Half a dozen Rats were sat on every available surface in the tiny upstairs kitchen while James cooked, talking loud, coarse and vulgar. "Where's Mouse?" Loki asked Bobby without actually entering the room.
"Downstairs - hence why we all got booted up here. I wouldn't recommend going down there," she added as she crunched on a slice of the pepper James was slicing, "it's gotta be dead silent, or something. One of the girls slammed a door last night and now she's in fear of her life."
"Why?"
"Because Mouse is terrifying."
"No, why must it be silent?"
"We got a pest problem. Ironically." James slapped her hand away from the chopping board. "Mouse refused to put traps down, said she'd sort it."
"Joy," he muttered. "Don't eat all the food."
He reluctantly walked to the basement entrance, opened it without a sound and crept silently down the stairs, the closing of the door behind him muting the sounds of the Rats completely. Humans were by nature loud and cumbersome, especially to hypersensitive Jotunn ears, but the burrow was eerily quiet, save for someone's soft, deep breaths.
All the lights were switched off, but he could see regardless- Gwen had ripped up one of the floorboards in the kitchen, beneath which there was a gap about an arm's length deep filled with pipes and dust, some of which had been disturbed by crumbs of food. The woman herself was sat on the kitchen table with her legs crossed and body completely still; her eyes flicked over to him and she slowly lifted a finger to her lips, then patted the space next to her.
He sat down and moved his lips to her ear. "Why?" he whispered, and she shook her head a fraction of an inch, her fine hair tickling his nose. Guessing he wasn't going to get an answer any time soon, he mirrored her position and waited.
About an hour before dawn, scratching noises echoed around the kitchen and Gwen slipped off the table, her bare feet making near-inaudible slapping noises on the floor as she landed. A tawny-coloured mouse had scrambled into view and was cautiously nibbling at the food. After a couple of minutes it bolted, and Gwen grinned.
"It's a mum," she explained to him under her breath, "which means there's a litter, which means there's a runt."
"Doesn't your realm have places that sell animals?" he asked, as she dropped into the maze of plumbing.
"Yeah, but then I'd have to pay. Besides, I got an affinity for the wild abandoned ones." She disappeared into the floor and he heard a few clangs as she squirmed through the pipes, a yelp, then more of the former as she made her way back a few minutes later.
When she emerged, she was wearing a thick coat of dust and a victorious expression, as well as an exceedingly small and exceedingly ugly wrinkled pink thing in her bloodied hand.
"The mum bit me," she explained, "but I got off alright since I didn't touch the bigguns."
"I really don't care. Although you should probably clean the bite before you catch some feral disease and die horribly."
She deposited the kitten in her uninjured hand and turned on the tap, dousing her hand in soap before running it under the boiling water. "Turn the lights on, will you?"
He reached for the switch on the wall behind him and the kitchen flooded with light, only making her look more filthy: she was almost as bad as when he first met her. It was strange how his distaste had changed and grown from disdain and disgust into lust and love, despite the fact that his opinion of her had barely altered at all. He still thought she was vulgar and clever, annoying and fascinating.
"If you call it Algernon again, I'll have to put an end to our relationship," he informed her.
"But it's, like, the mouse name."
"No."
"Fine. But it's gonna be a name to piss you off." She poured a small amount of milk into a saucer, dabbed her finger in it and held it to the mouse to lick off. "Isn't it adorable?"
He raised an eyebrow at her. "What will you do about the rest?"
"Leave some super-longlasting biscuits down there to last 'em through the winter and board up the holes." She wiped her finger on her trousers, thus getting it covered in dirt again, and picked up the kitten with surprisingly gentle hands and wrapped it in an old shirt. "I'll have to stay awake and feed it every couple hours to make sure it survives, but... how's you, anyway? How's Gallifrey?"
"Wonderful, save for the infanticide-committing witches."
"Well, we can't have it all." She set down the mouse and approached him with a wicked grin on her filthy face.
"Don't touch me," he warned her, leaning back.
"But I love you," she crooned, holding out her hands.
"Gwen, I swear-" but he couldn't lift a finger as she very lovingly wiped her disgusting palms down his cheeks. Stupid bloody sentiment. "I hate you."
"I know. Peaches!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Peaches," she repeated, "like in The Amazing Maurice. I'll call it Peaches."
"That's a terrible name."
"I'm only doing it to piss you off. It's either that or I name it after you, Lejemand."
"Don't even think about it."
"It may look like an abomination now, my love, but give it a week and it'll be adorable. Just like me."
"Not exactly the word I'd use to describe you," he replied, "vicious, possibly. Mad, definitely."
"Sure you're not just describing yourself there?"
"It's why I love you," he said, "you remind me of myself."
"Oh, touché, my darling. Tou-bloody-ché."
A/N a small chapter. Mouse-sized, if you will.