Fffc Bingo Card - Save the last dance

[m_findlow]

Title: Save the last dance
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Owen 
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 94 - Dancing at fffc
Summary: Owen and Tosh get a moment just to enjoy what weddings are all about. 

Owen could tell Tosh was giving him the look as he led her out onto the dance floor. She clearly hadn't thought he was serious when he'd suggested proving that dead men could dance. He supposed he could hardly blame her. He was a prat at the best of times and was always taking the mickey out of her. How many times had he kiboshed her plans for them to go out for a few drinks and rounds of pool? He must have knocked back invitations for the two of them to go out for a drink more times than he could count. Tosh was either completely desperate for still attempting it, or otherwise she was too blind to see that he really wasn't interested in her in that way he was convinced she must be. 

He wasn't a complete idiot. Everyone knew Tosh had a crush on him. It had just taken him a little bit longer to cotton on to that fact than it had everybody else, that was all. And bloody hell, but what would a nice girl like Tosh want with a dropkick like him, anyway? He was sure the others must have discouraged her a million times, telling her what a bastard he was and that she could do better. They might not say it to his face but he was pretty sure that behind his back that was exactly what they'd say. And, on occasion, they actually had said those kinds of things to his face. He just shrugged it off - sticks and stones and all that. People he cared about a whole lot less had said a whole lot worse. 

Owen didn't dislike weddings, he just wasn't all that geared up over them. He was however happy that he wouldn't have to hear anymore about Gwen's wedding. Everyone must have been at their wits end about it by now, even patient schmucks like Tosh and Ianto. Still, it hasn't turned out to be a bad affair once everything that was effed up about it had been resolved. Gwen got her nice ceremony and her cracking reception, dinner and dancing. 

And Tosh, for all her usually dowdy, plain sense of dress, looked gorgeous. He probably should have told her that. You didn't have to fancy someone to tell them they looked nice. He figured he owed her a dance at least after all the support she'd given him lately. She was just standing there staring at the couples on the dance floor, especially Gwen and Rhys. He could tell she wished she was out there, even if it was only with a useless twat like him. 

'I didn't think you danced,' Tosh said, semi-awkwardly wrapping her arms around his neck instead of the traditional dancing pose. 

'Lots of things you don't know about me, Tosh,' Owen replied, wondering if it was too much to pretend he was mysterious and enigmatic. 

'Guess I'll just have to watch my feet so I don't accidentally trod on yours.' 

'What, you mean you haven't been practicing for weeks for this big moment?' he teased. 

'After everything that's happened?' She let the rhetorical question hang in the air for a few moments. 'I'm just glad we're all here now.' 

Owen smirked. 'Never thought I'd be glad to be around to see Gwen finally getting hitched. That poor bastard, Rhys. Don't reckon he signed up for this.' Space whales and getting shot and carving up the alien mother in law from hell with a chainsaw. It didn't get much more Torchwood than that. 

'Guess it just goes to show that even people who work for Torchwood sometimes get to live happily every after too, huh?' 

Owen sighed, wishing he could agree with her. Likely as not, things were not going to end happily ever after for either of them. Gwen would be the exception that proved the rule. 

'Looks like we're not the only ones,' she said nodding over Owen's shoulder at something happening behind him. He turned her as they swayed and they both watched as Ianto cut in on Gwen's dance with Jack. Now that was a priceless moment. Owen grinned at Gwen being left out in the cold. Even Jack seemed a little surprised. It wasn't malicious, it was just downright hilarious. 

'I'm never going to let Teaboy live down that one. Jealous much?' 

'I think it's sweet,' Tosh replied, turning them slightly again to get a better look at the happy couple pressed together and slow dancing like they'd done it a million times. 'I'll bet you anything Jack's been nagging him for weeks.' 

'And I'll bet you he's been dodging it like nobody's business.' Owen knew Ianto and he was not the outgoing, let's be the gay couple that dances at someone else's wedding type. How much champagne had he drunk that had given him the Dutch courage for that? 'Love works in mysterious ways,' he mused out loud. 'To this day I still say that is the most bizarre coupling I've ever seen.' 

'Not like us, huh?' Tosh said. 

'Us?' Was there an us now that Owen didn't know about? 

Tosh shrugged. 'Just friends hanging out at a wedding and enjoying a dance. It's much nicer than being at a wedding on your own and having to deal with being hit on by all the single guys that show up. I mean, I feel bad for them in a way. They don't know that the woman they're about to go off with before the ceremony starts might be an alien shape-shifter planning on eating them.' 

'Or that she might be some kick-arse Torchwood agent who carries a gun and doesn't let blokes mess with her,' Owen added, trying to pay her a compliment. 

'That's true,' Tosh agreed. 'I think I'll start carrying a gun with me to all weddings, just in case.' 

Owen chuckled. 'Glad you didn't use it on me for asking you to dance.' 

'Step on my toes and I might reconsider.'