m_findlow

Title: Strange bedfellows
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 919 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for withasmile87's prompt "Any, any, pillowfights at the crack of dawn" at fic_promptly
Summary: Owen and Ianto make for strange bedfellows.

Owen woke to the sound of the tiny alarm beeping. It wasn't loud enough to rouse him completely, but then again, alarms clocks never did. Fuck it, his brain told him. He felt slightly hungover and a few hours more sleep would be very nice indeed. He turned over in bed and gripped the pillow beneath his head, nestling into it, never even bothering to open his eyes. Warm arms wrapped around his waist, slender and comfortable there. Life was good, he decided, falling back to sleep.

A second, more insistent beeping woke him properly this time, as did the arms that gripped him tightly. As he opened his eyes at the alarm, so did his bedroom companion, both starting at the idea they'd been snuggled together.

'I thought you were-' Ianto and Owen simultaneously blurted out the same time.

Owen flopped back on the bed, keeping himself as far away from Ianto as possible. 'Argh! This is shit,' he complained. 'When the fuck are these bracelets gonna detach themselves?'

Ianto let out an annoyed breath of his own. 'You know as well as I do that we're stuck like this for at least another week.'

'This is what I get for helping,' Owen grumbled. If he hadn't been down in the archives with Ianto at the time, this never would have happened.

Ianto said nothing in response. He preferred the idea that Owen had resorted to blaming karma rather than him for the incident.

It had all happened so suddenly. One moment the two metal rods had been sitting inside the box, the tag on them marking them as healing devices without going into any further detail. He wanted Owen to take a look and see if he could divine something more from them. No sooner had Owen reached in for one of them, then the second one came to life, snapping itself around Ianto's wrist whilst Owen's own did the same thing. Since then, they hadn't been able to be more than a few dozen feet apart without one or both of them dropping like a sack of potatoes or feeling violently ill.

They weren't doing a lot of healing as far as either of them were concerned, since all their experiences had been of the kind that made them feel worse rather than better, especially when they got too far apart. Living and sleeping together was just more than either of them could really cope with. The reality of the situation however clearly hadn't penetrated their subconscious, which had resulted in their ending up cuddled together in bed. Each was expecting their other halves, and not the last person on Earth they would ever willingly share a bed with.

They lay there for a few minutes, trying to regain some sense of dignity.

'I didn't think you were the snuggling type,' Owen heard Ianto mutter. Owen grabbed the pillow out from under his head and whacked Ianto with it.

'Hey! What was that for?'

'For ruining my sleep in with that stupid bloody watch alarm of yours. It's not even six am yet.'

'Oh, so you'd rather we stay snuggled for a while longer?' That earned him another whack.

'I thought you were Tosh, alright? Anyway, it wouldn't have happened if you'd woken up to your own stupid alarm. You could've gotten up and left me here in peace.'

'Well, maybe if I wasn't so tired because someone kept me up most of the night snoring. Honestly, you're worse than Jack.'

Owen huffed. 'I do not snore. '

'That's not what Tosh says.'

That shut Owen up. He didn't like the idea that Tosh was talking about what they did in bed, even if it was with Ianto, whose own adventures with Jack were likely to make anything they got up to seem boring. Any bad habits he had were his and Tosh's business only.

Owen suddenly felt himself get hit with a pillow. 'Oi! What d'you hit me for?'

'Because I was happier before I realised you weren't Jack,' Ianto said, a definite sulking tone to his voice.

Owen turned over so he didn't have to face his bunk mate. 'Yeah, well keep your hands to yourself next time.'

'Gladly. We haven't been able to sleep together for two weeks now. Jack gets stroppy when we don't, you know...'

Owen snorted. 'Yeah, and you're a bundle of joy when you haven't been properly shagged either.'

Ianto hit him again. Owen retaliated. Soon there were pillows and the sound of bodies being assaulted taking over the entire room, until finally they both flopped back on the bed exhausted.

'Glad we got that out of our system,' Ianto said.

'Yeah.'

'I'm knackered.'

'You want a few more hours sleep?'

Ianto sighed. 'We have to go to work.'

'Correction, we have to stay together. That's the whole point of these bracelets isn't it?' Owen said. 'So, if you're too tired to go to work, well I guess that means the both of us will just have to stay home.'

Ianto paused and thought about what Owen had said, reading between the lines. 'That sounds... underhanded.'

Owen shrugged. 'Jack doesn't want us falling into a coma by trying to go our separate ways, does he?'

'I suppose not,' Ianto replied, toying with the idea of playing hookey. 'Just until noon, though. Then we should go in.'

'Works for me,' Owen grinned. 'Who doesn't love a sleep in?'

'One condition, though.'

'What's that?'

'You get to sleep on the sofa.'