![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fic: "Connections"
Title: Connections
Characters/Pairing: Owen Harper, some Owen/Gwen, Owen/Tosh, Owen/OC, Jack
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2500 words
Summary: They're the things of the hours after work and the breaks in between: small human connections in a big, big world or, well, shagging.
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amand_r. Happy birthday. Beta'd by paragraphs and blue_fjords
"Make that two, mate." Owen gestures the two with his fingers. A hammer is already pinging in his skull, one of the small surgical ones that makes it sound like someone is knocking it against the bone above his ear. He knocks back the drink when the barkeep sets it down, and uses the second to cradle while he surveys the scene of Friday night beauties.
Two hours ago he'd been elbow deep in alien gore, now he is three sheets to the wind in one of the in-bars. He's living the high life.
A blonde winks at him, he winks back with a grin, waits until she's done tittering with her girlfriends and then gestures a nod at the bar stool next to him. Another smile shot into the stratosphere, and the girl comes over and slides onto the seat next to him.
"Nice skirt," he says as he swivels around and bumps his knee into hers.
She takes the scotch from his fingers and sips from his glass, leaving him with his hand in the air, head cocked. Her hand lands on his thigh.
"Naughty." He gestures for the barkeep for another drink.
The bloke sits at the end of the bar (they are always in the same bar, and the bloke always sits at the other end so they don't get in each other's way). Still without a girl for the night, and he mimes a 6 with his fingers and a thumbs-up. Owen flips him off and then forgets about him altogether when the girl's fingers rub over his groin, knuckles pressing in. She likes to kiss, he likes to oblige, and he gestures an eight and a half behind her back at the bloke, just for the potential of great head with those lips.
***
"I'm not here to clean up your pissing wreckage, Harkness," Owen bellows up from the medbay at Jack's grinning face at the railing. "You've got the pretty one for that now, eh?"
Jack skips his way down the steps like he owns the place, which he probably does in fact do and just isn't telling them, and then stands too close and breathes garlic down the side of Owen's face. Garlic and warm breath, while Owen's hands are buried in a weevil's reproductive system.
"He's cute," Jack mouthbreathes.
"This one or the kid? Did you shag?"
"This one or the kid? Hm. Maybe. Anything interesting other than slibbery slime?"
Jack reaches around Owen's waist, little wriggling fingers wanting to poke at intestines before Owen grabs them in his gloved hands.
"Off!" Owen shoulders Jack away.
"Anyway," Jack says, chuckling in that unfuriating, dark chest rumble way and rubs his fingers on Owen's coat. "He's not senior enough. Still jumps at every loud noise as if I'm coming to take his security blanket from him."
"He shouldn't be working here then," Owen mutters, as he pulls at bits and pieces of reproduction. You'd think weevils shag like monkeys the way there's always more of them, but has anyone ever seen a baby weevil?
"Looks good in a suit."
So does the girl he's done on his bathroom sink, wearing his tie, his shirtsleeves shoved up her slim arms and her legs spread to let him shag her. Never say he can't appreciate the attraction. He nods Harkness away to amble off and bother the rest of Torchwood.
***
Owen thumbs on the light and slides the jacket off his shoulders to hang it up. He toes off his shoes. His cleaning service has been through earlier that day, everything is slightly off-kilter just by being centred and too perfect. He turns to look over his shoulder. Tosh is still standing in the doorway. He likes the long skirt on her and her hair done up nice.
He'd kissed her earlier, and he likes that shyness that isn't like the girls in the bars.
He also likes office affairs. Katie and he, they'd- well, too soon for that and he isn't drunk enough.
"Come in then?" Owen says as he walks in and turns on some music, gets out glasses and some wine, perfect gentleman.
Tosh steps in and takes off her coat and the heels he kind of likes and is sad to see go.
"Jack knows I'm..." she trails off and gestures to her watch.
"Right, sure." Owen sets the glasses down and gestures at his stylish sofa in his stylish flat with the view of everything.
She kisses him then, fingers trailing over his cheek and winding around his neck. She's desperate for it.
They have a pact not to talk about the past but he's a sneak and she's a sneak and they both work for Torchwood.
Before Tosh he'd have thought that isolation messes up someone more, but the only thing wonky with her is that she's desperately in love with everyone who even looks at her. He looks at her a lot. He has photos, and she blushes when he pulls them out.
He's never asked about Jack and her, they don't seem like that, but he's never seen anyone Jack hasn't done. Maybe quite literally.
They drink the wine, they kiss some more, he undresses her and touches her and she luxuriates in it, like it's all she wants from life.
"I don't like you very much," she tells him later when they're both sweaty and she's scratching at his nipples.
"Doesn't look like it from here," Owen quips.
She chuckles with that edge of infatuation that she keeps for herself, because it makes her feel or some such, he isn't sure he follows.
"You're not as broken as Jack," she whispers against his collarbone. "Still something alive in here." She knocks against his heart.
He laughs and can't stop. Biggest fucking joke, if he's ever heard one.
But he likes Tosh because she gives just as much as she needs, and the rest of it, she keeps that all to herself. He'd be less of a fool if he could do that with a snap just like that.
***
"Not pulling tonight?" The bloke with the rating hand signs settles on the stool next to him and Owen gives him the eye. If he'd had chances with any of the birds before, he sure doesn't now with the poncy pink-shirted bastard sipping a frilly cocktail.
"Not swinging that way," Owen mutters into his scotch.
"Not gay."
Owen looks him up and down, opens his mouth to explain the intricacies of his to-shag-and-not-to-shag list but he'd have to explain Jack topping both of them, and that's tedious and he's too drunk. He waves it away.
"I like her." The bloke points out a fake-redhead with nice tits and Owen gives her a four, maybe a five if he drinks another one.
"Her." Owen nods at a shy one, hair falling past her shoulders, cute top.
"Had her."
"And?"
The bloke shrugs and turns back around to the bar to set his frilly cocktail down while Owen continues to watch the girls and blokes like him on the pull, prowling, while girls, similarly on the prowl, keep telling them off. Wasted fucking night. He grins broadly at a girl whose arse he could get into and she looks him up and down, then turns to her girlfriends for a laugh. He turns around with his scotch, sips it.
"Good fun, isn't it?" the other bloke says, eyeing him.
"Not tonight." Owen shifts, the muscle he's pulled running after some lameass weevil because new boy can't do proper sprints twinging in his side.
Bloke tries to talk about sports which Owen doesn't watch and the job he hates which Owen understands but he's not such a whiner about it, then his parents who he hates, the girls he has pulled and how his dick is the best in Cardiff. They don't have much in common but rating their future shags across the bar, but a bloke's got to have some fun in his life, yeah?
Owen gets the best dick thing.
He pisses off before midnight with the redhead the bloke liked and gives him the finger for goodbye. The bloke gestures a 2 or maybe a V, same difference.
***
"That's her at fifteen, look at that smile."
Owen swallows tea past the lump in his throat. The porcelain cup clinks against the porcelain saucer as he sets it down and keeps both a hand's width above the photo book on his lap.
"She was the best swimmer on her team, so gracious when she won." Another page turned showed Katie at seventeen with her then-boyfriend and at eighteen off to uni and a shot in front of her parents' house where the wind pushed the hair into her face, and she looked so much like the woman he grew to love.
"And there?" Owen asks to say something, pointing at another picture, anything to keep her mum talking and her dad half-listening as he stares out the window.
"On holiday in Devon, nice, isn't it? Nice place, she went with friends... yes."
Katie's mum turns another page and another page.
He excuses himself after another hour of memories and promises to come back by and steps back out into rare English sunshine.
She'd always liked doing it on the washing machine, and when he gets home that day he goes to the laundromat around the corner and when the guy's in the back, ruts against it for a celebration of the person he'd loved.
Then he goes to see Jack. They must look like debris floating past his window, and Owen's got no clue why he's picking all the lost causes.
***
"You fucking wanker." Gwen has him pushed against a wall again.
The office affair is getting old already and they've only shagged five times so far. Once was on Jack's desk though, so maybe that should count double.
"Calm down, love."
"Not your bleeding love. Calling me? Really? Calling me when I'm home," she lowers her voice here, very covert, "with my boyfriend?"
"Look I was free, I thought maybe you were free for a little action."
She shoves him into the wall once more, bruised shoulderblades already from the tumble with something earlier in the week, thanks very much, and paces in the storage room she's chosen for her confrontation.
"You can't do that. That's not how this works."
He likes her fierce, he likes that she's a screamer, he likes that she likes everything illicit, and he likes a little that she cries after, when they've managed not to save someone. He's calling it sexual healing.
Jack has taken him aside and told him to knock it off. Hypocrite who's been hard up for a shag since the cyberman thing.
"Fine. My mistake, it won't happen again." He lifts his hands, properly acting contrite and he knows he has her when she slumps against the wall, face in her hands.
He wants to meet that bloke of hers sometime, curious to see what the man's like. Sounds a bit like an idiot judging from the texts he sends her (he thumbs through them when she stays the night and he lies awake, unable to combat insomnia, not in this lifetime).
"His cock is bigger than yours."
"Whu?"
Gwen looks at him, sassy smirk on her face. "Rhys. His cock's bigger than yours." Then she walks out.
He likes to think she'll stay later that night and he'll show her what he can do.
***
Diane's there. They shag like rabbits. And Diane leaves.
His heart should be all scar tissue from how often it's broken and knitted back together.
***
"Mate, piss off," Owen says into his scotch when the bloke's trying to sit down next to him.
"Prickly."
"Piss the fuck off."
He knows his eyes look a bit rabbit and a bit pissed, and he'd like to say something like it's the end of the world, let me have a last shag but those lines only work for Jack and his albeit questionable charm. It's not true either, but he hates when birds end it. He hadn't needed to read Gwen's text to know what had been in it.
"Girl there's a looker. Nine, I'd say. Leave her to you, eh? Looks like you need it."
The bloke fucks off to the other end of the bar and Owen turns to look at the girl in question over his shoulder. Sad fucking joke of the universe that he's had her and she'd been semi and drenched him in water when he suggested that he'd really very much like a blowjob, and he doesn't get off on fingering birds all that much.
He's toasting his miserable existence when Jack sits down next to him and orders water. He's got the look of someone who has just spent hours giving head.
"Hey," he says, and Owen digs out some gum and slides it over for semen breath. Jack pops it in, chews. "I need you in tonight. Gwen's off-" Owen grimaces. "Need all the manpower we can get."
A girl sidles up to Jack and he grins at her, compliments her dress and pockets the number. Wanker.
"Could've called me."
"Boring." Jack looks around the bar, taking it in with the interest of someone who doesn't quite know how these things work. "Few weevils on your table, bloating away for you." He laughs like it's the biggest joke that Owen's the tosser who works late Friday night because a girl's dumped him.
"It's all bloody useless, eh?" Owen twirls his scotch and drinks it down. "Shagging, being dumped, being left, trying to have a bit of a good time."
"All part of being in love," Jack says and crunches down on some peanuts.
Owen snorts. "Come on, we're talking about me shagging my way through Cardiff here." Owen reaches over past Jack to get some of the peanuts for himself. "Bird here, bird there, Gwen, Tosh. That's just boredom."
Jack glances at Owen from the side. "Yeah, is it?" Then he gets up with another handful of peanuts. "Expect you in three hours. Be there." And he's out of the door.
Love. Owen pops a peanut into his mouth and chews it slowly. Must be too much to ask to expect the roses and the swelling music of yet another Hollywood romcom.
A girl comes up to him and he has three hours so he uses them, always good to get blown before work. Coming in her mouth and kissing her after makes him think that maybe life's not that bad after all.
Characters/Pairing: Owen Harper, some Owen/Gwen, Owen/Tosh, Owen/OC, Jack
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2500 words
Summary: They're the things of the hours after work and the breaks in between: small human connections in a big, big world or, well, shagging.
Notes: For
amand_r. Happy birthday. Beta'd by paragraphs and blue_fjords"Make that two, mate." Owen gestures the two with his fingers. A hammer is already pinging in his skull, one of the small surgical ones that makes it sound like someone is knocking it against the bone above his ear. He knocks back the drink when the barkeep sets it down, and uses the second to cradle while he surveys the scene of Friday night beauties.
Two hours ago he'd been elbow deep in alien gore, now he is three sheets to the wind in one of the in-bars. He's living the high life.
A blonde winks at him, he winks back with a grin, waits until she's done tittering with her girlfriends and then gestures a nod at the bar stool next to him. Another smile shot into the stratosphere, and the girl comes over and slides onto the seat next to him.
"Nice skirt," he says as he swivels around and bumps his knee into hers.
She takes the scotch from his fingers and sips from his glass, leaving him with his hand in the air, head cocked. Her hand lands on his thigh.
"Naughty." He gestures for the barkeep for another drink.
The bloke sits at the end of the bar (they are always in the same bar, and the bloke always sits at the other end so they don't get in each other's way). Still without a girl for the night, and he mimes a 6 with his fingers and a thumbs-up. Owen flips him off and then forgets about him altogether when the girl's fingers rub over his groin, knuckles pressing in. She likes to kiss, he likes to oblige, and he gestures an eight and a half behind her back at the bloke, just for the potential of great head with those lips.
***
"I'm not here to clean up your pissing wreckage, Harkness," Owen bellows up from the medbay at Jack's grinning face at the railing. "You've got the pretty one for that now, eh?"
Jack skips his way down the steps like he owns the place, which he probably does in fact do and just isn't telling them, and then stands too close and breathes garlic down the side of Owen's face. Garlic and warm breath, while Owen's hands are buried in a weevil's reproductive system.
"He's cute," Jack mouthbreathes.
"This one or the kid? Did you shag?"
"This one or the kid? Hm. Maybe. Anything interesting other than slibbery slime?"
Jack reaches around Owen's waist, little wriggling fingers wanting to poke at intestines before Owen grabs them in his gloved hands.
"Off!" Owen shoulders Jack away.
"Anyway," Jack says, chuckling in that unfuriating, dark chest rumble way and rubs his fingers on Owen's coat. "He's not senior enough. Still jumps at every loud noise as if I'm coming to take his security blanket from him."
"He shouldn't be working here then," Owen mutters, as he pulls at bits and pieces of reproduction. You'd think weevils shag like monkeys the way there's always more of them, but has anyone ever seen a baby weevil?
"Looks good in a suit."
So does the girl he's done on his bathroom sink, wearing his tie, his shirtsleeves shoved up her slim arms and her legs spread to let him shag her. Never say he can't appreciate the attraction. He nods Harkness away to amble off and bother the rest of Torchwood.
***
Owen thumbs on the light and slides the jacket off his shoulders to hang it up. He toes off his shoes. His cleaning service has been through earlier that day, everything is slightly off-kilter just by being centred and too perfect. He turns to look over his shoulder. Tosh is still standing in the doorway. He likes the long skirt on her and her hair done up nice.
He'd kissed her earlier, and he likes that shyness that isn't like the girls in the bars.
He also likes office affairs. Katie and he, they'd- well, too soon for that and he isn't drunk enough.
"Come in then?" Owen says as he walks in and turns on some music, gets out glasses and some wine, perfect gentleman.
Tosh steps in and takes off her coat and the heels he kind of likes and is sad to see go.
"Jack knows I'm..." she trails off and gestures to her watch.
"Right, sure." Owen sets the glasses down and gestures at his stylish sofa in his stylish flat with the view of everything.
She kisses him then, fingers trailing over his cheek and winding around his neck. She's desperate for it.
They have a pact not to talk about the past but he's a sneak and she's a sneak and they both work for Torchwood.
Before Tosh he'd have thought that isolation messes up someone more, but the only thing wonky with her is that she's desperately in love with everyone who even looks at her. He looks at her a lot. He has photos, and she blushes when he pulls them out.
He's never asked about Jack and her, they don't seem like that, but he's never seen anyone Jack hasn't done. Maybe quite literally.
They drink the wine, they kiss some more, he undresses her and touches her and she luxuriates in it, like it's all she wants from life.
"I don't like you very much," she tells him later when they're both sweaty and she's scratching at his nipples.
"Doesn't look like it from here," Owen quips.
She chuckles with that edge of infatuation that she keeps for herself, because it makes her feel or some such, he isn't sure he follows.
"You're not as broken as Jack," she whispers against his collarbone. "Still something alive in here." She knocks against his heart.
He laughs and can't stop. Biggest fucking joke, if he's ever heard one.
But he likes Tosh because she gives just as much as she needs, and the rest of it, she keeps that all to herself. He'd be less of a fool if he could do that with a snap just like that.
***
"Not pulling tonight?" The bloke with the rating hand signs settles on the stool next to him and Owen gives him the eye. If he'd had chances with any of the birds before, he sure doesn't now with the poncy pink-shirted bastard sipping a frilly cocktail.
"Not swinging that way," Owen mutters into his scotch.
"Not gay."
Owen looks him up and down, opens his mouth to explain the intricacies of his to-shag-and-not-to-shag list but he'd have to explain Jack topping both of them, and that's tedious and he's too drunk. He waves it away.
"I like her." The bloke points out a fake-redhead with nice tits and Owen gives her a four, maybe a five if he drinks another one.
"Her." Owen nods at a shy one, hair falling past her shoulders, cute top.
"Had her."
"And?"
The bloke shrugs and turns back around to the bar to set his frilly cocktail down while Owen continues to watch the girls and blokes like him on the pull, prowling, while girls, similarly on the prowl, keep telling them off. Wasted fucking night. He grins broadly at a girl whose arse he could get into and she looks him up and down, then turns to her girlfriends for a laugh. He turns around with his scotch, sips it.
"Good fun, isn't it?" the other bloke says, eyeing him.
"Not tonight." Owen shifts, the muscle he's pulled running after some lameass weevil because new boy can't do proper sprints twinging in his side.
Bloke tries to talk about sports which Owen doesn't watch and the job he hates which Owen understands but he's not such a whiner about it, then his parents who he hates, the girls he has pulled and how his dick is the best in Cardiff. They don't have much in common but rating their future shags across the bar, but a bloke's got to have some fun in his life, yeah?
Owen gets the best dick thing.
He pisses off before midnight with the redhead the bloke liked and gives him the finger for goodbye. The bloke gestures a 2 or maybe a V, same difference.
***
"That's her at fifteen, look at that smile."
Owen swallows tea past the lump in his throat. The porcelain cup clinks against the porcelain saucer as he sets it down and keeps both a hand's width above the photo book on his lap.
"She was the best swimmer on her team, so gracious when she won." Another page turned showed Katie at seventeen with her then-boyfriend and at eighteen off to uni and a shot in front of her parents' house where the wind pushed the hair into her face, and she looked so much like the woman he grew to love.
"And there?" Owen asks to say something, pointing at another picture, anything to keep her mum talking and her dad half-listening as he stares out the window.
"On holiday in Devon, nice, isn't it? Nice place, she went with friends... yes."
Katie's mum turns another page and another page.
He excuses himself after another hour of memories and promises to come back by and steps back out into rare English sunshine.
She'd always liked doing it on the washing machine, and when he gets home that day he goes to the laundromat around the corner and when the guy's in the back, ruts against it for a celebration of the person he'd loved.
Then he goes to see Jack. They must look like debris floating past his window, and Owen's got no clue why he's picking all the lost causes.
***
"You fucking wanker." Gwen has him pushed against a wall again.
The office affair is getting old already and they've only shagged five times so far. Once was on Jack's desk though, so maybe that should count double.
"Calm down, love."
"Not your bleeding love. Calling me? Really? Calling me when I'm home," she lowers her voice here, very covert, "with my boyfriend?"
"Look I was free, I thought maybe you were free for a little action."
She shoves him into the wall once more, bruised shoulderblades already from the tumble with something earlier in the week, thanks very much, and paces in the storage room she's chosen for her confrontation.
"You can't do that. That's not how this works."
He likes her fierce, he likes that she's a screamer, he likes that she likes everything illicit, and he likes a little that she cries after, when they've managed not to save someone. He's calling it sexual healing.
Jack has taken him aside and told him to knock it off. Hypocrite who's been hard up for a shag since the cyberman thing.
"Fine. My mistake, it won't happen again." He lifts his hands, properly acting contrite and he knows he has her when she slumps against the wall, face in her hands.
He wants to meet that bloke of hers sometime, curious to see what the man's like. Sounds a bit like an idiot judging from the texts he sends her (he thumbs through them when she stays the night and he lies awake, unable to combat insomnia, not in this lifetime).
"His cock is bigger than yours."
"Whu?"
Gwen looks at him, sassy smirk on her face. "Rhys. His cock's bigger than yours." Then she walks out.
He likes to think she'll stay later that night and he'll show her what he can do.
***
Diane's there. They shag like rabbits. And Diane leaves.
His heart should be all scar tissue from how often it's broken and knitted back together.
***
"Mate, piss off," Owen says into his scotch when the bloke's trying to sit down next to him.
"Prickly."
"Piss the fuck off."
He knows his eyes look a bit rabbit and a bit pissed, and he'd like to say something like it's the end of the world, let me have a last shag but those lines only work for Jack and his albeit questionable charm. It's not true either, but he hates when birds end it. He hadn't needed to read Gwen's text to know what had been in it.
"Girl there's a looker. Nine, I'd say. Leave her to you, eh? Looks like you need it."
The bloke fucks off to the other end of the bar and Owen turns to look at the girl in question over his shoulder. Sad fucking joke of the universe that he's had her and she'd been semi and drenched him in water when he suggested that he'd really very much like a blowjob, and he doesn't get off on fingering birds all that much.
He's toasting his miserable existence when Jack sits down next to him and orders water. He's got the look of someone who has just spent hours giving head.
"Hey," he says, and Owen digs out some gum and slides it over for semen breath. Jack pops it in, chews. "I need you in tonight. Gwen's off-" Owen grimaces. "Need all the manpower we can get."
A girl sidles up to Jack and he grins at her, compliments her dress and pockets the number. Wanker.
"Could've called me."
"Boring." Jack looks around the bar, taking it in with the interest of someone who doesn't quite know how these things work. "Few weevils on your table, bloating away for you." He laughs like it's the biggest joke that Owen's the tosser who works late Friday night because a girl's dumped him.
"It's all bloody useless, eh?" Owen twirls his scotch and drinks it down. "Shagging, being dumped, being left, trying to have a bit of a good time."
"All part of being in love," Jack says and crunches down on some peanuts.
Owen snorts. "Come on, we're talking about me shagging my way through Cardiff here." Owen reaches over past Jack to get some of the peanuts for himself. "Bird here, bird there, Gwen, Tosh. That's just boredom."
Jack glances at Owen from the side. "Yeah, is it?" Then he gets up with another handful of peanuts. "Expect you in three hours. Be there." And he's out of the door.
Love. Owen pops a peanut into his mouth and chews it slowly. Must be too much to ask to expect the roses and the swelling music of yet another Hollywood romcom.
A girl comes up to him and he has three hours so he uses them, always good to get blown before work. Coming in her mouth and kissing her after makes him think that maybe life's not that bad after all.