There was a big difference between being sensitive and being sympathetic. And it amazed Owen sometimes just how often people tended to mix those two terms up. For instance, Owen considered himself very sensitive, especially when it came to other people's feelings. This skill had been helpful to Owen when he'd been a doctor; a proper doctor working in a proper hospital treating proper life forms that came from the planet Earth. Back then, he supposed he used his powers for Good. When he became a Torchwood employee, having to mainly dissect alien corpses and humans who'd died under dodgy alien-related circumstances, he couldn't be bothered to censor his behavior, just because he was saddled with this ability to read people. If anything, he liked to use his powers of observation to just make entertainment out of other people's lives.

And besides, if there was one thing Owen knew, it was that people were rather resilient. In this day and age when people could survive a heart transplant, no one was going to fall apart and die if someone trod on their feelings. Gwen seemed to behave as if one harsh word could lead to a person taking a swan dive off a building, but the medic knew better. Humans, for the most part, were tougher bastards.

But now having sort of survived a gunshot wound to the chest, he thought maybe it was time to try a new tactic when faced with hardship. Perhaps he could exercise compassion, patience and understanding again as he once did when he'd been a proper doctor. Look toward helping others and finding solutions when faced with problems rather than complaining or ditching the mess for others to deal with. Maybe he could try being decent again.

This was what Owen had told himself only this morning.

By the afternoon, he found himself trapped in section H of the Torchwood Three archives thanks to an unusually sensitive lockdown system. It was as if Fate was trying to test how serious he was about nudging that leaf over.

"Fuck!" Owen swore. "Fuck, fuck! This is utter shit! Why the bloody hell did Tosh program it like this?!"

"She didn't," Ianto answered, who with keeping his voice at a normal volume was doing a better job of keeping his frustrations in check. "The system's been in place 1903 when Torchwood salvaged tech from the Chula containment ship that allowed for automatic lockdown when the environmental air became contaminated with an unknown-"

"Ianto, if you know what's good for you, shut up," ordered Owen, darkly.

"It's your fault we're stuck here," snapped Ianto. "You want something from here, you ask! You don't just start opening up crates. It's a good thing you didn't actually open up anything hazardous."

"What's the point of having a lockdown system that a cough could trigger?" demanded Owen.

"You're not supposed to open a red crate without putting in the proper safety codes-"

"What's the point of having an archiving system if only one person can access it?" Owen cut in.

"I don't know, Owen," Ianto replied, coldly. "I've often wondered why we've even implemented a filing system since only one person here actually does any proper filing."

"Your system down here is useless. I swear it was better organized back before you got hired."

"Right," Ianto snorted, derisively. "I thought one could assume a medical degree meant you'd mastered the alphabet. First thing tomorrow I'll change everything back to the Leave It Where You Threw It system from before."

"At least I'd be able to find something for once," Owen grumbled.

The H section of Torchwood wasn't very large. It was all of ten paces in length and apart from the one crate that was now open and lying on its side, the narrow aisle in between the shelves was neatly cleared.

"How long 'til this area gets unlocked?" Owen wondered as he paced five of the ten paces.

Staying where he was, Ianto gingerly stood against one line of shelves, taking care not to actually lean on anything. "The system is set to scan the area every two hours to check if anything life form, microscopic or viral is still in the air. Once it doesn't detect anything, it'll automatically open."

"So two hours?"

"Er…no. It scans for anything alive before it does that."

Owen silently came to the conclusion that the Chula race had to be the most paranoid or idiotic species in the universe. "So all I need to do is kill you and I'm free?" he asked aloud. "From utter nightmare to dream come true."

Ianto gave him a glare that could have given Owen a second death.

"Tosh really needs to update this," Owen said, frustrated. "What's she here for if our tech stuff turns on us?"

If possible, Ianto's glare got frostier. "Yes, one should really speak to her about all those times she goes home to get those indulgent 4 hours of sleep a night."

Owen felt his mind automatically come up with a returning barb, only to find it stuck in his throat as he felt an unexpected twinge of guilt.

He had sussed it out after the first month at Torchwood that Tosh had a massive crush on him. He'd watched it grow into an infatuation and had made it a bit of a game to guess how long he could be around her, acting like an oblivious twat before she threw in the towel. So far, no towel throwing. Despite even walking dead status it seemed. She persevered in openly offering him emotional support, no strings.

And he was reciprocating by slagging off about her.

"Right," Owen muttered, sounding vaguely ashamed. He walked back to the turned over crate and sat down on it, suddenly finding great interest in the green crate that was just next near it.

A few minutes passed in silence.

"The lockdown will register on the systems upstairs," Ianto said after a bit, his tone less severe. "Someone will know to investigate."

Considering the hour, however, Owen was pretty certain that most of the team had gone home by now.

"Jack's still around," Ianto continued, as if reading Owen's thoughts. "He'll figure it out."

Owen wagered that even if he hadn't been gifted with sensitivity, he would have noted the slight hero worship in Ianto's tone.

The medic had also worked out long before Jack scuppered off to find his doctor that their fearless leader was shagging their resident tea boy and their arrangement had gone all lopsided, not so much in Ianto's favor. For a man who'd managed to hide one of the largest secrets ever underneath their feet for a half a year, Ianto was surprisingly crap at hiding his feelings when it came to Jack.

And obviously, no towel throwing there either.

"Let's hope he's not napping," Owen threw out mindlessly.

"Jack doesn't sleep all that much."

Owen snorted. "Bet you love that."

"Not really," said Ianto, purposefully skipping over what he knew Owen meant. "I wake up sometimes and find he's been watching me sleeping. It's a bit creepy."

"That sounds fucking very creepy, Ianto," was what Owen planned on saying.

But a part of him felt a bit treacherous. He remembered soon after Katie's wrongful diagnosis of Alzheimer's how he'd sometimes stay up hours just watching her sleep. Fearful that when morning came and she opened her eyes, she would look at him without a shred of recognition.

Not that Jack had to worry about something like that. Though Owen wondered if Jack was indulging himself in up close voyeurism for strange kicks or if he was thinking about how years from now everything next to him would be gone. He wondered if Ianto ever thought about that himself.

Suddenly the metaphorical leaf was tantalizingly waving in front of him. Heaving a silent sigh, Owen mentally reached out and turned it over. It's not like being nice was going to kill him. Again.

"That sounds…" Owen groped for an appropriate word, all the while summoning his dead face muscles into something resembling a smile. "Nice," he finally decided.

The look of confusion and horror on Ianto's face, like he'd just seen a Weevil wearing makeup, almost made the awkwardness worth it.

THE END