There, Wolf [8/13]

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

Title: There, Wolf
Rating: teen [language and sexual situations]
Characters: Gwen, Ianto, Jack, PC Andy
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...




**********

Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight days of waiting, and worrying, and now it came down to Andy slumped glumly in front of a workstation and already looking hard-done-by for barely the start of this long shift. "Oi, Wolfboy, who took your bone away?" Gwen said from the bottom of the stairs, trying to make her voice light for the benefit of any unseen onlookers who might not be too busy shagging to hear yet.

He nodded towards Jack's office. "I tell them and tell them, I can smell everything they're about in there, but do you think they could show a little courtesy towards an employee with the occasional special requirements?"

"I'll add your name to the harassment suit, it's getting on for three hundred pages by now." She came up to ruffle his hair, small gesture that they'd found seemed to reassure the wolf in him at any time of the month. "Reckon we're about to find out just how stupid we were, then."

"Yeah, I... Yeah." Andy was regarding her quizzically, seeming a little distracted of a sudden. "Is that new perfume?"

"No, same old same old."

"Shampoo, then."

Gwen shook her head. "You're just trying to wind me up with it now, this is going to be a long enough night."

He mustered a wan smile. "Dunno what a lady wolf would smell like, anyway. Nearly moonrise, I should --"

But there would be two cells with water-dishes laid on this month. Ianto's silent expression of sympathy had been almost too much to bear, when she'd shown him a trumped-up scratch and asked him not to mention it to Jack unless... circumstances... required him to. "We should."

And would being a werewolf necessarily be so bad, Andy was otherwise doing well enough with it these days except for the part where he'd needed to be wormed, oh, and the general stress of turning into a wolf every month which couldn't exactly be good for anyone, there was always that. Gwen hesitated, staring at the pile of her clothes on the concrete bench, and finally laid her wedding ring on top. How does he stand this, every month?

Lord, but the vaults were chilly. She'd have to mention it to Jack sometime, see if she couldn't work it in as a human-rights issue for the weevils or something. She paced aimlessly for a few minutes, and ended sitting pressed back into the corner, hugging her knees to her chest. Was this how it had been for him, that first time? No, it couldn't, Andy hadn't any warning at all that he was about to see his life change so drastically. He'd only worked out something strange was wrong with him when a neighbour complained about the barking. She should have asked Ianto to leave a blanket as well. Or would that have been a mistake, a lot of Andy's stories of what he'd managed to do to his flat those first few times had involved horrible consequences to the duvet...

Too much time had gone by with only an anxious cramp in her stomach to show for her trouble, the mournful whining from the next cell proof enough that there didn't seem to be any baying at the full moon in her immediate future. Although relief seemed... well. Couldn't help it, could you, but. Gwen dressed herself with trembling, human fingers and went to heel Andy to her, patting the shaggy head a little sadly. "No proper company for you, then. Come on, let's go upstairs and toss the ball around, yeah?"

He seemed unusually morose tonight, for the wolf, ignoring her efforts to distract him with his favourite toys in favour of laying himself down on the settee with his chin on his paws like some grumpy old hound who'd been left behind when the young pups went off to the hunt. Gwen shrugged and settled in for an evening with Torchwood's eternal paperwork. Pity it was pissing down rain tonight, a run around the Plass might have done him good. (Absurd to have to think of her colleague in terms of a dog who'd been indoors all day, but then that was what everyone at Torchwood was, weren't they --) Almost like not even having a werewolf in the house at all, he was so quiet...

Andy was back to himself when Gwen looked up from her running battle near dawn, asleep with his bare bum stuck up in the air like a baby who'd conked out mid-crawl. Yoga for werewolves. She went to drape a blanket over him in the underground chill: "You'll be stiff, sweetheart."

He yawned as wide as the wolf and sat up, letting the blanket slip carelessly from his shoulders. Not really much point in clinging to modesty when someone had seen you running about in your furry altogether as much as she had by now and that not even as the wolf, yeah. "You're all right, then?"

Gwen wriggled her fingers at him. "Clean bill of species health, apparently. Let me drop you home so I can go make it up to Rhys before he has to get to work."

Andy was regarding her with the most peculiar expression. "But you still smell of... I don't know, I..." He caught up her hand and gave it a good long sniff, brows drawn together as if they were the stereotypical mark of the wolf. When he released it he'd gone pale. "Gwen, what would normal people have been worrying about with all of this?"

Twenty-eight days, twenty-eight days gone by and what was the more usual sense of time of the month... "Shit."