38
The rain had started early in the morning and by lunchtime there was a very unhappy little girl chewing thoughtfully at her sandwich.
This was sandwich number two, sandwich number one was being eaten by Andy to show solidarity.
Apparently cutting a sandwich into little squares is inappropriate and each triangle was carefully scrutinized before popping into a little mouth that was so much like Rhys'.
Martha couldn't apologize anymore, so she had decided to clean the oven, gaining a quip form Mickey about it not being gas.
Ianto had eaten little, complaining about a tummy ache due to the baby and Jack had scurried him off to bed with the promise of a 'belly massage' that they were all sure must be some code word for sex.
Jack was true to his word and soon they could hear the soft moans of delight as Jack 'saw to his fella' and if anyone had bothered to peek they would have seen Ianto laying spread-eagled in his back and Jack straddled his legs, rubbing lotion onto the bump and crooning soft loving words to stop the threat of stretch marks.
Jack could feel the baby moving under his hands and he leaned over the now prominent bump to gently kiss and nuzzle as he gently scolded his child for giving poor Taddy backache.
Ianto's fingers in his hair gently coaxed him up for kisses and a cuddle too, both men lying with as much touching as possible while just enjoying being together.
No.
There was no sex, none was needed as Jack filled Ianto with love just from his words and affections.
Ianto blamed the hormones as a tear or two escaped, kissed away as Jack cradled him and they snoozed, unaware of the rest of the house's unease.
Andy felt a spike of jealousy and claimed an aching back due to the weather, rolling to the bedroom to snooze the food away. He wondered if one day Rhys might be comfortable showing such open affection and then swallowed it down as that voice whispered that he was not worth the embarrassment to Rhys.
That left Rhys and Mickey watching the little girl finish her drink and then sigh with her head hitting the table.
"You know what we need?" Mickey asked.
Rhys raised his eyebrows.
"DVDs" Mickey said with glee, "I vote we got get some movies and blob!"
Anwen's head shot up and she looked imploringly at her father, the promise of a ride in the car plus the DVD store that had cool stuff to play in while the grown-ups chose their movies way too good to pass up.
"I don't know" Rhys frowned softly, "Do you think it's safe?"
"It's been a week since she left the house, she's going crazy with cabin fever" Mickey pointed out, "We take a green car, swap for the red and watch how we go. A good exercise if anything else. She can't stay here forever, she has to learn how to act if we ever bug out or whatever."
"God, you're right" Rhys sighed and Mickey scribbled a note telling the others where they were, then grabbed the keys as they headed out.
Anwen was so excited she was skipping.
The store was a familiar place and she was soon deep in the ball pit with another little girl who had a ponytail like her, their giggles filling the quiet store as Rhys and Mickey pursued the Action shelves.
Anwen had missed playing with someone and they were soon both puling their coats off to dive and swim in the little multi-coloured balls.
There were other stores but this one had Rhys' membership on file, something Jack would have immediately pointed out was not good but the men were unaware of the full force of Torchwood's search engines and alert systems.
As soon as Rhys walked in and was pinged by the facial recognition software, it was all over rover.
They had three DVDs chosen to more for the special offer when a puff had them both looking over to find a smoke grenade sitting innocently in the middle of the isle.
"Fuck" Mickey kicked it without a second thought, sending it over the counter and into the staff area as Rhys ran for his daughter, finding men already at the ball pit and he could only scream with rage as they turned with a wriggling child in their arms and exited the store.
"ANWEN!" he screamed.
"Tada" a small voice said and he looked down, finding his daughter covered by the balls, hiding in the corner of the pit, only her left hand visible as she clutched the edge of the pit.
Oh god, they had the wrong child.