "I'll just leave you to this."

"leave us to this?" Tosh put a hand on her hip. "You dumped this here, not me."

"And I have nothing to do with this," Ianto seconded.

Owen exaggeratedly rolled his eyes. "Fine."

"Doing your job won't kill you."

"I'm a doctor."

Ianto snorted. "You're an alien hunter."

"Alien-hunting doctor," Owen corrected. "But this isn't an alien, it's a piece of space junk."

"It's space junk of alien origin." Tosh bracingly thumped him on the shoulder. "The sooner we bring this downstairs, the sooner we can get the ten other pieces still in the SUV."

Ianto echoed Owen's groan of annoyance as he watched them walk away: that was ten more pieces of space junk that he'd have to archive later. He ran his hands through his hair as he thought of the hour the action would waste him, and leaned back in his chair, chancing a look up at Jack's office. He caught Jack's eye and waved; Jack waved back.

Maybe they'd be able to see a film after dinner. Ianto grinned and pulled up the local theaters' schedules, all thoughts of tomorrow's cataloguing forgotten.