Fixtures and fittings [fic]
Title: Fixtures and fittings
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating(s): PG-13
Pairing(s): Gen
Warning(s): Set between first and second series.
Word Count: 2434
Summary: Owen, Ianto and Tosh on the comforts of home.
Owen.
Owen bought his flat simply because it was close to work; he had spent years commuting to the hospital for training, for work and then for Katie and liked the idea of just being able to roll out of bed and be in work ten minutes later. It takes longer than ten minutes to get to the Hub from his flat, but he still gets his lie-ins and that’s the important thing.
Everyone he has around takes a moment to give the place the once over and they all have more or less the same thing to say.
“It’s not very homey, is it?”
And true, it isn’t. Owen hadn’t wanted homey. Homey was for people who were cosy and happy and safe and wanted to be reminded of that fact. Owen was neither and saw no point in pretending to be, not now he didn’t have Katie to play house with. Instead he went cool; hard, sharp edges and glass walls, plasma screen TV in his bedroom and all the other toys a little boy his age could possibly want. He’d always said life was too short, always took what he wanted. Now he has a job that could kill him any day he’s just being a bit ruder and stupider about it.
He’s having the time of his life doing it, though.
But then he brings Diane back. And he buys her that red dress. It lies lifeless on the floor of his bedroom like an old snakeskin for days. He gets drunk and cries over her and Katie and his mum; all the women who he loves (loved) that he can’t make stay. He lies on the floor next to that dead, deflated dress, cold and uncomfortable, and doesn’t sleep because this place has only ever been for show.
Toshiko drives him back from the hospital, but doesn’t stick around for too long - there’s only so long you can talk to a person without accidentally making eye contact. He slumps on one of the couches in front of the coffee table. Somewhere along the line he’s gone from living dangerously to standing in death’s way. He should probably stop doing that. He probably won’t.
When Jack leaves Owen can’t sleep. Because he’s the leader now and no one ever really thought that that was going to happen, least of all him. It’s like being back at school again, having a really important test slapped down in front of you when you spent the whole night playing video games.
He alternates between hating work and not wanting to go home. He can see the tower through the bloody glass walls of his bedroom, an unpleasant ever present reminder of his duties, of why he can’t afford to screw up anymore. He buries his head under the sheets - nine again, trying to ignore mum and dad screaming at one another - and wishes he could just stay there.
Once he’s actually in the Hub, though, he’s reluctant to leave. He’s never quite realised until now just how many reflective surfaces there are in his flat. Countless doubles follow him around the kitchen in the glossy dark floor tiles, the huge silver fridge, the gleaming countertop and cabinets. When he wanders in from the Hub in the small hours of the morning ghosts of him glide across the dark glass walls with him. He’s tired of seeing all the ways he’s wrong for the job and can’t quite measure up to Jack. He knows that, has always known it and gets enough accusing glances at work without being reminded of it when gets home.
He gives himself a day off and finds a new flat. It’s still cool, still slick, because homey still isn’t him, but it’s more… comfortable. He’ll actually be able to like spending time here, he thinks. He takes the next couple of days off and gives Ianto the day off too so he can help him unpack and arrange his stuff.
“Gwen’s taken charge while all this has been going on, you know,” says Ianto as he helps Owen with the bed.
“Really?” He doesn’t care. Now they’ve got the bed straight he jumps on and flops back.
Above him Ianto rolls his eyes. “I think she thinks the power’s gone to your head a bit. What with making me help you move in and everything.”
Owen doesn’t care. From here, lying in bed, he can’t see the tower. He’s safe. This could be home.
Ianto.
Provided that there’s a bed, a desk, some shelves and a shower Ianto can make himself at home pretty much anywhere. His old room at home was a god-awful mess, however his mum tried to straighten it out, but since he left home all his rooms have been anally neat. Which isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it sound when you rent a room with a little bathroom attached; there isn’t as much space in which to lose things.
Not that he has that much to lose either. When you’re moving around it’s best to travel light. Just keep the things you need. There are things he misses, like that old book with the title worn off that his Granddad used to read to him - silly little nostalgic things that would just weigh him down and get battered over time. Better that they’re safe and he knows where they are rather than realising, when he’s walking down some random street, that he’s left it behind and crying about it.
When he does get a steady job, and even a steady girlfriend, he gets a flat. There’s barely anything in it and this amuses Lisa. As she becomes a more permanent fitting she begins to frown at the floor, beautifully clean and painfully bare, and suggests he get a rug, or some cushions for the sofa. By Christmas she’s bought them for him herself, all in blues and reds. Red, because it’s her favourite colour, and blue for him. Ianto has to admit the cushions are excellent for fights, though the rug keeps sliding around on the floor and when Lisa’s not there to drag around on it he gets fed up with it.
When Lisa moves in there’s plenty of room for her. Too much room, she says, and those first few days most of her things stay packed away in their boxes and suitcases because she feels she’s hogging the flat. Well, their flat now. Ianto unpacks and arranges it one night while she’s out on call and refuses to listen to her half-hearted protests upon her return.
Half a year later he moves back to Cardiff alone. He thinks about moving into a hotel, but rents a room instead; he’s not going to take no for an answer. Lisa can’t afford him to.
It’s a Spartan little place, with only a few photos of him and Lisa to prove that those last two years in London actually happened. The cushions and rug are in storage along with the rest of Lisa’s things. Once again he’s only got what he needs, not wanting to leave behind the important things if and when they need to make a quick getaway.
Afterwards he’s finally able to look past the space and see the emptiness. It’s quite pathetic that he only notices it when he comes back in a mood to throw things, only to find there’s nothing to throw.
Jack visits him during his suspension. His surprise at Ianto’s accommodation is fleeting, then he sits down on the bed and Ianto sits on the chair while they wait for the kettle to boil.
“Rather compact,” Jack remarks when Ianto passes him his tea.
Ianto shrugs. “It was all the space I needed.”
Jack doesn’t bat an eyelid at his use of past tense. “I’d move somewhere bigger. More comfortable. There are some new flats being built near the Bay. It’d be handier for work.”
Ianto stares at him. Jack just drinks his tea.
He stays in that pokey little room for some time, licking his wounds and looking at the old photographs.
Then, on a whim, he sleeps with Jack. He expects the guilt to start gnawing at him the minute that he opens the door and sees the pictures. He looks at them for a long time, smiling as he remembers the jokes Lisa had told him to make him laugh, and how awful the weather was that time in Cumbria. He straightens them out and goes to bed. One day a couple of weeks later he looks around and decides that the time has come to get a bigger place.
Toshiko.
When Toshiko is released she doesn’t have anything to her name; the contents of her flat had been seized by UNIT. The clothes she’s wearing as she walks out a free woman are too tight or too baggy and pull the wrong way when she moves. Captain Harkness - Jack, he keeps insisting - is very apologetic about this. And about the house he has rented for her. She can’t quite bring herself to go further in than two steps past the front door.
“It comes with furniture, but you’ll be able to replace that if you just talk to the landlord,” he says, walking down the hall. He stops when he sees she’s not following and forces a smile. “It’s probably not to your taste, but you can always find somewhere else later.”
Later. Is there really going to be a later? They’ll probably try to get her back in a few months, and there won’t be a thing that Captain Hark- Jack - can do about it.
At the other end of the hall he’s visibly casting around for something to say.
“There’s a lot of red,” he says finally. “You like red?”
Toshiko starts crying.
The days and weeks add into months, and a year has passed. They don’t come to get her back. She still feels a little intimidated by the size of the place. It’s not a big house by any means, but after that tiny cell it feels like she’s drowning in it. There’s so much space for clutter that she doesn’t remember how to make, for furniture she won’t use. She’s starting to grow into it, though at the moment only the bedroom shows any signs of being inhabited, with piles of trashy romance novels and empty mugs sat on the dresser.
She tries to make it feel more like her own with photographs. No one else would have photos of her parents and family. Though, now that she thinks about it, someone else living here might have put up pictures of Jack and Suzie and the new boy, Ianto, and Owen, had they come to live here instead of her. When they lived here before her. She doesn’t like thinking like that and takes those photos down. Except for that one Jack took of her and Owen, huddled up against the worst weather the Welsh countryside could throw at them. That photo is completely hers; even if it featured them instead of her, it wouldn’t mean the same - just another photo with someone from work.
She never has anyone from work around. She doesn’t know if this is an accident of if she’s trying to avoid being found out. She makes a conscious effort after this to invite someone around, but everyone’s too busy with side projects and girlfriends and getting laid. Jack comes around - there’s no point trying to avoid him, he picked the place out for her, for God’s sake - and they hang around in sitting room. Jack tries to go into the kitchen for something, more sugar for his tea, maybe, but he comes back quickly. Hers is not the sort of house you can wander around freely; there are clearly rooms that you aren’t meant to enter, that make you feel unwelcome in the hope that you’ll leave them alone. It’s no different for her; there are rooms she can’t stay in long, others she avoids altogether. It’s a bit pathetic, really.
Mary doesn’t seem to care about whether the house will accept her or not. Her attention is fixed completely on Toshiko. It’s wonderful and quite terrifying to be looked at like that. She’s as relieved as she is devastated when it all comes crashing down around her.
But, going home, it comes back to her more than ever how big it is, how quiet it is. She’s starting to feel afraid of breaking the silence, of making too loud noises. When there’s time to take a break from work, she decides, she’ll move into a new flat.
However, a quiet time at work is slow in coming. First Suzie comes back and Gwen almost dies, then there’s that business with Eugene, and then the Aluthrenian disc. She does manage to find and put in an offer for a new flat while the others are dealing with the refugees from the fifties, but it’s a brief reprieve before the fight club with the Weevils and Owen trying to get himself killed and being trapped in 1941 with Jack and, of course, the almost end of the world.
And now they’re stumbling along without Jack, feeling their way forward inch by inch like they’re walking in the dark. She moves in sofa by bed by television, slowly but surely spending more nights there until she’s moved in completely.
Upon Jack’s less than triumphant return she invites everyone around for drinks. Gwen declines, saying she needs to get back to Rhys, but the boys all happily accept. Owen staggers off home first, saying he needs to get up early. Ianto and Tosh grin at Jack’s face and explain about Owen’s new place. Ianto’s next to disappear, with a private smile at Jack and a congrats to Toshiko on her new place.
“You can stay over if you like,” she tells Jack as she starts clearing the glasses and bottles. “The spare room’s all made up.”
Jack raises his eyebrows. The spare room in her old house was dank and grey and empty aside from the odd cardboard box or two that Toshiko had shoved in there to keep it out of the way. This guest room is fully made up, tastefully decorated and as clean as all the others, though perhaps a touch neater.
Jack hovers in the doorway and purses his lips to keep from smiling. “Tempting. Very tempting. But I think I might just go back to the Hub, get my quarters sorted there. Some other time, maybe.”
Toshiko shrugs happily. “Whenever.”
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating(s): PG-13
Pairing(s): Gen
Warning(s): Set between first and second series.
Word Count: 2434
Summary: Owen, Ianto and Tosh on the comforts of home.
Owen.
Owen bought his flat simply because it was close to work; he had spent years commuting to the hospital for training, for work and then for Katie and liked the idea of just being able to roll out of bed and be in work ten minutes later. It takes longer than ten minutes to get to the Hub from his flat, but he still gets his lie-ins and that’s the important thing.
Everyone he has around takes a moment to give the place the once over and they all have more or less the same thing to say.
“It’s not very homey, is it?”
And true, it isn’t. Owen hadn’t wanted homey. Homey was for people who were cosy and happy and safe and wanted to be reminded of that fact. Owen was neither and saw no point in pretending to be, not now he didn’t have Katie to play house with. Instead he went cool; hard, sharp edges and glass walls, plasma screen TV in his bedroom and all the other toys a little boy his age could possibly want. He’d always said life was too short, always took what he wanted. Now he has a job that could kill him any day he’s just being a bit ruder and stupider about it.
He’s having the time of his life doing it, though.
But then he brings Diane back. And he buys her that red dress. It lies lifeless on the floor of his bedroom like an old snakeskin for days. He gets drunk and cries over her and Katie and his mum; all the women who he loves (loved) that he can’t make stay. He lies on the floor next to that dead, deflated dress, cold and uncomfortable, and doesn’t sleep because this place has only ever been for show.
Toshiko drives him back from the hospital, but doesn’t stick around for too long - there’s only so long you can talk to a person without accidentally making eye contact. He slumps on one of the couches in front of the coffee table. Somewhere along the line he’s gone from living dangerously to standing in death’s way. He should probably stop doing that. He probably won’t.
When Jack leaves Owen can’t sleep. Because he’s the leader now and no one ever really thought that that was going to happen, least of all him. It’s like being back at school again, having a really important test slapped down in front of you when you spent the whole night playing video games.
He alternates between hating work and not wanting to go home. He can see the tower through the bloody glass walls of his bedroom, an unpleasant ever present reminder of his duties, of why he can’t afford to screw up anymore. He buries his head under the sheets - nine again, trying to ignore mum and dad screaming at one another - and wishes he could just stay there.
Once he’s actually in the Hub, though, he’s reluctant to leave. He’s never quite realised until now just how many reflective surfaces there are in his flat. Countless doubles follow him around the kitchen in the glossy dark floor tiles, the huge silver fridge, the gleaming countertop and cabinets. When he wanders in from the Hub in the small hours of the morning ghosts of him glide across the dark glass walls with him. He’s tired of seeing all the ways he’s wrong for the job and can’t quite measure up to Jack. He knows that, has always known it and gets enough accusing glances at work without being reminded of it when gets home.
He gives himself a day off and finds a new flat. It’s still cool, still slick, because homey still isn’t him, but it’s more… comfortable. He’ll actually be able to like spending time here, he thinks. He takes the next couple of days off and gives Ianto the day off too so he can help him unpack and arrange his stuff.
“Gwen’s taken charge while all this has been going on, you know,” says Ianto as he helps Owen with the bed.
“Really?” He doesn’t care. Now they’ve got the bed straight he jumps on and flops back.
Above him Ianto rolls his eyes. “I think she thinks the power’s gone to your head a bit. What with making me help you move in and everything.”
Owen doesn’t care. From here, lying in bed, he can’t see the tower. He’s safe. This could be home.
Ianto.
Provided that there’s a bed, a desk, some shelves and a shower Ianto can make himself at home pretty much anywhere. His old room at home was a god-awful mess, however his mum tried to straighten it out, but since he left home all his rooms have been anally neat. Which isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it sound when you rent a room with a little bathroom attached; there isn’t as much space in which to lose things.
Not that he has that much to lose either. When you’re moving around it’s best to travel light. Just keep the things you need. There are things he misses, like that old book with the title worn off that his Granddad used to read to him - silly little nostalgic things that would just weigh him down and get battered over time. Better that they’re safe and he knows where they are rather than realising, when he’s walking down some random street, that he’s left it behind and crying about it.
When he does get a steady job, and even a steady girlfriend, he gets a flat. There’s barely anything in it and this amuses Lisa. As she becomes a more permanent fitting she begins to frown at the floor, beautifully clean and painfully bare, and suggests he get a rug, or some cushions for the sofa. By Christmas she’s bought them for him herself, all in blues and reds. Red, because it’s her favourite colour, and blue for him. Ianto has to admit the cushions are excellent for fights, though the rug keeps sliding around on the floor and when Lisa’s not there to drag around on it he gets fed up with it.
When Lisa moves in there’s plenty of room for her. Too much room, she says, and those first few days most of her things stay packed away in their boxes and suitcases because she feels she’s hogging the flat. Well, their flat now. Ianto unpacks and arranges it one night while she’s out on call and refuses to listen to her half-hearted protests upon her return.
Half a year later he moves back to Cardiff alone. He thinks about moving into a hotel, but rents a room instead; he’s not going to take no for an answer. Lisa can’t afford him to.
It’s a Spartan little place, with only a few photos of him and Lisa to prove that those last two years in London actually happened. The cushions and rug are in storage along with the rest of Lisa’s things. Once again he’s only got what he needs, not wanting to leave behind the important things if and when they need to make a quick getaway.
Afterwards he’s finally able to look past the space and see the emptiness. It’s quite pathetic that he only notices it when he comes back in a mood to throw things, only to find there’s nothing to throw.
Jack visits him during his suspension. His surprise at Ianto’s accommodation is fleeting, then he sits down on the bed and Ianto sits on the chair while they wait for the kettle to boil.
“Rather compact,” Jack remarks when Ianto passes him his tea.
Ianto shrugs. “It was all the space I needed.”
Jack doesn’t bat an eyelid at his use of past tense. “I’d move somewhere bigger. More comfortable. There are some new flats being built near the Bay. It’d be handier for work.”
Ianto stares at him. Jack just drinks his tea.
He stays in that pokey little room for some time, licking his wounds and looking at the old photographs.
Then, on a whim, he sleeps with Jack. He expects the guilt to start gnawing at him the minute that he opens the door and sees the pictures. He looks at them for a long time, smiling as he remembers the jokes Lisa had told him to make him laugh, and how awful the weather was that time in Cumbria. He straightens them out and goes to bed. One day a couple of weeks later he looks around and decides that the time has come to get a bigger place.
Toshiko.
When Toshiko is released she doesn’t have anything to her name; the contents of her flat had been seized by UNIT. The clothes she’s wearing as she walks out a free woman are too tight or too baggy and pull the wrong way when she moves. Captain Harkness - Jack, he keeps insisting - is very apologetic about this. And about the house he has rented for her. She can’t quite bring herself to go further in than two steps past the front door.
“It comes with furniture, but you’ll be able to replace that if you just talk to the landlord,” he says, walking down the hall. He stops when he sees she’s not following and forces a smile. “It’s probably not to your taste, but you can always find somewhere else later.”
Later. Is there really going to be a later? They’ll probably try to get her back in a few months, and there won’t be a thing that Captain Hark- Jack - can do about it.
At the other end of the hall he’s visibly casting around for something to say.
“There’s a lot of red,” he says finally. “You like red?”
Toshiko starts crying.
The days and weeks add into months, and a year has passed. They don’t come to get her back. She still feels a little intimidated by the size of the place. It’s not a big house by any means, but after that tiny cell it feels like she’s drowning in it. There’s so much space for clutter that she doesn’t remember how to make, for furniture she won’t use. She’s starting to grow into it, though at the moment only the bedroom shows any signs of being inhabited, with piles of trashy romance novels and empty mugs sat on the dresser.
She tries to make it feel more like her own with photographs. No one else would have photos of her parents and family. Though, now that she thinks about it, someone else living here might have put up pictures of Jack and Suzie and the new boy, Ianto, and Owen, had they come to live here instead of her. When they lived here before her. She doesn’t like thinking like that and takes those photos down. Except for that one Jack took of her and Owen, huddled up against the worst weather the Welsh countryside could throw at them. That photo is completely hers; even if it featured them instead of her, it wouldn’t mean the same - just another photo with someone from work.
She never has anyone from work around. She doesn’t know if this is an accident of if she’s trying to avoid being found out. She makes a conscious effort after this to invite someone around, but everyone’s too busy with side projects and girlfriends and getting laid. Jack comes around - there’s no point trying to avoid him, he picked the place out for her, for God’s sake - and they hang around in sitting room. Jack tries to go into the kitchen for something, more sugar for his tea, maybe, but he comes back quickly. Hers is not the sort of house you can wander around freely; there are clearly rooms that you aren’t meant to enter, that make you feel unwelcome in the hope that you’ll leave them alone. It’s no different for her; there are rooms she can’t stay in long, others she avoids altogether. It’s a bit pathetic, really.
Mary doesn’t seem to care about whether the house will accept her or not. Her attention is fixed completely on Toshiko. It’s wonderful and quite terrifying to be looked at like that. She’s as relieved as she is devastated when it all comes crashing down around her.
But, going home, it comes back to her more than ever how big it is, how quiet it is. She’s starting to feel afraid of breaking the silence, of making too loud noises. When there’s time to take a break from work, she decides, she’ll move into a new flat.
However, a quiet time at work is slow in coming. First Suzie comes back and Gwen almost dies, then there’s that business with Eugene, and then the Aluthrenian disc. She does manage to find and put in an offer for a new flat while the others are dealing with the refugees from the fifties, but it’s a brief reprieve before the fight club with the Weevils and Owen trying to get himself killed and being trapped in 1941 with Jack and, of course, the almost end of the world.
And now they’re stumbling along without Jack, feeling their way forward inch by inch like they’re walking in the dark. She moves in sofa by bed by television, slowly but surely spending more nights there until she’s moved in completely.
Upon Jack’s less than triumphant return she invites everyone around for drinks. Gwen declines, saying she needs to get back to Rhys, but the boys all happily accept. Owen staggers off home first, saying he needs to get up early. Ianto and Tosh grin at Jack’s face and explain about Owen’s new place. Ianto’s next to disappear, with a private smile at Jack and a congrats to Toshiko on her new place.
“You can stay over if you like,” she tells Jack as she starts clearing the glasses and bottles. “The spare room’s all made up.”
Jack raises his eyebrows. The spare room in her old house was dank and grey and empty aside from the odd cardboard box or two that Toshiko had shoved in there to keep it out of the way. This guest room is fully made up, tastefully decorated and as clean as all the others, though perhaps a touch neater.
Jack hovers in the doorway and purses his lips to keep from smiling. “Tempting. Very tempting. But I think I might just go back to the Hub, get my quarters sorted there. Some other time, maybe.”
Toshiko shrugs happily. “Whenever.”