notevery | Torchwood fic: Caten, Claire and the Rhysmeister

Title: Caten, Claire and the Rhysmeister
Rating: High PG-13. Swearing, heavily implied sex.
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, and a mystery crack pairing of joy.
Spoilers: Everything up to, and including, the series finale, to be safe. Also for this e-mail, written by Owen, on the Torchwood official site.

Beta: Beta-read by katharynne, and also her much-belated xmas present.

Comments and constructive criticism welcomed!

Written because someone had to. If you want to know the mystery-pairing, follow the link below and highlight the first blank lines of text. Takes some of the fun out of it, though. (Take a walk on the wild-side!)

Summary: The morning after the night before. Owen's forgotten something important, Ianto's got a crush, Gwen's women's-intuition sensors are malfunctioning, Toshiko fails to fix a technical glitch, and Captain Jack Harkness leads a group of mentally unstable people by example.

* * *

Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Owen/Bilis

GWEN: Hey, Tosh. Got a moment? :)

TOSHIKO: Sure. What’s up?

GWEN: It’s Owen. Do you think there’s something … up with him?

[ Toshiko is typing a message ]

GWEN: Tosh?

TOSHIKO: I don’t know. What do you mean?

GWEN: Well, he arrived in late, even for him. And he’s wearing the same shirt as yesterday.

TOSHIKO: Hangover?

GWEN: Maybe.

GWEN: I mean no, not maybe. Something’s wrong, I can tell. He walked into a door before.

TOSHIKO: Hangover.

GWEN: And he’s making a mess of that autopsy.

TOSHIKO: Hangover.

[ Gwen is typing a message ]

GWEN: I guess so.

[ Conversation ends ]

“Anything you want to talk about?” Gwen says cautiously, leaning forward over the banister. The metal bar is cool enough under her wrists to send goose pimples over her skin; below her, Owen keeps his glare fixed on the Weevil he is dissecting. “It’s just that you’re looking a bit… down.”

“Cut the niceties, sweetheart,” Owen snarls back, cutting a jagged line down the alien’s stomach. “You’re the one with all the people skills, aren’t you? ‘Women’s intuition’ and all that crap. Pissed off –” he violently tugs out some kind of organ with an unpleasant tearing sound – “is not the same as a bit down.”

Gwen takes a very deep breath and counts silently to ten before she replies, with her best PC-Cooper-diplomacy-smile, “why are you pissed off, then? Bad night out?” Wincing as he drops something large and liver-coloured onto the table, she raises her voice to add, “Tosh says you’re hung over. A milkshake might help, don’t you think? Always does for Rhys. I can ask Ianto –”

“One,” Owen responds in a bored drawl, “why the fuck would Tosh know what I was up to last night? Please, don’t insult my taste. Two, I can deal with hangovers myself. Not a newbie to the drinking thing, sweetheart.”

Even after everything, the way that Owen throws endearments as insults still makes Gwen hurt. She looks down at the tiles as she finds her composure; grits her teeth for a moment and asks herself why she cares. “Alright, then, Owen. I won’t care then. How does that sound?”

“Like fucking paradise. Cheers.”

Owen has made a mess of the autopsy room – again – and this time it is even worse than usual. Ianto pulls on plastic bags over his expensive leather shoes to step across the tiles, trying to hold back an unprofessional nose-wrinkle at the smell. Occasionally his feet slide over particularly viscous blobs of flesh and blood; he has to push aside some red-stained scalpels to lay down Owen’s coffee mug.

“Double shot, just like you asked. Anything else?”

Looking decidedly psychotic – up to his elbows in Weevil, fluids spattered over his apron – Owen raises his eyebrows to acknowledge Ianto’s question. It’s only when Ianto is already up the stairs and removing the plastic bags from his feet that Owen says suspiciously, “Gwen been putting ideas in your head about milkshakes, has she?”

Ianto frowns. “Milkshakes…?”

Owen grunts. “Nothing. Just forget I said anything.”

“I just had the strangest conversation with Owen,” Jack remarks with a frown, settling back into his office chair and steepling his fingers. “Kept twitching and calling me ‘Fiona’. You noticed anything wrong with him today?”

Ianto doesn’t look around from the filing cabinets, neatly sliding ‘CATEN, CLAIRE’ back between ‘CATEK, PLANETARY REPUBLIC OF’ and ‘CATS, EXPLODING’ where it belongs. “Beyond the fact that he’s turning a Weevil corpse into modern art, sir?”

Jack grunts, and his chair creaks as he leans back. “Beyond the new-found talent with Weevil-as-interior-décor, yes.”

“Well, sir, he has been taking painkillers like candy.”

Snorting, Jack twists his head to look to Ianto, raises an eyebrow. “Bad suicide attempt?”

“Hangover, sir,” Ianto replies with a little smile, closing the door and finally turning around. “Or at least, I assume so. He smells of alcohol and cigarettes.”

“That’s what I thought. He told me he had a ‘late night’. Given his mood, I thought maybe it was a late night with someone – a someone who looked less attractive this morning.”

Ianto smiles at that, ever-so-slightly, and wishes he were brave enough to tell Jack that he doesn’t care about this conversation, that he doesn’t care about Owen: that he just likes Jack’s voice, and the easy intimacy of this, the fact that Jack talks to him and trusts him. The way that Jack is slowly undressing himself – unzipping his fly, undoing the buttons of his shirt, sliding his braces from his shoulders – fills Ianto’s stomach with butterflies, makes him giddy with this secret.

“Lock the door, Ianto.”

Owen stands behind her, watching the laptop screen over her shoulder, close enough for Toshiko to feel the tension in his muscles, to smell Weevil on him. Soap and a hard scrubbing may have removed visual evidence, but there’s a particular stench to Weevils, a certain sickening smell that is nearly impossible to shake.

“Look, if this is going to take all day, I’ll go find someone else, alright?” Owen snaps finally, reaching his arms around her – so close, sleeves of his white coat brushing her sweater, sending tingles down her skin – and gripping the side of the laptop.

“No, I’m doing it,” she says quickly, tilting her head to him with a tight smile. “It’ll just take a minute… when did you say that you deleted it?”

Owen sighs in distaste before pulling back, going over to lean the back of his thighs against Gwen’s desk. “Last night. I think. I’m not sure. Just – find it, okay?”

“It’s a little hard to find a file that you may or may not have even written, let alone saved, when you’re not sure of the content,” Toshiko says with no smile at all. “Give me some time. Since this laptop is Torchwood property, whatever you wrote will have been automatically backed up on the central computer too – we can find it. In time.”

“I don’t have any fucking time,” Owen snarls, and there’s something in his face that scares Toshiko.

“Sorry, Tosh, no can do,” Ianto replies with an apologetic shrug. He keeps his eyes firmly on the coffee mug before him, shaking the cream canister before spreading some over the top of the liquid. Toshiko recognizes the way that Jack likes his coffee; wonders why Ianto has a half-smile on his lips; doesn’t really notice that his hair is tousled. She is preoccupied.

“Look, it’s just a favour for Owen. He says that he was typing something last night and forgot to save it. Surely the Hub computer will have a record…”

“Yes, but not easy to find. If this document is really important we can search for it, but until then…”

Toshiko shakes her head quickly, smiles as much as she can. “Oh, it’s probably nothing. He won’t even talk about it. It’s almost like he can’t remember what it said.”

“Then it’ll come back to him if it’s important,” Ianto says, turning with the coffee mug in one hand and a cheery smile on his face. “And if it is, then I’ll bother Jack for the restricted access codes.”

Nodding quickly, Toshiko steps back and allows him to pass.

As Gwen is leaving that night, she cannot help but notice the yellow Post-It notes all over the screen of Owen’s computer.

Have forgotten what?

How drunk?

Hangover cure (milk + meat)

Buy ~~veg +~~ meat

Who was it?

And then finally, scrawled over several notes lined up together: it was nothing, you fucking idiot.

Gwen quietly tells Jack that she thinks, just maybe, Owen needs a psych examination. Jack laughs and tells her that he’s glad Owen still fits the Torchwood employee requirements. In the corner of Jack’s office, Ianto – who had moved very quickly away from Jack’s desk when she opened the door – shifts Jack’s coat on its hanger pointlessly.

That night she tells Rhys that she thinks her boss might be shagging the secretary. “Oh yes?” Rhys responds, tickling her mercilessly to the bed, “well as long as he’s not shagging you. That’s a privilege reserved for the Rhysmeister!”

Sometimes, how much she loves Rhys scares her.

Despite telling himself over and over not to think about it, Owen can’t stop himself. As he buys milk from the corner shop he finds himself wondering: why did they leave before I woke up? How bad is their taste? As he cooks a big steak for dinner he almost burns it, distracted by thinking: I must have been very drunk. Hammered, actually. To forget all that.

He strains his memory when he’s in the shower, but he can’t remember a thing, and that’s the problem. He remembers getting drunk, remembers chatting to someone, and then… that’s it. Beyond waking up this morning with a splitting headache and come on his sheets. The imprint of a second body beside him on his bed. Toilet seat left up, too, so chances are it was a guy.

His pillow smells of some really old-style cologne. It’s all some kind of Sherlock-fucking-Holmes mystery, and Owen really wants to know whom he can blame for not being able to sit properly all day.

(Later, certain events and faces will jolt Owen’s memory and it will all make terrible sense: his forgetfulness. How thoroughly the email had been deleted from all systems. The way that his partner disappeared from the club and then reappeared in his flat later.

Owen will know exactly why he ended up sleeping with Bilis after all, too – libido + alcohol > common sense.

It is hardly the first time he's done something against his better judgement.)

Torchwood fic: Caten, Claire and the Rhysmeister

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