s4_see | There, Wolf [11/13]

Title: There, Wolf
Rating: teen [language and sexual situations]
Characters: Gwen, Ianto, Jack, PC Andy, A Werewolf
Spoilers: post-Exit Wounds
Advisories: crossover with Being Human; also if you think about the werewolf thing a little too hard, um... yeah, but not on-screen
Disclaimer: I am apparently a very silly person at this hour

Summary: Torchwood has adopted a stray...

**********

Not the woods this time, or the safety of the old ward, but bless him if he did know where he was, soft sheets beneath him and not even ripped up to wolf-mauled flinders. Someone's flat, apparently. Someone who'd thought they were being kind to a stray dog, and he'd open his eyes to find them lying mutilated in the doorway --

Or not, maybe. Snoring, actually. Snoring beside him, just as bare-arsed, and on the other side of the naked bloke a woman who still had her clothes on, thank whatever powers still looked after foolish drunks and werewolves, and it was about here that the naked bloke part sank in far enough to startle him the rest of the way awake.

The naked bloke was another wolf.

This was about the stage of things where his instinct would be to find his trousers and slip out quietly, if he hadn't known quite well he hadn't any trousers to find. There was losing one's human inhibitions, and then there was the horrible suspicion that you'd spent half the night having gay werewolf sex in the middle of a city park, and it wasn't exactly helping matters that something about this seemed achingly familiar.

The woman wore a wedding-ring. Threesome werewolf sex in the middle of a city park, like he'd rung up on some 'couple seeks SWWM, 21-30, for film night and public debauchery, let's disembowel some chickens together, no fatties' advert? But no, she wasn't one of -- them -- she smelt of it a bit but only in the same way that Mitchell complained of ever trying to borrow anything of his if they were late getting the washing sorted, and anyway the clothed detail suggested a human bystander who just happened to have some sort of fetish for fur and fangs.

Oh, god, this was looking kinkier by the minute.

The others had been disturbed by his movement, the naked bloke turning to look over a pale shoulder marked by three faint scars spaced about right to have been made by human fingers. Or claws. Tiny flare of the nostrils to say that he'd picked up on the same cues of identity; "Ah, good morning, then?"

Welsh accent. He'd never woken up all the way across the Severn before. Vague recollections suggested that someone's actual legitimate stag-do would have been involved in some capacity. Gay, drunken werewolf sex, then, and he was probably in bloody Newport. Without any trousers. "Erm, sorry, I'll need to ring for a lift... Where, exactly, am I?"

The other werewolf reached for a mobile lying on the bedside table next to a heavy-duty collar with a tag on that said Andy. "Croeso i Gymru. You can tell them to meet you in front of the Millennium Centre in Cardiff."

Gay, drunken werewolf sex in a public park in Cardiff. It wasn't his worst morning, but it was up there. "Your accent's still shite," the woman said sleepily. Her voice stirred a memory of a sensation like rubbing his hair dry with a fluffy towel, only all over his body. Kinkier by the minute.

The line connected at the first ring, and he gave an abbreviated and no doubt quite garbled account of the circumstances in which he found himself, cringing at the yipping hysteria he heard creeping into his voice. (He suspected he made a rubbish werewolf, as it went, far from the confident natural alpha one would fantasise oneself to be if one were mad enough to think any of this a good hobby to take up. Even this Andy bloke seemed to have this sorted better, and he didn't look one to eat first in the human scale of social interactions.) Mitchell sounded amused but touchingly relieved as he agreed to mount the rescue.

The other werewolf had got up to rummage in the wardrobe by the time he'd rung off, feeling somewhat better about his prospects for the morning but just as naked. "Yeah, cheers, erm... not even entirely sure how I got here last night, really."

Andy grinned and held out a Cardiff Blues hoodie. "Woke up in a lorry once, that could have got pardonnez-moi, où sont mes pantalons if he'd tied down his sides better."

He started to stand up to put on the track-pants that followed the hoodie out of the wardrobe and the woman gave them a oh, make that two naked blokes then look, turning away to hide a gap-toothed smile behind her hand. "I'll go make us some tea, then," she said, and slipped out practically at a run.

Gay werewolf sex, then. Brilliant. "I smell of dog shampoo."

A resigned grimace as Andy sniffed his own underarm. "That'll be Gwen worrying about dragging in the fleas again. Only bloody job I can think of where the medical includes jabs for parvovirus."

"Is she, your..."

"No, we, erm -- work together. The wolf trusts her enough she takes me out for a run, keeps it from getting a bit much always shut up with it. Tells people I'm not a stray and sees me home at moonset, all that."

"She's sort of your... werewolf beard, then? People believe you're just her dog?"

Andy shrugged. "People see what they think they're going to see. Should be some photos from last night on the mobile, have a look."

He'd never thought to keep a record of his condition. Hadn't wanted to have to consider the proof, he supposed. Gwen had taken one of both werewolves curled up on the bed; side by side like puppies in a basket they might just have been two large scruffy dogs, one dark and one fawn like the other man's hair. "You have floppy ears," he said.

"Workmate has this theory about how a werewolf would stay a bit like a puppy. I had to go look up 'neoteny' and I'm still not sure he wasn't just trying not to tell me my human ears are too big."

"You're, completely... out at work?"

Small disbelieving snort. "I am not a patch on their issues, believe me. Don't know I'd try it if I was still with the Heddlu, though, mates there would just as soon leave you somewhere to make it home with no trousers..." Andy was looking at him now with an arched eyebrow, lips parting as if he were grasping after some elusive thought -- "Gnomes."

That wouldn't have been the word he would have guessed. "Pardon?"

"Gnomes. On the wallpaper. That's where I know you -- Erm."

He was probably flushing as crimson. "Oh. Oh, my god. That's my -- Did we, I --" Boyish smile, 'would they notice if we', clutching until his nails -- "Oh, my god, I did this to you. I'm sorry, I'm so --"

"No, it's all right. Really. It is."

"I turned you into a monster, how is that in any possible sense of the words 'all right'?"

A blink that bordered on outright incomprehension. "Well, you know, you get on with it, yeah? Could have been cancer or something."

Well, that was that bloody Celtic fatalism for you, practically almost expecting something like this to happen sooner or later. "You sound like Mitchell."

The look of sly interest seemed just a bit too casual. "Who's he, then? Your...?"

"My housemate, erm, he's a vampire, actually."

Cardiff was apparently rougher than he'd thought, from Andy's total lack of anything resembling a shocked reaction. "Used to share with this bloke in a band. Bet yours keeps better hours."

"Erm, I just said my housemate's a vampire, you did hear that part?"

"You should only see the job. Got bloody aliens in our cellar. And ghosts playing at Moaning Myrtle down our internet lines, last time they had a domestic she launched a denial-of-service attack against the European Space Agency and nearly brought down a satellite."

"We live with a ghost as well. Ours... makes tea. It can be a surprisingly hostile act."

A wry, shy grin. "...You doing anything next month?"