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It was a nonchalant lean. Jack had decided to do something festive again with the hub, having spent the entirety of the day in luck with the fact that there had been no activity, thus he could tell his employees that he didn’t need them in, just on call. Owen, Toshiko, Suzie, Ianto… None of them complained about the freedom they weren’t expecting this holiday.
Which was why they all let out frustrated groans when Jack said he needed them to come in immediately and drug their sorry asses to the hub. The lift had been deactivated so… Through the bulkhead they all had gone, but only when all of them were together.
When they came down, what they saw was… Absolutely bizarre, to say the least, seeing the Hub decorated in Christmas decor. But… Well… They went with it anyway. Owen forced himself to smile through the idiocy that was the celebration of such a trivial Hallmark holiday. Sure, he talked with his team. Jack, Tosh, Suzie, Ianto… All of them, and while it was unusual to be socialising with his team when they were out all afternoon enjoying the normalcy of human life for once, it was… Nice.
He’d found out little things. Ianto’s love of Bond, though he wasn’t sure if Ianto would call it that. Possibly a fangirl in slight denial? Clearly, he accepted it to some point, or he wouldn’t talk about it… Jack’s reasoning as to why he dresses like he’s in WWII; because it’s a classy style, something that would never be forgotten… Well, that was damn accurate, to say the least, seeing is how Owen had decided that Jack was probably the one person who was the most unforgettable.
Tosh? She seemed to have an in-depth fascination with some of the various technologies around the hub, enough to actually tell Owen what they could do and how precisely they were able to accomplish the task at hand. He decided that could be useful later because it was entirely possible some of this bollocks had a medical use. Suzie had one hell of a knack for making certain sweets, it seemed. She’d brought taffy she’d made on her own the night before.
They weren’t allowed to leave until after one thirty, Jack offering extra sleeping space to them in case they were too intoxicated to go home. While Suzie took a cab home and Ianto walked, Owen, Jack and Tosh remained at the hub and had a little bit more of a conversation with his co-workers to sober himself up. It was three when Tosh had decided to leave and Owen decided the courteous thing to do would be to wait with her after Jack gave him the look of go wait with her… She wants your company.
Courteous… That’s what Owen would call it. Tosh would call it Owen’s sweet side. But it whatever it was, it was a side Owen didn’t show often. He waited outside with her, having walked to the millennium centre with her. Talking… That’s what they called this. He found out she’d also been born in London, which caused him to try to differentiate the different accents in his intoxicated thoughts.
It was when they got in front of the centre that Tosh decided it’d be best to just call a cab, not feeling confident in her mildly tipsy state to walk the… Well, fairly long walk. So Owen waited with her, hands shoved into his pockets as the two of them paced and moved to keep warm as they continued talking.
Owen admitted that what got him through school so fast was the remotely photographic memory that retained information better than the average person’s memory and that Jack had found him as he was in med school for his degree to be not only an M.D., but a psychiatrist to some degree as well.
He didn’t notice that she’d tapped a piece of mistletoe up to the pole he stood under, so when she pointed it out, he thought it was something someone else had done. He wouldn’t put it past people…
But regardless, as the cab pulled up, Tosh moved and leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. Owen’s eyes widened a little but a familiar, missed feeling… He couldn’t help but lean into it a little, a couple seconds before she pulled away and waggled her fingers in a departing note.
Owen’s brow creased and he shook his head slightly, trying to process that before decided that it was nothing, walking home from there. It wasn’t like it was that much further.