Fandomweekly Challenge 81 - A house is not a home

[m_findlow]

Title: A house is not a home
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG. Set post CoE.
Length: 699 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 81 - Haunted house at fandomweekly
Summary: Rhys has his reservations about the latest place he and Gwen are expected to call home.

As Rhys pulled the car up, he peered out through the windscreen. Was this really it? He supposed it must be. Nothing else for bloody miles. Even the satnav had given up hope of finding it but here they were.

The place was totally ramshackle, a run down rural house plonked out in the middle of nowhere, but so rusted and falling down that Rhys couldn't conceive of any way that it could be considered habitable. Then again, he'd been living in caravans and porta cabins, so an actual house was definitely an upgrade as it was.

Rhys checked the key fob again and sighed at the now all too familiar and ridiculously neat penmanship that said "If lost, please return to I. Jones, Post office box 6042, Grangetown.” Ianto and all his bloody keys. Gwen had a whole pillowcase full of them, plucking them out almost at random, like a renter's lucky dip. Where shall we live next? They'd yet to uncover that nice villa on the Amalfi coast. Just perusing the addresses written on the fobs was enough to depress Rhys.

He'd have loved to sit Ianto down over a pint and asked him "Now, in all seriousness, do you really think this place qualifies as somewhere safe for when your average Torchwood agent is in a bit of a mess?” He'd known Ianto well enough to know that he would have been perfectly cognizant of where all these places were and the state they were in. It would have horrified his obsessive compulsive, Marie Condo sock drawer sensibilities. Perhaps he'd simply hoped that no one would ever have to use them. He'd probably hoped for a lot of things, and being dead wasn't one of them.

‘The place is a dump, Gwen,’ he announced.

‘I'm sure it's fine,’ she said, looking too tired to argue with him. At six months pregnant it was hardly a wonder she was tired, even just from sitting in the car. They should have been staying in some nice clean house in the city close to a hospital or at least a decent medical clinic. It was not how he imagined her pregnancy, making random hospital appointments to make sure the baby was okay and then retconning the doctors and nurses, then erasing Gwen's medical files.

Seriously, this whole being in hiding nonsense was a lot harder than he'd ever imagined. So much for all the times he'd complained that he never saw enough of Gwen. Now she was the only person he saw - and she him - with the exception of the pimply teenagers and overweight women in aprons who ran the local shops where they picked up tins of beans and pints of milk. God what he wouldn't give for a nice juicy steak and an ice cold pint of beer. Having it in lukewarm cans just wasn't the same, even when he'd shoved them in a snow drift one time to chill them down. That had been during the hard winter in North Wales. They'd moved further south and west now, always on the move, always looking over their shoulders. He never knew when they would move next, but mostly just when he'd finally gotten settled somewhere, Gwen would get nervous and say they needed to go. He didn't like to ask Gwen when she thought they might be able to stop running. Surely the government had given up looking for them by now.

‘It all feels a bit Blair Witch to me,’ Rhys murmured. The trees were strangly and bare, and ravens were crouching on the rusted out guttering, cawing ominously. ‘Couldn't we stay somewhere else?’ Not like they didn't have options.

‘There's nothing for miles, Rhys.’

Exactly, he wanted to say. Makes you wonder how Torchwood came to own it in the first place. Lair of a secret cult? Mass suicide? A Welsh Waco? ‘Fine. You go in and get the beans on. I'll go take a walk around the place. Make sure everything's secure.’

She pecked him on the cheek and grabbed their measly possessions. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you, too,’ he said. But if he found a stash of dead bodies they were out of here.