Title: Down To Your Level
By: Fighting Hand
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Ianto/Owen & Jack/Ianto/Owen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Owen meets the god of love.

***

Silently Ianto casts away his clothes. A few moments of unbuckling, unbuttoning, loosing the knot of his tie, and he will be ready for the journey to the pit where Jack never sleeps.

Not speaking during love is bad form, but somehow it's become their rule, after that first hot session of whispers in the dim blue light of what Ianto thinks of as Jack's cell. Tonight they will barely say a word to each other, not even each other's names, and it will go on forever and it will be achingly too brief and then Ianto will climb up and out again, and buckle and button and tie, and go home.

He kneels by the edge of the pit, looking down into the blue darkness. Jack is not there. It's not the first time he's had to wait. Ianto doesn't mind.

He climbs down into the niche in the floor and sits on the bed, cross-legged, softly naked. The blue light comes from the CCTV monitor, Jack's nightlight.

With a shock that makes Ianto involuntarily cover his sex with a hand, he sees Doctor Harper enter from the stairwell. Owen is in his street clothes, absently chomping a pen as though it's a cigar. He heads straight for his workstation.

Half a dozen explanations for Owen's presence run through Ianto's mind. If Jack has invited their resident idiot savant, they _will_ have something to talk about. Most likely, though, Owen is working overtime on something he wants to impress the rest of them with.

Ianto lies on the bed, propping his head up with a hand, watching Owen working on his computer. He's just considering patching in to Owen's screen, seeing what he's up to, when all the lights go out.

The screen flickers like an old television, then comes back on. Owen has jumped to his feet in fright and knocked over his ergonomic chair.

Behind him stands an immense figure, easily eight feet tall. Owen slowly turns to look up at it.

Owen says something, just out of Ianto's earshot. He inches up the volume control on Jack's monitor.

'... the fuck,' he catches Owen repeating.

The creature isn't human, though it wears a humanoid shape. It seems lit from inside. It's plumaged. Great long feathers rise from its shoulders, dangle from its wrists, spray upwards from its head. Ianto pulls up just that one camera and forces it to display in colour. The thing is green and purple, gold and blue, iridescent. It shrugs its shoulders, and the whole shape of it gleams with iridescent waves.

Owen whips his gun out of its holster, but the creature doesn't seem impressed. Ianto cannot make out its face from this angle, but unless he's mistaken it's a bird-face, he can see a shining beak, hooked like the beak of a raptor.

Ianto's own gun is overhead, at the edge of the pit, with his clothes. He makes the decision to stay put and watch for as long as possible. Gather intelligence. Keep the element of surprise.

The creature speaks, and Owen, tiny before the figure, seems to cringe down with the weight of its voice.

'I'm the god of love,' it caws icily. 'I'm the pleasure god, and you've invoked me, Owen Harper.'

'Uh,' says Owen. 'Uh, I don't think I _did_.'

'Look at me,' says the god of love. It raises an arm, and Owen follows the movement, as though hypnotised. The figure is male, Ianto can see now. As male and gorgeous as a peacock, as some ancient warrior covered in ornaments. The arm is powerfully muscled, arm used to hefting the weight of a weapon or of holding a struggling enemy in an unbreakable grasp. Ianto can see the shape of a hard hip, the skin brushed with gold dust, above a cluster of electric green feathers.

'Is this a joke?' says Owen, but the laugh in his voice isn't convincing. 'Somebody's little prank?'

'You know it isn't,' says the figure. 'From the moment you took your gun out, you knew it wasn't.'

'I don't know what you are,' says Owen, starting to back away, 'but I don't believe in gods, or demons.' He almost trips over a box of spare parts on the floor, but catches himself. 'I do however believe in projectile weapons, so I strongly suggest you _stay_ where you _are_.'

'I'm not here to hurt you, Owen Harper,' says the god-creature, undeterred. 'I'm here because you called me here. You summoned me the night you made love to a woman and then to her man. That's a rare act. An act of power. I couldn't help but notice.'

Owen startles, as though suddenly catching what the creature's talking about. 'Everyone had a good time,' he says carefully. 'A great time, actually.'

'Oh yes,' says the god-thing. Its feathers shimmer. 'You taught them things they would never have guessed.'

'I may have shown them a thing or two,' says Owen cockily.

'Things they would never have known about themselves,' says the god-peacock.

'This is something to do with the spray, isn't it? Some kind of after-effect. Hallucinations, or something.'

The god of love laughs. 'If I'm only a hallucination, what's the gun for?'

'What do you want!' Owen shouts. 'They didn't do anything they didn't want to do! Most of it was her idea!'

'That was what she found out,' says the creature. It bows its head a little towards the small figure in front of it, the long feathers reaching out towards him. 'She found out just how far she could go. Now she's not sure how low she's sunk. _Don't try to run because you won't get away._' The thing suddenly snaps at him.

'You're the alien,' says Owen thickly. His gun arm is coming down. 'You must be the alien - the one the spray belongs to.'

'You can feel it, can't you?' says the creature. It steps towards him, graceful and immense. 'The pleasure god is here for you, Owen Harper, and you won't run from him.'

'You can have it back.' Owen is almost pleading. 'I can get it for you. No problems. It's right here in the Hub in the lockup. It'd only take a minute.'

'That was what her man discovered,' the god-thing caws. 'The he wouldn't run. Now he's not sure whether he's a man at all.'

The creature's arm comes up a little, and Owen is staring at whatever it has in its hand. 'Oh don't,' he squeaks. 'Don't do that. You don't have to use that. _Please._' The gun drops out of his nerveless fingers.

'Don't be afraid, Owen Harper,' says the god of love. 'I won't make you do anything you don't want to.'

There's a sudden golden glow, and Owen is suddenly sitting down on the edge of the desk behind him, looking as though he's melted, his jaw slack, his face tilted up to look into the god-thing's eyes.

The god-thing stalks towards him, raising its arms, and Ianto can no longer see Owen on the screen. It's time. He climbs up out of the pit, mouse-silent, and plucks his holster out of the tidy pile of his clothes. This is no time for modesty.

But by the time he looks up, the god of pleasure has gone.

Owen is still sitting on the desk. His hands are up behind his head - Ianto sees they are tied in place, plastic cuffs by the look of it. Owen is fully dressed. His eyes are closed and his teeth are a little gritted. He is writhing, twisting at the restraints. Ianto can't help but see that Owen has a painfully strong erection.

'Oh _God_,' Owen cries out, 'come back! Don't leave - come back!'

From somewhere, Ianto hears the pleasure god's laughter, like someone shaking a tambourine.

'Oh, _Jesus_!' Owen's hips buck and his thighs twist, but there's nothing can can do. He will be riding the power of that alien spray until morning.

Ianto creeps back to the edge of the pit, reholsters his gun, and slips back down into the blue darkness. On the monitor he can still see Owen wriggling and cursing.

Only a few minutes later the god of love slides down beside Ianto, now just as naked, his body brushed with sparkling gold. He grins and puts a finger to his lips and Ianto sees that his eyes are highlighted with glittering green and purple powder.

Wordlessly, Jack reaches out and snaps off the monitor screen and they're in darkness.

***