littledoglaughed

Titles: "Secret" and "Cleanup"
Characters: Gwen, Owen, Ianto, other character
Spoilers: 1x05 "Small Worlds" and 1x06 "Countrycide"
Rating: PG
Notes: I wrote these months ago, before I had actually decided to try to and write fic, and just got around to putting them here. Just my way of dealing with something that bothered me after "Small Worlds"—maybe I'm serious, maybe I'm not. *g* They're in reverse chronological order.

1. (Sometime after "Countrycide")

Drabble: Secret
The cry seemed to be coming from inside the bathroom wall. “Owen,” Gwen called while washing her hands, “do your neighbors have a baby?”

There was a pause, then finally Owen called back, “Yeah. A baby. Think so.”

But later Gwen spied the small empty tins in the dustbin. The memory clicked.

“Owen Harper! Do you have a cat?” She headed toward the closet adjoining the bathroom, ducking around Owen as he tried to block her.

From the floor of the closet, a black and white cat blinked at them sleepily. Owen groaned, defeated.

“Moses?” Gwen laughed incredulously.

"He has a name?"

~~~

2. (During "Small Worlds.")

Cleanup
Owen didn’t appreciate being assigned to cleanup, even when the deceased was a friend of Jack’s. Especially when the deceased reminded him of his gran. He drummed a beat on the steering wheel. What the hell had Ianto gone back to the house for? They had the body in the SUV. The area was clean.

Finally he saw Ianto coming down the front path, a raincoat bundled in his arms. Ianto climbed into the SUV. In his lap,the raincoat moved.

“Ianto?” Owen had a talent for making names sound like threats.

“Jack wouldn’t want us to leave it,” Ianto said, looking straight ahead.

“Fine. But it’s your problem.”

Owen pulled into the street and they drove in silence. The raincoat began to purr. A sleeve flopped down, revealing a black ear and a pink nose.

By the time they were approaching the Plass, the cat was in Owen’s lap. Attempts to dislodge it had resulted in painful wounds to his thighs.Owen pulled the SUV into a space near the visitor’s bureau.

“Ianto.” Threatening again.

“I forgot to mention that my flat doesn’t allow pets," Ianto said evenly.

“Then keep the little beast in the Hub.” The cat kneaded its claws into Owen’s leg and purred louder.

“Myfanwy will eat him.”

“Perfect.” That could be very entertaining.

“I doubt Estelle would have thought so.”

The cat stood and began rubbing its cheek insistently on Owen’s hand. Owen scowled. Really, though, if you could avoid the claws, cats weren’t much trouble. Clean animals. His gran had had three, the year he lived with her. One of them had always slept curled in the small of his back.

Owen fixed Ianto with a scowl. “All right. But listen to me. If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone…”

Ianto was the model of surprised innocence. “And why would I do that?” He opened the passenger door and climbed out of the SUV. Owen tried tomove, forgetting that he was still trapped by the cat.

Before shutting the door, Ianto leaned back in. “I’ll get you a box from the tourist office. Stay put, now!” His eyes twinkled.

Owen tried to use his own eyes to burn holes in the back of Ianto’s head as the young man walked away. Not realizing his hand was resting on the cat’s back, he clenched his fist, grabbing a chunk of fur in theprocess. The cat yowled, twisted around, and sank its teeth hard intothe fleshy part of Owen's thumb.

Owen resisted the urge to swat, then began to smile.

“Now, I can respect that,” he told the cat. “You hold onto that spirit. Maybe we’ll have Mister Coffee over someday and you can show him what you’ve got.”