Chapter Text
One week after Jack disappeared (was taken, didn’t leave—Ianto is firm with himself on this point), Owen disappears as well. He doesn’t show up at work or answer any of his telephones, no matter how Ianto threatens or Gwen wheedles on his voicemail.
So after Ianto gets off work he drives to Owen’s flat to check on him. They’ve all been fragile since Jack left—was taken—so maybe Ianto is checking out a sense of duty. Or maybe Ianto just doesn’t know what to do with himself when he actually gets time off Torchwood. Being Jack’s part-time shag is, was, a full-time job.
Maybe Ianto is still angry with Owen, and is hoping he’s weak enough that Ianto can exact some revenge.
Owen doesn’t answer when Ianto knocks, even to tell him to fuck off. He’s probably pulling at a bar, getting shit-faced when they need him.
Ianto picks the lock. He wouldn’t be a member of Torchwood if he had any respect for other people’s privacy.
Not that Owen seems to care about privacy. His apartment has glass walls. Exhibitionist, Ianto thinks, watching the rain gush like a waterfall over the dark windows. Someone will see him if he turns on the lights, so he doesn’t; he just drifts slowly toward the windows, staring out at the misty swoops of light and feeling almost tranquil.
A click, the hammer of a gun drawn back. Ianto turns. Owen’s in the bed across from the windows, arm outstretched and bluish in the dimness, the gun only a smudge of shadow. Payback, Ianto thinks, payback’s a bitch, “Owen—”
“Ianto.” Surprised; Owen must have thought he was an intruder. Owen drops the gun and fumbles with the lamp, snarling. “Ianto?”
He gets the lamp on, finally, though he can’t seem to grip the knob properly; his fingers are as long and brittle as dragonfly legs, and trembling. Ianto can smell sweat baking off him, he can hear Owen’s breath rattling, and Owen’s eyes are bloodshot and wild and glaring.
Ianto collapses into mental default. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Owen stares at him incredulously. “Sod off.”
“Do you have coffee here or should I go find a café?”
“Sod. Off.”
“Which way to the kitchen?”
Owen pulls the covers over his head and ostentatiously ignores Ianto. Ianto ignores him too. Just the idea of making coffee for someone who won’t let it sit at her elbow to go cold while she runs tests on the Rift as if that could bring Jack back is like a drug.
Owen’s kitchen has crystal stemware, excellent alcohol, and a stockpile of cooking gadgets that have probably never been used. Ianto digs out a nearly empty bag of coffee beans, which must have been nice before they went stale, and brews them in a state-of-the-art coffeemaker that’s gathered a thin film of dust.
It’s nice to know that Ianto isn’t the only one with no life outside of Torchwood.
The coffee wounds Ianto’s professional pride. It’s too weak because of the paucity of coffee beans; Owen will hate it. He sets it on Owen’s bedside table anyway, next to where he thinks Owen is. It’s hard to tell because the blankets are heaped up so high; it could just be a bump in the comforter.
Owen peaks his head out of his cocoon. He scowls at the coffee and at Ianto, lip curled. One arm snakes out and knocks over the mug, and Owen disappears under the covers again. The smell of sweat and alcohol drifts out as he rustles the bedclothes.
Ianto watches the coffee dribble down the bedside table. Really, he ought to leave, but now he can’t. I’m not addicted to making people beverages—I can quit any time I want! Right. “Perhaps you would prefer tea?”
“Fuck off,” Owen rasps.
Ianto collects the cup and cleans up the spill and digs through Owen’s kitchen equipment until he finds a kettle. Washes it, fills it, fiddles with the stove, digs through Owen’s cabinets for some tea as he waits for it to whistle. “Which bar did you go to?” he calls.
Silence. Ianto is impressed; Owen usually can’t stand to be silent.
The kettle whistles just as Ianto unearths some decrepit chamomile tea. There doesn’t appear to be any mold so he lets it steep. “Which bar?” he asks.
“I didn’t go to a bar.”
Ianto flips a tea towel over his shoulder and carries the tea out to Owen. “How many bars?” asks Ianto, setting down the tea and stepping back, hands folded. Owen regards the tea as if it might be an alien life form.
“Did you boil dust bunnies?” asks Owen.
“It was in your cupboard,” Ianto says. “Chamomile, it said it was.”
Owen knocks the cup over again. Ianto kneels to wipe it up. This close, Ianto can hear Owen’s break rattling in his throat. There’s a bruise behind his ear. Ianto wonders if there are more. “Did you try to fight another Weevil?”
“Three of them at the same time,” Owen mutters.
“Should’ve called for backup.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt you lot whingeing about Jack. I can catch aliens just as well without you lot getting in the way. ”
Ianto stands up too quickly. He knows Owen’s joking (right?) but still, Owen has no right to go alien hunting without them. “You should have called us,” he says, grabbing the teacup and retreating to the kitchenette. More tea. Measure the tea into the filter, pour the water, watch it steep. Tea brewing: the new path to nirvana.
Owen hurls the teacup at the window. The window holds but the teacup shatters like fireworks, and Owen sits panting as though he ran a marathon. Sweat beads on his upper lip and sticks his shirt against his chest. He collapses back onto the bed, coughing.
“If you would rather I could get you a box of tissues and a pint of ice cream and a copy of the six-hour version of Pride and Prejudice?” says Ianto.
“It was your boyfriend who left,” chokes Owen.
“He was taken,” snaps Ianto. He should have said, so you’ve upgraded me to boyfriend, he should have said—
“Fuck he was,” says Owen, but he can’t get the breath to make it sound mocking instead of hurt. He lapses into coughs, his body jerking with the hacks.
The coughing goes on and on. Ianto half-expects (wants? But he isn’t mad at Owen now, which is novel) blood-spatters, given how consumptive he looks. Owen notices Ianto watching, and Ianto knows he’s sick because Owen doesn’t preen for it. He slinks back under the covers and snarls, “Why are you here?”
Because Jack is gone and Gwen is having a second honeymoon with Rhys (dying always makes relationships better) and Tosh is doing Toshly things and Ianto doesn’t have a life outside of Torchwood and would rather listen to Owen snipe than spend the evening in the Hub, or driving in the rain, or pulling in a bar. There are bars for all kinds of kinks but forcing hot beverages on people is not one of them.
Ianto doesn’t like that thought process (anything that relates Owen, who he hates, to pulling is…no, he’s not going there, not with Owen staring at him dark-eyed with his shirt sticking to his chest). He cleans up the broken teacup instead. “I’ll get you another cup of tea,” he says. “As that one wasn’t to your taste.”
“I hate you,” Owen mutters, and coughs pathetically.
Ianto reheats the water and digs through Owen’s cupboard again and is rewarded with a tin of tea that looks drinkable. Owen is nothing but a pair of bloodshot dark eyes peeping over the bedspread, narrowed as he watches Ianto progress to the bedside table.
He doesn’t knock the tea over this time. Ianto waits for a while, and then says, “You should drink it.”
“I bet you poisoned it.”
“Teaboy guild law prohibits poison.”
Owen glares at him over the blankets, clearly not sure whether Ianto is joking or not. Ianto sits next to him on the bed, pushing the blanket down so he can see Owen’s face. “You’re supposed to drink a lot of fluids when you’re sick,” he says.
“They never mentioned that one in medical school.”
“Will you drink it yourself or do I need to hold the cup?”
No response. After about twenty seconds of Owen staring fixedly over his shoulder at the lights across the bay, Ianto picks up the cup and holds it to Owen’s lips. Owen presses his mouth shut more tightly. Ianto can feel the breath puffing out of his nose, fast and angry. “You really don’t want me to spill this,” says Ianto.
Owen glances at him, and Ianto almost lets up because he looks so distressed. But Owen’s chapped lips part—the lower lip scrapes over Ianto’s finger—and there’s nothing for it but to give him the tea. Some of it dribbles down Owen’s chin. Ianto wipes it off with the tea towel. Owen flinches. “Do you want more?”
Owen makes a wretched little noise, which Ianto translates as “Damned if I’m actually going to ask you for it.” Ianto makes a whole pot this time and knocks Owen’s hand away when he reaches for the teacup. He cups Owen’s head with one hand and holds the cup to his lips with the other.
Owen is much more appealing when he can’t talk. He looks fragile, his cheekbones sharp and flushed, dark eyelashes (he closed his eyes), his breath on Ianto’s right hand. Ianto’s left supports Owen’s head; his elbow rests on top of a pile of blankets that probably cover Owen’s shoulder. Owen shifts uncomfortably and frowns, just a little, adorably, and Ianto kisses his forehead.
Ianto pulls away fast enough that he spills on himself, the lukewarm tea staining his cuffs. Owen would sneer if he saw Ianto’s dabbing frantically at the blotches, but his eyes stay closed and his lips a little parted and damn, Jack’s only been gone a week, Ianto can’t be so desperate yet that Owen—
This is the wrong situation to think about Jack, who would probably be all for jumping Owen then and there. (“Threesome, Ianto?”) Kissing Owen again (just his forehead, after all) seems harmless in comparison. And his eyelids, his earlobes, his cheekbones. Owen tastes like salt—sweat and maybe tears.
Ianto hesitates over Owen’s mouth, close enough to taste his breath. Owen turns his face away and Ianto comes to his senses. This is Owen, who he hates, and Jack has only been gone a week, and damn it, damn it, maybe he couldn’t pick up someone to make tea for but he could definitely pick someone up for just sex, except he doesn’t want just sex; he wants Owen: twitchy and vulnerable and unhappy.
Fortunately he recognizes that’s a bad idea. Torchwood hasn’t quite sucked out all his humanity after all. He leaves, and drives around Cardiff in the rain all night, and tells himself firmly that this is never, ever happening again.