Fandomweekly Challenge 40 - Needing space

[m_findlow]

Title: Needing space
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M (language)
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 40 - A walk in the woods at fandomweekly
Summary: Gwen needs to escape the mess she's made of things.

'Fuck, I hate camping,' Owen complained, trudging loudly through the forest. Leaves and branches cracked noisily under his feet as Gwen trailed a good three yards behind him, wondering where the peace and tranquility was meant to come from when Owen was making such a bloody racket. He didn't even look like he was searching for more firewood, just stomping straight past anything that Gwen thought might make good kindling.

She didn't care much about helping him so much as she'd just needed to get away to avoid the awkward guilt she felt and the tension left hanging over the camp.

Tosh was hurt that Owen had confessed kissing Gwen, and she knew Tosh, poor love, had a thing for Owen, even if he didn't see it. She wanted to be able to laugh it off and tell Tosh it was nothing. Owen thought he was going to die and wanted one last kiss for the condemned man. They might all have laughed about it then, amused that Owen was worried he wouldn't be able to squeeze in one last shag before he died. Instead Gwen's own ambivalence over it had left it up in the air, simply telling Tosh it was complicated. It wasn't really. Owen wanted her and she sort of wanted him back.

After that, things had gone from bad to worse. Ianto was upset at being forced to admit the last person he'd kissed was Lisa, the pain of her loss still etched so deeply into his expression that Gwen wished she could have torn it out with her fingernails. He didn't have to join in - no one had asked him - but he'd gone right ahead and said it anyway. If it hadn't been the elephant in the room, Ianto had made it so. Until then it had just been a silly game. Now she wished she'd let someone else try to entertain the team.

And Jack was just pissed, though whether it was because he was mad at Ianto for despising him having murdered Lisa or mad at Gwen for having brought the whole thing up, she couldn't tell. All she'd seen was the thunderous scowl on Jack's face as he continued to perch sideways in the driver's seat of the SUV, not joining them around their campfire, pretending to study his maps.

Either way, she was going to grab any excuse to get out of there with both hands. That it meant having to accompany Owen and think about that awful moment when she'd let him snog her whilst they were pressed together in that cadaver storage unit, then she was going to have to put up with it as the lesser of two evils.

Owen cursed again as a tree branch got caught on his jacket sleeve and he attacked it like it had done it on purpose. 'Bloody countryside. I'm not staying another night out here, especially if I have to put up with Jack snoring.'

'Well, you could always swap and share with Tosh,' Gwen called out to him, ducking low beneath the same branch that had caught Owen. 'Sounds like she's overdue for another snog from you.'

'Bite me, PC Cooper. Not my fault she's got no life. At least I was trying to make a joke out of it.' Owen paused, holding a hand up. 'Shh, do you hear that?'

Gwen stood stock still, all her senses alert, suddenly remembering the reason they were out here in the first place was because people were going missing. 'What?'

Owen looked back at her and grinned at the tension in her body. 'The sound of a Teaboy crying over his dead girlfriend.'

Gwen huffed at the remark, moving past him, making sure she shoved him hard as she did. Like she didn't feel bad enough without Owen being an arsehole about it. 'Why is he even here with us?' she asked trying to defend her actions and change the subject. 'He's not a field agent.'

Owen shrugged. 'Jack thought it might be good for him to get out of the hub, take his mind off things. I didn't disagree. Maybe Jack thought he might go and top himself when we weren't there. Not like the hub is lacking ways to kill yourself.'

Gwen felt taken aback by the comment. Ianto had seemed kind of... normal, these last few days, like he'd been moving on. 'Things aren't that bad, are they?'

Owen shrugged. 'Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Grief does funny things.'

Gwen frowned. 'So, this is what, keeping an eye on him?'

'Refocusing his energies. Distraction. Whatever you wanna call it. Just didn't expect some dumb ex-copper to go and balls it up by reminding him of the one thing that's probably tearing him up on the inside. Might be nice to have five whole minutes where it isn't shoved in his face.'

'I didn't think...' she trailed off.

'No, you didn't think,' Owen replied. 'That's the whole fucking point. Maybe if you'd lost someone you loved you might have been a little more sympathetic.'

Gwen scowled at him, setting her hands on her hips. 'That's rich coming from you. I didn't see you trying to talk Jack out of trying to shoot him.'

'No. I preferred Jack save his bullets and stick them in that cyberman and blow it to kingdom come.'

'Now you feel sorry for Ianto?'

Owen sighed. 'He fucked up. We moved on. That's what we do. Suzie fucked up too. We moved on from that as well. That's what this job does. It fucks you up. That's why Tosh hasn't had a snog since last Christmas. That's why the last person I snogged was you. None of us do more than snog each other. Half a wonder Jack hasn't had a go yet. Or maybe he has. Because this job comes along and takes anyone you love away from you. All we've got is each other. I'm not going to apologise that everybody knows now.'