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Owen groaned as sounds woke him from where he'd been having pleasant, dreamless sleep. It took him a few moments to try and pinpoint the source of the noise, and then, with another groan at the slightly still warm half of the bed he wasn't occupying, did the answer hit him. He rolled over and tried to ignore the sounds, but subtle as they no doubt were, it was just enough to prevent him from dropping back into sleep. It was the annoyance factor more than anything that prevented him going back to sleep. This is why you enjoy your bachelor existence, he told himself.
Reluctantly he pulled back the covers, giving an involuntary shiver as he noticed how cold the morning was. Just another reason why it would have been better to stay in bed. There were probably some socks lying around, and maybe even a hooded sweater he could pull on to add a few extra layers, but through sleep encrusted eyes and a bit of kicking around the floor with his bare feet, using them to search under the edge of the bed, he was unable to locate any. They should have been there had he thought about it a little harder. That's where they'd been last night when he toed them off. Instead he padded out of the bedroom, hell bent on giving the noise maker a piece of his mind.
Just as he expected, there was Ianto, moving around the flat - his flat - tidying up.
'Oi,' Owen began. 'It's…' He sighed and rubbed his face, trying to remove some of the sleep from his eyes. 'What time is it anyway?'
'Bit after half six,' Ianto replied, looking fresh as a daisy despite still being in his pyjamas and bed socks and…
'That's my hoodie!'
'You weren't using it,' Ianto argued. 'And it's cold. You should really get the timer fixed on your central heating to come on a bit earlier.'
Owen growled. 'It's Saturday! Saturday at six thirty in the morning and you're…' Owen took a closer look at Ianto's current activity and his frown deepened. 'Those are my underpants!'
Ianto rolled his eyes at Owen. 'I'm not wearing them. I'm doing the laundry. God knows it's overdue. I would have asked you to come with me to pick up some fresh clothes but that still meant washing these. Figured I might as well do them here. Not like I can get you to hang out with me for hours doing laundry at my place.'
Owen bit back on anything he might say that was going to devolve into a massive argument. The only thing worse than putting up with Ianto was putting up with a stroppy, argumentative Ianto, followed by a silent sulking one.
This was all Jack's fault. Him and his stupid alien devices that meant he and Ianto now couldn't be more than a half dozen yards apart without feeling violently sick, and risking death. The effects were supposed to wear off after a week so Jack promised, but it had now been over a week and Owen was getting tetchy. He'd put up with a lot, but there was only so much of it he could take in the long term. He didn't like sharing his space and he liked it even less when he had to share it with someone he wouldn't have ever chosen for a flatmate. Most of Owen's former flatmates had been female for a start - good shag, a decent spag bowl, and cleaned their own piles of hair out of his shower drain. Having an obsessive compulsive neat freak…
'You don't have a Playstation at yours,' Owen said, putting forth the best argument he could think of for why they were cooped up here, the pair of them crashing at Owen's flat on what was looking like being a semi-permanent basis the way things were going. Just great.
Ianto's brow knitted into a little series of creases. 'You've never even been to mine.'
'Yeah, but I know what it'll be like. All pristine white walls and monotone furniture and not a shred of bloody humanity.' In other words, boring. In other words, Ianto. 'No way we were staying at yours. Not to mention Jack turning up all the bloody time and sneaking into bed with us.' Bad enough he had to share his king size bed with Ianto. He'd chivalrously offered to take the sofa, which had only guilted Owen into agreeing to share the bed, just so long as he didn't find Ianto cuddled up against him in the middle of the night, thinking he was Jack. Fortunately, Ianto had kept to his side, tucked up behind the wall of spare pillows wedged between them, and at least he wasn't a snorer. More a snuffler at worst. Silent mostly, just like when he was awake.
Ianto looked a tad offended by the suggestion. 'I would have told him no.'
Owen snorted. 'Yeah, because just saying no to Jack has always worked so well in the past.' Two weeks without a shag and Owen thought Jack's hand must be getting pretty tired by now. He loitered after them around the hub like a puppy and it drove Owen mad to the point where he just wanted to yell at Jack to bugger off.
'At least I'd be allowed to do the laundry.'
'Do it. Just don't touch mine.' Having Ianto pawing through his smalls - especially dirty ones - was a bridge too far, even if Ianto regularly put up with the indignity of Owen's medical examinations, often close to or completely naked.
Ianto raised an eyebrow at him. 'Oh, and how many clean clothes have you got left after two weeks? Hmm?'
'Enough,' he lied. He would have gotten around to his laundry, er, eventually. He'd just been a bit busy, what with work and being tethered to one of his teammates and all.
Ianto gave a resigned huff. 'Well, most of it's on already, so you'll just have to lump it. Oh, and when was the last time you cleaned the filter on your tumble dryer? There was about two inches of fluff caked together. Jubilee could have marketed it as a new pizza. You know that's a fire hazard, don't you? And you don't have any proper powder for washing whites.'
Owen set his hands on his hips, having thought that he might be able to get used to having Ianto as a flatmate after all, but now remembering all the reasons why that was never going to happen. 'Anything else, mum? Going to cook me up some scrambled eggs and bacon while you're waiting for the spin cycle to finish?'
Ianto gave him a disparaging look. It was commendable that he could manage such a witheringly gaze in rumpled bedclothes and a burgundy hoodie that had the words "Full quid" splashed on the front. 'Get your own bloody breakfast. I'm not your maid.'
'And yet you are doing my laundry.'
'I'm doing mine, actually. Yours just happened to be an efficient use of my time since it was lying all over the place. It was a good way to get rid of it all.'
'Hey, I don't tell you how to organise your flat.' Owen gave the converted warehouse an appraising look. 'I happen to like shit lying around everywhere.'
Ianto rolled his eyes. 'And you wonder why you're still single.'
'Cause I've got a gay bloke sleeping in my bed, killing off any chance of me scoring a decent looking bird and bringing her home. That's why.'
'Why don't you make me breakfast, then? Least you can do for me doing your laundry and tidying up.'
'Isn't my not killing you enough thanks?' He was about to tell Ianto that he knew where the cereal boxes were kept when there was a knock at the door. Bloody hell. Who was knocking at this hour of the morning? He padded through the living room and reluctantly pulled it open.
Jack was standing on the other side, looking chipper and bright. 'Morning! It's Saturday and you know what that means?'
'I don't have to work? Or put up with you?' Owen quipped.
Jack ignored the comment. 'Raisin scrolls, coffee almost as good as Ianto's, and…' he elbowed his way past until he stood just a few inches in front of Ianto and leaned forward despite the tray of paper cups and bags of pasties clutched in each hand, '…slow sloppy Saturday morning kisses in bed.'
Ianto wrapped his arms around Jack's neck to keep him right where he wanted him, carrying on for what felt to Owen like an interminably long time. Possibly the kind of length that was meant to put him off on purpose.
'No bed unfortunately,' Ianto finally said, taking a cup from the cardboard tray and popping off the lid to inhale the contents before taking a sip. 'Always nice when you don't have to make it yourself,' he added. 'Like a mini holiday.'
'Extra hot so it'd still be good by the time I got here,' Jack replied. He turned to face Owen. 'And what's this about no bed?'
'It's my bed and you're not having it. Bad enough I've got Teaboy washing my smalls.' He'd said it before he could stop himself, realising that Jack would no doubt find some joke in there. With Jack, everything was about size.
'Not even for drinking coffee and reading the newspaper?'
'Is that what you're calling it these days?'
Jack frowned at Owen's assumptions. 'When the world isn't ending we still like to do the normal couple-y things like everyone else. It hasn't been easy living apart like this, y'know.'
'Oh, and it's been a real walk in the park for me, too.'
Ianto stepped in as arbiter before Owen could start on Jack and his endless assurances that nothing bad would happen if they tinkered with alien artefacts. 'You have your breakfast, we'll just close this door and have an hour without you. God knows I could do without having you hovering over my shoulder for five whole minutes.' He managed a little smirk. 'I'm sure the feeling is mutual.'
It was. Owen just decided to take the high moral ground for once and not openly agree. Ianto would only find a way to use it against him later. 'How's that fair, though? You crash at my place and it's me having to sit out here whilst you've got the sock on the doorknob?'
'The socks are all in the wash. And I promise to wash the sheets after we're done as well. They needed it but it was a little hard to steal them with you still sleeping on them.'
'Wash them?' Owen barked out a laugh. 'You'll have to bloody burn them before I'll be able to think about using them again.'
'Does that include the bed that goes with them? I've got nowhere else to be tonight,' Jack replied. 'And I have missed cuddling. In fact, the rift predictor suggests it'll be quiet all day. Lots of time for catching up.'
'And with the washing on that leaves me with a spare hour or two,' Ianto teased.
Owen sighed loudly, making sure his displeasure was known. 'And I have to listen to it all?'
Jack gave a shrug of his shoulders. 'That depends. How loud does your TV go?'
Ianto flushed at Jack's audacious comment. 'He won't make any noise, promise.'
'I can't make the same promise on Ianto's behalf. Sometimes he just cant help himself.'
'Are you trying to ruin your chances of Owen letting us have a moment?' He gave Owen puppy dog eyes. 'One hour. Please. It's this or you having to stand outside the broom cupboard at the hub. At least here you've got a nice cosy sofa to park yourself on.'
Owen huffed. Giving in felt like giving up a mile rather than an inch. At least before they'd both been equally miserable. He snatched the coffee out of Ianto's hand and took one of the pastry bags from Jack's clutches whilst he was at it. 'One hour.' How he'd enforce that he had no idea. It was almost worst to think about them coming out after they were done, all happy and glowing, parking themselves next to him on the sofa and continuing their canoodling right in front of him. 'Disappear before I change my mind.' They didn't wait for an engraved invitation.
Owen flipped the stereo on, twiddling the dial until he found some death metal band with no sense of musical or artistic flair whatsoever, then cranked it up.
The bedroom door opened a few inches and Jack poked his head out. 'You don't happen to have any whipped cream in a can in your fridge, do you?'
'Go!' Owen yelled.
'Okay, okay! It was just a question,' Jack said quickly shutting the door.
It opened again a second later, this time Ianto popping around the edge. 'Oh, and you're going to need some starch so I can iron my shirts once they're done. Can we go to the shops after?' he asked, not waiting for a reply before closing it again as a fist grabbed him by the hood of Owen's jumper, dragging him away.
Owen clawed at the device attached to his wrist. 'Get this bloody thing off me before I kill someone,' he muttered.