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Title: Needing leverage
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Owen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,886 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 180 - Lever
Summary: Excitement over Tosh and Owen's new discovery ends abruptly

Moving house was hard work. It was even harder work when it meant consolidating two sets of apartment furniture into one. Agreeing to move into a new place with Owen had been exciting, and also practical, since half his stuff was at Tosh's flat and half of hers was at his - just never the right half that always coordinated with the half left at home. Finding a place that suited them was easy. Spacious, but not too big, close to work, bay views optional. The third flat they inspected fit the bill just nicely.

The troubles had started when they'd packed up everything from their constituent residences and tried to make it fit together. Several mornings they'd arrived at the hub not speaking to one another on account of a row over furniture choices. Owen's wall art clashed with Tosh's sofa; Tosh's microwave, though better quality, was not going to fit the space as well as Owen's would. Who's bed was more comfortable?

Curious as to how to end the endless raft of stalemates, Tosh asked the others how they'd managed it. Gwen of course, said that she and Rhys had moved in not long after they'd first met, and neither of them had much furniture, having roomed with several other friends from uni. Jack and Ianto were equally unhelpful. Jack's minimal chattels stayed where they were in his bunker, for nights when they didn't make it home. 'I just let Ianto keep everything. It was nice enough, and anything he didn't want to keep we bought brand new.'

Having finally come to a compromise, which was long and drawn out on account of their limited free time to dedicate to the task, they breathed a sigh of relief to finally be able to spend their first weekend in their new home, fully furnished.

With a few hours up their sleeve, they began giving the house a proper once over. Tosh was busy changing her mind about which cupboards should house their cups and plates, and which the pots and pans, whilst Owen was upstairs, checking that the hinges on the windows weren't stuck hard, and fixing squeaking doors.

'Hey, Tosh!' she heard him call down to her.

'What is it?'

'Come see.'

She trotted up the stairs to find Owen standing halfway down the hall that lead to a room which was designated as a study, but for them would be a mini hub. He was staring up at the ceiling.

'Looks like we've got ourselves an attic.'

She looked up, seeing the square door. 'How did we not notice that before?'

'Who knows?' Owen shrugged. 'There's a tall roof, so someone must've thought it was handy extra space.'

Owen returned a few minutes later with a chair from the study and propped it underneath the opening, clambering on top to push up on the door, sliding it back, poking his head through the gap.

'It's big,' he said. 'Hand us that torch.'

Tosh passed him the flashlight and he shone it around the space.

'There's stuff up here.'

'What kind of stuff?'

'Boxes.'

He climbed all the way up into the attic and instructed Tosh to follow him. She hoped there weren't spiders up there, before remembering that she dealt with weevils for a living.

Owen wasn't wrong, the space in the attic was lofty, the tall roof making it five foot at its peak, before sloping back down towards the floor. Owen's torch cast a dim light over a pile of boxes not far from the attic door.

'Do you think maybe the last tenants forgot to take them when they moved out?' she asked.

'That or they left them here because the didn't want them,' Owen replied.

As he went over to pull the top open from the first box, there was a squeak and a small creature flashed past Tosh in the commotion. She squealed and stumbled backwards, but Owen grabbed her before she could back up far enough to tumble out of the attic door. There was a loud thud and the room got immediately darker.

'What was that?' Owen asked.

'A rat. I hate rats,' Tosh moaned.

'No, the other noise.'

'Oh,' she turned around, trying to figure out what she'd tripped back on when she'd been startled. Right behind her was the attic door, only instead of sitting ajar, letting the light from the first floor up into the space, it was flush back in its hole.

'I must have kicked it shut when I stepped back,' she said.

'Right, well this lot can wait until we get some rat traps up here to get rid of our pest problem. Whatever is in the boxes will just have to be rodent food for a few more days.'

Owen knelt by the trap door and went to lift it back up out of its slot so he could slide it open, but the gap was narrow, and he couldn't get his fingers in to lift it.

'D'you wanna try lifting it up?' he asked. 'Your hands are smaller than mine.'

Tosh tried fitting her fingertips in beside the edge, but the door was tightly wedged in, perfectly flush.

'I can't get a grip.'

Owen scrambled around the other side, trying to press down on it, to push the other side up just a little so Tosh could get her fingers under it, but it was no use.

'Bollocks,' he muttered.

'Oh God, don't tell me we're stuck up here.'

'It's fine,' Owen said. 'Much as I hate it, we'll just call Jack and get him to come get us out. Or Ianto. In fact, make it Ianto. He'll at least be less smug about it.'

'You've got your phone?' she asked.

'No, I thought you did.'

'Mine's still in the kitchen.'

'And mine's in the bedroom. Bugger! So now what?'

'We need something thin to be able to slot into the gap and use it as a lever to prise open the door.'

'Let's see if there's anything in those boxes. Hopefully it's not just a pile of old blankets.'

Owen shone the torch over the box as Tosh opened it up, inspecting the contents, rifling through them and pulling items out. It was like a yard sale - a small table lamp, a battered metal teapot, some disused crockery, which Tosh could just make out the faded white geese which had once proudly adorned them. Another box was indeed full of old blankets and towels, threadbare duvet covers and flannel sheets, but nothing useful to their current predicament. The third box she opened was full to the brim with toys: a bucket and spade for the beach, a set of plastic quoits, wooden puzzles, and more.

'Aw, look at this, Owen,' she said, holding a toy rabbit up. It's fur was worn and it wore a paisley yellow frock, as she stroked its large ears. 'Who'd ever want to throw something like this away?'

Owen squinted at the sad toy. Tosh had a soft spot for them. Her bed at her flat had a couple of permanent residents that nestled in amongst the cushions, too precious to get rid of. Since they'd moved in, she'd relegated them to a drawer in the cupboard, but he knew that it was with a certain amount of regret that she'd done it. She didn't want him ragging on her about having toys on their bed. Instead he just shrugged.

'Unless it's going to get us out of here, it's probably not much use.'

Tosh continued to paw through the box, as Owen's torch began to struggle, the battery fading and flickering.

Underneath all of the soft toys was a cache of children's books, which Tosh set on the floor in a pile to get to the very bottom of the box. Owen picked up the top book.

'Hey, I remember these.'

Tosh looked at him. 'I didn't take you for a book reader.'

'Wasn't. Not really. But my brother and I used to pretend we were the Famous Five, having adventures, only ours were in the city rather than the country.'

He caught the brief smile that ghosted across Tosh's face at the thought of him pretending to be Dick, capturing criminals and getting into trouble. Then the torch went out.

'Dammit,' he said, hitting it with the heel of his palm, trying to get it to flicker just a while longer. It burned dully for another minute or so, before finally giving up.

'Well that's just great. Stupid house. We should've just stayed at the hub.'

'There's still one more box here,' Tosh said, fingering the top fold to get it open.

'Fat lot of good that does us in the dark,' he moaned.

Tosh began to roam around in the box, pulling things out and feeling them with her hand to figure out what they were. There was something that felt like a clutch bag, a big plastic box with a lid and inside a bunch of small round plastic tubes, which she guessed might be a set of hair rollers. There were a couple of pairs of shoes, and then she found a mirror and a brush. Perhaps if there was a matching comb, it might be slim enough to fit inside the gap in the door. She rifled further, searching for the comb when her hand brushed something else long and flat. She pulled it out and ran her hand across it.

'Eureka,' she said.

'What is it?'

'I think it's a shoe horn,' she replied, feeling the length of it.

She heard Owen scoff. 'Who has a shoe horn these days?'

'Probably why it was in the box,' she said, 'but who's complaining?'

She crawled across the attic floor, receiving a yelp of pain when she accidentally crawled over Owen's hand.

'Ow. Flipping heck, Tosh!'

'Sorry, it's pitch black up here,' she apologised, hands roaming for the trap door which she was sure couldn't be far away. She only hoped that her rodent friend had decided to go and hide, or she was going to test out the effectiveness of a shoe horn as a defensive weapon. Feeling the familiar square edge, she aimed the end of the horn into the narrow gap. It fitted perfectly, allowing her to lever it upwards, and chuckling out a laugh of relief when the light cracked through the small gap from below them. Owen quickly slipped his hand under it and pushed it back across the floor opening the hatch fully so that he could climb down. He reached up and helped Tosh down.

'Well, there you go,' he said. 'Team Torchwood completes another successful mission.'

'I didn't see you helping out much,' she joked.

'I had the torch,' he protested.

'For all the good that did us.'

'Yeah, well, I wasn't the one who got us trapped up there in the first place.'

'Oh, so now it's my fault?'

'I didn't say that, I just meant, well, it was a contributing factor.'

Tosh put her hands on her hips. This moving in together business was harder than it looked. If Torchwood didn't kill them, they might just kill each other.

'Well, I hope you like the new sofa,' she replied. 'You'll be spending your first night on it.'