Author's Note: This was intended to be a counter-part to "Slices of Monogamy", but it grew a bit big for its britches. What was going to be 5 flashes has turned into 7 segments looking at over 20 years of Torchwood's future. Conceived and begun before Series 2 started airing, "Bits of Bliss" is now AU as it (obviously) does not reflect certain events in newly revealed canon. In addition, two of the five flashes have further been divided into something akin to a "his" and "hers".

- - - - -
I. Family Obligations:
A. Weddings
- - - - -

Late Spring, 2008

"Gwen, there you are! I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost." Sioned Cooper smiled and waved at her older sister with the hand not holding a spool of white ribbon. "Come on in and grab a roll. Bit of confusion in the scheduling, so they only let us in an hour ago instead of at noon. Have to get all of the decorations sorted before we can get anything else done. Did you get your dress?"

Gwen blinked at the rapid-fire greeting. "Picked it up on the way over." She shrugged out of her jacket and purse and set them on the nearest pew before giving her sister a hug. "Sorry I'm late."

"Don't apologize, I'm just glad you got here. I know I said that all you had to do was show up for the wedding and wear the right dress, but things have gotten crazy tonight and we can use all the help we can get." Sioned pulled away and grabbed a plastic bag full of pre-tied bows, shoving them into Gwen's arms and turning to point at the far corner of the room. "Daniel's already over there with the ladder, I'm sure he'll be glad of the help. Mark's mother is coordinating, so check with her if you have any questions. Mam's off talking to the florist, I'll tell her you're here when she gets back. Thanks again for coming early. We'll do the procession rehearsal in two hours when the minister gets here. Ta!"

Sioned turned and was halfway down the aisle before Gwen had even managed to form a thought, never mind an objection. If she hadn't known better, she'd have sworn that her sister had been speaking a foreign language. With a sigh, Gwen adjusted her armload of decorations. She might be tired, but it was only one evening. There were worse things than spending a few hours hanging decorations and getting a free meal out of it. She could smile and make small talk without offending anyone. Especially if Aunt Carys wasn't showing up until the morning.

Daniel was attractive, outgoing, and athletically inclined. He was also single, available, and persistent. Gwen would have appreciated his attention a lot more had she not been emphatically off the market. It was almost enough to convince her to just tell her family and be done with it. Almost. She wanted to get them used to Owen before she broke the big news. Preferably over the course of several years.

Gwen gave up on getting her point of not interested through Daniel's markedly thick skull after the first hour, short of telling him she was married (and seeing as he was the groom's best friend, no way that secret stayed quiet for any length of time) the man was apparently unable to take a hint. Her only consolation was that he made for good eye candy, and that his attempts at flirting grew more creative as the evening wore on, and were interspersed with genuine conversation. At least it passed the time.

"So, what do you do in your spare time?"

"Spare time?" Gwen asked absently as she stretched to place the second-to-last bow.

"Yeah, you know, that thing after work and before sleep?"

She climbed down a few rungs, and then hopped off and landed next to him. "Don't know. Been a while since I had much of that."

"Workaholic, eh?"

She cocked her head to the side, studying him. "I guess you could say that. What about you?"

He shrugged, steadying the ladder as she climbed up to place the final bow. "I'm a solicitor, what can I say? Making partner by thirty didn't exactly come without sacrifices."

As she descended, Gwen paused on the bottom rung to look him in the eye. "I'm going to give you a piece of advice, because I don't know what my sister told you, but you don't want to date me. Cut back on your hours and find yourself a nice girl. You'll enjoy your life a whole hell of a lot more." She stepped down and pulled the ladder closed. "I'm not that kind of a nice girl."

Daniel raised an eyebrow as he watched her walk away. "You never know..."

--...--...--

The next morning, Gwen woke up to the smell of coffee and a hangover she didn't remember deserving. Owen appeared in the doorway a moment later, mug in hand. "Morning, Sweet Cheeks. Sleep well?"

She groaned and lobbed a pillow at him before closing her eyes again.

"Still touchy about the nickname, eh?" She didn't have to bother opening her eyes to know he was smirking.

"Owen, for the love of God, how are you this chipper at..." She rolled over and forced her eyes to open so she could read the bedside clock. "Half-ten??" She sat up, suddenly wide awake. "You let me sleep until half-ten?? We have to be at the church in an hour!"

"Oh, come off it." His tone was soft, despite his words, as he took the few necessary steps to reach the bedside and hand her the mug. "It'll take you all of ten minutes to shower. That gives you twenty minutes to dress and have a coffee, and we still get there early. So drink."

She did, and let out a quiet moan of pleasure. She took another sip, and narrowed her eyes in suspicion. There was no way Owen had made coffee this good. Only Ianto made coffee this good, but that would mean... "Owen...Not to complain, exactly, but where did you get this coffee?"

Even if his face gave nothing away, his emotions did. "You didn't!" Owen reached down and took the now-empty mug from her. "You did! Owen, I thought we agreed you were going to come with me today. Remember?"

Owen remembered. Gwen had spent the better part of a week giving him the cold shoulder, both mentally and physically. While the make-up shag had been incredible, he didn't fancy enduring the lead-in again any time soon. "Don't get your knickers in a twist. I called in a favour with Ianto, that's all. Thought you could use it, especially with how you looked when you got in last night."

She winced. "That bad?"

"Worse. You get something for the headache after your shower, but not until that coffee's had a chance to settle. Meanwhile, I'm going to try not to burn toast. No promises." With that, he disappeared into the hallway and left her to her own devices.

--...--...--

By the time the wedding itself happened, Gwen was so anxious she was giving Owen the jitters, and they weren't even in the same room. He had no idea what went on in the female half of wedding preparations, but he couldn't believe that all of it was responsible for Gwen's emotional state. She was angry and nervous in fits and starts, with a strong dose of general frustration about the edges. She hadn't been this upset when she'd met his family, and they knew about the marriage.

As always happens, there were minor catastrophes. The flower girl went running for her mother halfway through the procession, and the videographer had a technical glitch in the midst of the exchange of rings, but nothing that would leave lasting emotional damage. The two incidents did nothing to settle Gwen's nerves, however. Had it been any other situation, Owen might have filed it away to tease her with later, but not this time. This was one of those things that he knew they'd never have, something which he knew she'd wanted before Torchwood had entered her life and stolen away everything she thought she knew.

He hoped that wasn't what this was about, but regret surfaced at odd times for all of them. As the thought occurred to him, he found himself wishing that he hadn't blown her off when she'd first asked, turning it into a fight that had nothing to do with the actual wedding. Gwen talked about her family less than he did about his, and that was saying something.

--...--...--

Gwen shifted uncomfortably in her shoes, wishing that Sioned hadn't insisted on 4-inch heels for her vertically challenged maid of honour. She glanced down the aisle, trying to gauge how much longer she had before she could kiss her sister and escape to the relief of a pair of flats currently resting in the boot of Owen's car. Her smile grew more genuine as she noticed Owen politely shaking hands with Mark, but froze as he turned toward her with a smirk. She recognized that smirk; it was the same smirk he got before starting something which always landed them in some kind of trouble. The kind of trouble which ended up with her feeling all of six years old and being scolded for breaking her mother's vase.

When he stopped in front of her and extended a hand, she felt a spike of desire warm her cheeks, but before she could warn him not to even think about it, he was kissing her as if his life depended on it. She struggled for a moment before giving in, knowing that this was going to blow up in their faces but too far gone to care. When he let her up, she smacked him in the shoulder just hard enough to sting and tried to ignore the blush that she knew had crept up her cheeks. "You wanker."

He grinned and shrugged before turning away, nodding to her parents before stepping out the front doors. She sobered as she realized that both her parents and her sister were staring at her expectantly. "What? He's my flatmate, that's all. He's just having a laugh."

Her mother nodded slowly, and turned back to her conversation with Mark's mother. Her father shot her a speculative glance, but said nothing either. Gwen tried to start plotting Owen's untimely demise, but it was half-hearted at best. Unconventional methods or not, he'd managed what nothing else had that morning – he'd forced her to relax. Shooting another glance down the line of guests, Gwen suppressed a groan as she saw her Aunt Carys approaching. She was never doing this again.

--...--...--

The drive to the reception was short, and Gwen spent the time rubbing her feet and making a mental list of relatives to avoid in the coming hours. Luckily, if her family stayed true to form, they'd be doing just as much of the avoiding as she was. After they had parked, she reached down to undo her seat belt only for Owen to catch her hand and clasp it firmly. She looked up, and found an unusually serious expression on his face. She opened her mouth to ask, but he shook his head and she closed it again. It was a long moment before he spoke.

"I know I shouldn't ask this, because it's stupid and pointless and probably clinically insane, but-"

"Owen, for God's sake, just spit it out."

"Did you want this? Do you want this?"

She blinked. "This?"

He gestured with his free hand. "The dress, the church, the family shit, all of it. Do you wish you'd had it?"

She laughed, but sobered quickly as his reaction rippled through their bond. "Wait, you're serious, aren't you?"

"Guess I am, yeah."

"Then, speaking seriously, no. The ta-do is all fine and good, but it's not us, it's not me. Certainly not any more, and maybe it never really was. Knowing my family, if I'd married Rhys I'd have had a wedding half this size, with two bride's maids and a honeymoon in Swansea. If I'd married you like this, first, it wouldn't have happened. And second, even if it had, the rift would probably have opened up right in the middle of it and we'd have had to Retcon the whole guest-list. Neither options seems terribly appealing."

"When you put it that way, I rather like our version as well." As he relaxed, she realized just how tense he'd been as he waited for her answer. "Right, that's sorted. Next time you get into a fight with my mum, I want you to remember that this is me being supportive. Shall we?"

Gwen was halfway out of the car before she realized the inequality in his statement. "But I like your mum!"

--...--...--

Owen made it two hours into the reception riding on small talk and polite smiles before Gwen's father managed to corner him by the bar. He'd known the conversation was coming ever since he'd kissed her in the church, and some part of him just wanted it over and done with. It had been a long time since Owen had met the parents, not since Jenny, back before he joined Torchwood (and hadn't that turned out well).

One thing Owen could respect about Gwen's father was that he didn't bother wasting time on idle pleasantries. "I'm not stupid, Owen. If you're living with Gwen, and she brought you to her sister's wedding, then you're more than just flatmates. As her father, I'd like to cover my bases, get the unpleasantness over at the outset and move on to better things. So, are you interested in marriage?"

Owen shrugged and sipped his drink, wishing not for the first time that afternoon that he wasn't the one driving them home that evening. "Might do."

Her father nodded. "What about kids?"

Owen coughed as a sip of beer went down the wrong way.

Mr. Cooper raised an eyebrow, making a face that he probably considered intimidating. For Owen, who had faced down Jack Harkness in full snit (never mind Janet), it wasn't all that impressive. "I take it that's a no."

Owen shrugged, quickly regaining his equilibrium. He should have been expecting this, but he'd really thought that he'd have another meeting or two before the truly awkward questions started surfacing. Meetings which, if he had his say, would probably happen around the time the sun exploded. "They're just not in the picture. Life is what it is, yeah?"

"Have you talked to Gwen about that?"

"Oh, yeah, course. That kind of thing? No problem." He paused, taking a contemplative sip of his drink. "Now, hardwood versus tile in the kitchen? That's a bit trickier." He smirked at the long-standing joke, which wasn't all that funny in retrospect. Tosh and Gwen had gotten downright militant about kitchen décor for a while there.

Mr. Cooper wasn't amused. "I'm trying to be serious here, Owen."

Owen straightened to his full height, done with playing nice as the irritation buzzing at the edges of his consciousness grew worse. "That's Doctor Harper to you, and so am I. Gwen may be a right bleeding heart some days, but she's not bloody stupid. She's a big girl, big enough to make her own decisions. Gwen and I work a dangerous job, Mr. Cooper. Kids aren't in the plans; that's something we both accept. We've made our peace with it, and you'd do well to do the same." He glanced around the room, trying to pick Gwen out of the crowd. "Gwen and me, what we have, it works for us. Now, you may not be able to understand it, and I don't expect you to, but you're her father. You should damn well be willing to respect it."

"You seem rather comfortable speaking for my daughter, Doctor Harper."

Owen shrugged, and tossed back the last of his drink. "What can I say; I'm just special that way." Owen's gaze settled on a table on the far side of the dance floor where Gwen and her mother were speaking quietly. There she was. "And if you'll excuse me, I need to go keep Gwen from killing her mother."

--...--...--

"I hardly think this is the place for this, Mam."

"Well, it's going to be. You didn't come home for Christmas. Or your birthday. Or your father's birthday. Or Easter. You've broken it off with Rhys, which I still say is a bad idea, moved in with a strange man, a Londoner, who you refuse to tell me about, and you're never home. Andy doesn't know what's happened to you, none of your old friends see you anymore, what am I supposed to think?"

"You can think that I got a new job and some things changed. You can think that maybe I don't ring the girls from uni anymore. You can think that I decided to stop dating for a while after things with Rhys fell apart. You could even think that I decided to move in with a bloke from work because it was easier than finding a new flat of my own and he had the space. Pick one."

"I'm not blind, Gwen. Owen's more than just your flatmate. And if you think a british bloke like that's going do you better than Rhys, you're sadly mistaken. I've got a good bit more experience than you, Gwen, and if you had any sense at all, you'd listen to what I'm saying."

"And what exactly are you saying? That I'm better off with a man who cheats on me in my own flat than I am with someone who doesn't think I hung the moon? Who doesn't think kids and an aspidistra are the be all and end all? That at twenty-eight I'm not capable of making my own decisions?"

"I'm not saying that, Gwen. I just-"

Owen's arrival cut Anwen off before she could finish the thought. "Gwen! There you are. Jack made rather a number of threats to my person if I did not take you for at least one turn around the dance floor, so shall we?"

"Right, of course." Gwen was already standing up and turning toward the dance floor, grateful for the rescue and unable to bring herself to feel guilty for leaving the conversation with her mother unfinished. She'd said what she had to say, her mother could take it or leave it. "Can't have your lazy arse mucking the cells for the next month, now can we?"

--...--...--

"Gwen, are you in here?"

Gwen sighed as her sister's voice echoed in the ladies' room, and stepped out of her corner. Busted. "What do you need, Sioned?"

"I'm tossing the bouquet, and I didn't want you to miss it." Sioned looked so earnest that Gwen didn't have the heart to tell her that the bouquet toss was the whole reason she was hiding in the first place. It had always been one of the worst parts of the wedding when Gwen's friends had gotten married. She didn't like being singled out as, well, single. Now that she was married, whether her family knew about it or not (and given her mother's reaction to the implication that Gwen was dating Owen, it was going to be a while before they found out she'd married him), she saw no need to put herself through the humiliation.

Except it was Sioned's wedding, the one she'd been planning since they'd been children. And whether or not she got along with her sister the rest of the time – and strategic avoidance was highly underrated as an artform – Gwen couldn't bring herself to put a damper on Sioned's enthusiasm with any of the excuses she had planned on using if discovered. "Of course not, I hadn't realized it had gotten so late."

As the women to either side of her jockeyed for position in a manner a little too much like a pack of weevils for Gwen's piece of mind, she began to edge her way toward the left side of the crowd, getting as far from the proverbial line of fire as possible. Just because she'd agreed to stand there, it didn't mean she had to try to catch the damn thing. She glanced around, looking for Owen to make sure that he wasn't recording this particular moment for posterity's sake. He was standing by the bar, smirking at her from a distance as he ordered what she desperately hoped was a double whiskey with her name on it. An increase in volume from the crowd around her caused her to turn back toward her sister, only to be hit in the face by something white and mostly-floral.

She caught it instinctively as it fell, and for a long moment all she could think was 'Thank God it's not roses.' Then reality kicked in, and she looked up to find a sheepish expression on Sioned's face, only partially obscured by the hand covering her mouth in surprise. She could hear Owen in the background, having what sounded like a bad coughing fit. God, she was never going to live this down.

Gwen smiled as sweetly as she could and glanced over at Owen to confirm that yes, he really was laughing himself sick back there. She turned her attention back to her sister. "Well, I can honestly say: I never saw this coming." There was polite laughter, and she nodded in acknowledgement. "Now, I seem to remember something about a garter...?"

She could feel the abrupt shift Owen's attitude, and smirked as she made her way back to their table. Just as she sat down, however, her phone rang. She cursed quietly as she dug through her purse until she found it, annoyed that she hadn't remembered to silence the damn thing.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry to have to pull you in, but we've got a situation."

"Right. Twenty minutes."

"We'll be waiting."

She ended the call and shoved the phone back into her purse. Owen was at her side before she'd managed to get it closed. "Jack?"

"Jack."

"You say good-bye, I'll grab the car."

"Right."

As she made their apologies to her relatives, exchanging hugs and well-wishes, Gwen's mind had already left behind the world she had visited that afternoon, and returned to the real world. Her world. Torchwood. When Owen pulled up, she slid comfortably into the passenger seat without a backward glance.

"What do we have?"

Finis