Title: The Velocity Of A Kebab
Rating: Teen [language and sexual situations]
Characters: PC Andy/Tosh, Owen, Jack, Ianto, Rhys
Advisories: AU, character death
Disclaimer: I'm denying I speak English at this point
Note: Written for

tw_bigbang 2009

Summary: The flap of a wing, a slight change of angle, and the task of chasing after the spooky-do's could have fallen to another of Cardiff's finest...

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Typical Jack, to swan back in and get them entangled in a madman's scavenger-hunt right off the mark. Andy pointed his torch around at the cluttered shelves and heaped pallets of odd tat haphazardly, hoping to catch some glint or dullness that somehow stood out against the background of visual noise. "Not the exciting night out we were expecting, I don't think."

"I suppose you could have been out on the pull by now."

He cocked an eyebrow at Tosh's teasing smile. "Could I have been?"

"Owen would be."

"Owen probably is. He'll have sweet-talked Hart into skiving off to go clubbing, while here we are, doing the legwork." For all of Owen's posturing and cock-measuring the struggle for power in Jack's absence had been surprisingly brief, mostly because deep down the medic just couldn't be arsed to do the actual work involved. They'd probably get back to the Hub tonight and find him trying to distract their visitor from his failings with the file that they had decided was Jack's collection of alien wank mags.

They'd all been wrestling with Jack's absence in their own ways, throwing themselves into paperwork or programming or obsessive tidying or, in Owen's case, the rather anomalous reaction of swearing off sex for about three weeks. (Andy suspected he'd mostly been trying to wind the rest of them up.) More than once they'd all gone back together to someone's with videos and drink and woken in a fully-clothed pile of Torchwood knees and elbows, huddling together more for the comfort than warmth. At least once the pile had been considerably less clothed. He wasn't sure whether some of the dates he couldn't personally account for might have involved retcon. But they'd managed, somehow.

And now he was back.

Too soon to tell if Jack bore any of them grudges for the mutiny. Andy's dreams were still haunted by that vision of Gwen pleading with him to set time right, to help her get back to her Rhys, and it had been ages before Tosh had been able to get through a night without waking up sobbing for her mother. He'd never even asked the others who they'd seen, or how long it had been before it stopped seeming quite so real, in the dark.

But then, they'd never asked him, either. They were British, after all, acculturated to pasting on stiff upper lips in the face of the terrors, or just needed to pretend that one of them came close to being something like a grownup and he was the best that they could do, newest to this or not. Maybe it was because he was the latecomer, not as tangled up in unhelpful memories of the last twelve times something had tried to eat them all. And if leadership meant he was the one to inherit the other nightmares, the stranger ones about ice and blood and shining sharp spheres... he wasn't entirely surprised that Jack had rarely seemed to sleep.

"I think it's on the third shelf up," Tosh said, prodding at her handheld.

Just about over even his head, but Andy grasped the edge of the shelf and stretched up until he could see an inconspicuous grey tube. He fetched it down and presented it to her with a flourish. "You're brilliant, have I told you that recently enough?"

Tosh lifted her chin at him playfully. "Always bears repeating."

"No, I mean it, you're..." You're Tosh. You're our Tosh. You're my quiet, brave Tosh. Who never ever flinched when it came to it, who'd used that marvellous brain to rescue herself from a fate he still couldn't quite bring himself to look at straight on, and brought him tea as he sat vigil over a body that lay cold yet incorruptible as the saint Jack most assuredly was not -- "Marry me?"

"What?"

Oops. "Right, erm, yeah, I know, this isn't very romantic, or anything, standing here in a warehouse and all, but... Been, erm, trying to work up to asking you a while now, never seems to be a good moment, so, I..."

"This is our lives, after all," Tosh said. "Wouldn't really be honest to try to do this the way everyone else would." And took Andy's hand. "All right: yes. Let's do it."

"Jack will go spare," he said giddily, and caught sight of Captain Hart approaching them in the dim light, pale eyes glittering with wary assessment of the two mad grins. "We're getting married," Andy blurted.

Hart cocked his head at them. "Are you, now." He reached out to lift Toshiko's fingers to his lips as if for a formal kiss, then seemed to change his mind at the last moment and drew her in for a hard snog. She coughed as he turned her loose, spluttering indignantly, and suddenly it was his turn for a mouthful of tongue --

"Oi, gerroff!" Andy shoved at the red-jacketed shoulders, strangely solid under his hands, or was it his hands that were suddenly not quite at the ends of his arms? "Don't you, ever..."

"Sorry, this isn't the queue for congratulations?"

Andy's lips were on fire, Tosh had sunk gasping to her knees, he couldn't, he couldn't get in much of a breath -- "What have you done to us?"

"Just a bit of poison lippie." As if it were merely a fashion where he came from. Hart squinted at Andy; "Although I ought not to have been such a gentleman about kissing her first, leaves me rather warm lips but no friendly drop to help you after. Well, mostly."

Andy sat down hard on the filthy concrete as his legs folded under him. Tosh was breathing in tiny pants, sprawled full-length in the dust. "What have you done with Owen?"

Hart shrugged. "Last I saw him he was trying to dig a bullet out of his own stomach. Might even have managed it by now, he's a clever one." He regarded them with an arched brow as Andy forced a trembling hand out to touch Tosh's cheek. "You're sweet, really, you are, but I'm a very busy man, I'm sure you'll understand if I'll just be buggering off now." He bent to retrieve the canister from where it had rolled from Tosh's limp fingers, then dropped all the way into a squat to lean closer to the two stiffening faces; "Tell you what, though, I might even tell Jack he needs to find you before the damage gets to be irreversible." A flicker of red at the corner of fading vision as Hart turned to go. "Call it a... wedding present."