In Passing
Rating: G
Prompt: #065 - Passing
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Torchwood - Exit Wounds
Characters/Pairing: Owen/Tosh
Summary: They got their date, in the end.
Note: Yes, I did use the Time War as an excuse to have them have something like a happy ending.
This story is dedicated to my dear friend nightrider101 , who loved Owen and Tosh just as much as I did, and in Owen's case probably more.
“I believe,” Toshiko says, “that some event has disturbed the laws of space and time. Something so big that reality got damaged.”
Owen rolls his eyes. “You just have to analyze it, don’t you? Even now.”
Glaring at him over the rim of her glasses doesn’t have the desired effect, so Tosh takes them off.
“Don’t you want to know how it works?” she asks. “You feel it too, don’t you? It’s all around us - like waves in the air, pushing us down. Maybe it’s to do with the rift, but it can’t be just that. Otherwise it would happen all the time.”
“If you ask me, the rift is a damage to reality in itself,” Owen replies, with an exasperated sigh. “No idea what caused it. Maybe some grand cosmic catastrophe, maybe a bored alien with a reality cutter, and if it happened all the time, how would we know? How do these people around us know?” He gestures to the couple sitting on the table beside them, to the family just coming though the door, to the waitress. “And to answer your question: No, I don’t want to know. I’m plainly not interested. It happened and that’s enough for me. Can’t you once, just once, simply accept things the way they are?”
Tosh stares at him in surprise. Then, much to his surprise, her face softens with a small smile.
“Ah,” she says quietly. “Magic.”
“Yes,” Owen confirms. “Magic. We don’t need an explanation for everything, not anymore. For once let there be magic. When else, if not now?” He sounds a bit like a romantic fool, he realises, and hastily looks down. His voice is all cool and indifferent again when he asks, “What do you want to eat?”
For the first time since entering the restaurant the Asian woman has a look at the menu, but sensing Owen’s impatience she chooses quickly. Playing the gentleman it is the doctor who gets up to take their food. He returns a few minutes later with two plates, which he positions beside the glasses of wine he’s taken before.
“They didn’t have what you wanted so I took something similar,” he apologizes. “Hope it’s okay.”
“What we do is wrong anyway.” Tosh shrugs and doesn’t seem to feel particularly guilty.
“Well, I don’t see anyone complaining, do you?”
Owen surprises his friend by picking up the candle positioned in the middle of their table and taking it over to the next table, where he lights it on the candle burning between the couple dining there. The two of them look at him with indignation writ all over their faces, but once he’s left, they turn back to their meals with only small frowns that vanish after another second.
Owen places the candle between them and Tosh smiles brightly and is smart enough not to say anything about him being romantic.
“Wouldn’t be a proper date without candlelight,” Owen justifies his action, somewhat uncomfortably, aiming for a nonchalant voice.
“You’re right,” Tosh agrees with a warmth in her eyes that see through his pretence. “Thank you, Owen.”
“Yeah. Don’t mention it.” He means it. All this is a bit embarrassing.
They enjoy their meal, both silently amused by the fact that it is for free.
“On a proper date I should be paying,” Owen muses when they have finished eating and the only thing left to devour is the wine.
“On a proper date you would have picked me up at home and I would have let you wait for hours trying to find the perfect outfit,” Tosh points out and Owen thinks she is right and that he is quite lucky. “Still, this is as proper a date as well ever have. I’m glad to be here.”
“Me too,” the doctor admits. They clink glasses.
“You know, it is magic,” Tosh suddenly says. “Who cares if it was caused by some kind of rift-stuff?”
“Rift-stuff,” Owen echoes.
“All right, I’ll stop already.”
He grins, unexpectedly. “I think this is the most unscientific expression I have ever heard you use.”
“Sorry,” she apologizes. “Won’t do it again.”
“Oh, please do.” Owen leans back in his chair with a twinkle in his eyes. “I like it when you talk dirty.”
“If it affected us because we’ve been exposed to the rift for so long,” Tosh thinks out loud, her mind never stopping once it has wrapped around something, “then I would have expected Tommy to be here as well. After all he’s been lying on top of the rift for ninety years.”
With a sigh Owen leans forward again. “Tosh,” he says.
“Yes, I know. No talking about reasons.” She looks up when Owen’s hand covers hers.
“Tosh,” he says again, more softly this time. Their eyes lock. “I don’t want Tommy to be here.”
With the flame of the candle between them she searches for something in his face, and when she finds it they rise from their seats, his hand still on hers, and lean closer. Her lips are slightly parted and he thinks that this is long overdue, that the first time doesn’t really count because it’s been a trick, because he didn’t feel anything, and that he wants to do it properly this time. He feels her breath on his face as her lips are but a heartbeat away from his and thinks that they both deserve this.
A loud shriek drives them apart just before their lips touch, and Owen curses silently even as he stares down at the waitress who’s fallen over his dropped jacket, the tray she was carrying crashing to the ground. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything, and the time for him to make up for it is quickly running out. This is a gift, every sensation a miracle and he only now realises how much he’s missed the simple feeling on another’s skin touching his.
Not much longer now. Still, if the last skin he touches is Tosh’s, if the last things he tastes are her lips, it would be perfectly fine with him.
More than fine.
But for that to happen he’ll have to kiss her first, eventually. It’s true: somehow they miss every chance presented to them.
Tosh takes her bag after helping the confused waitress back to her feet.
“Let’s go,” she says.
-
Following the rules of a proper first date Owen takes her to the movies. The sun is stetting already, and the waves washing over them, holding them down, are less heavy now. At some point in space and time something happened and send ripples though the fabric of reality, but the waves have almost passed over the points in time that marked the lives of Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. They don’t mention it as they stand before the cinema.
“Which one do we watch?” she asks. “I haven’t been watching a movie for ages. What’s being shown at the moment?”
“There’s a sci-fi movie,” Owen observed, looking at the posters outside the building. “A romance, a thriller… Since this is a date we should pick the romance, or something boring.”
“Why?” Tosh looks genuinely confused. “Why deliberately waste money on something boring?”
“Because,” Owen tells her, surprised she doesn’t know this basic rule of dating, “if it’s boring there’s no point in watching the movie and the couple sooner gets to making out. Romance movies have the same effect: The guy bears it in favour of getting the girl in the mood.”
Tosh grimaces at this little romantic description of the laws of dates.
“I’ve never had a liking for love stories,” she admits. “And if this is the last movie I’ll ever see I actually want to see it.” Somehow it’s a relief to get a confirmation that it isn’t only Owen who sabotages their chances for romance, but right now he can’t enjoy it.
No one stops them from entering without paying. They end up watching the sci-fi movie, and it is actually quite good. Owen expected Tosh to complain about the science all the time, but she sits attentive and quiet and just enjoys the plot of the movie in complete disregard of obvious holes in the logic, or Owen’s arm around the back of her seat. There is no romance to speak of the in the story, but toward the end, when one after the other character dies a heroic death, Tosh leans onto his shoulder and he strokes her hair and her cheek.
They are sitting in the last row, ignored by everyone. While the end credits are running over the screen and the other viewers leave, Owen turns his friend’s face toward his and leans in.
The credits end with an extra scene that adds one last shock effect. Lost in each other as they are, they don’t even notice until on screen a girl screams, making both of them jump, just before the gab between their lips is closed.
The waves slowly ebb away. When they step outside there is daylight and it shouldn’t be. Reality is collapsing, for them.
Fog caresses the street beneath the grey shroud of the morning sky. Apart from them the street is empty. The entire city seems empty but for one car passing by.
The freezing air is almost a narrative necessity. It makes Owen take off his jacket and drape it around Toshiko’s trembling shoulders. She leans closer to him and together they walk down the street until they don’t feel the cold anymore.
Their breath is no longer visible in the still air.
But Owen still feels Tosh pressing against him. She is still warm, still real, and her hair is still soft beneath his fingers.
She doesn’t smile, but looks as if she might.
This time her hand his lying on the back of his neck and he’s holding her face between his palms, and when a raven cries in the last possible moment, startling them, Owen curses under his breath and kisses her anyway. It doesn’t taste like he expected, if he’s expected anything at all - Tosh’s lips taste of snow, but they are warm and soft and he wonders what she’s thinking now, if she’s thinking anything at all.
Owen thinks that this was well worth the wait. Better late than never, they say. It’s a chance they got thanks to the rift, thanks to some event taking place somewhere in time and space, causing ripples that are almost gone. It’s magic.
It’s enough.
The world fades slowly. This time Owen isn’t shouting, isn’t angry and scared, and Tosh isn’t crying as the light comes.
They hold hands.
September 10, 2008
Prompt: #065 - Passing
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Torchwood - Exit Wounds
Characters/Pairing: Owen/Tosh
Summary: They got their date, in the end.
Note: Yes, I did use the Time War as an excuse to have them have something like a happy ending.
This story is dedicated to my dear friend nightrider101 , who loved Owen and Tosh just as much as I did, and in Owen's case probably more.
“I believe,” Toshiko says, “that some event has disturbed the laws of space and time. Something so big that reality got damaged.”
Owen rolls his eyes. “You just have to analyze it, don’t you? Even now.”
Glaring at him over the rim of her glasses doesn’t have the desired effect, so Tosh takes them off.
“Don’t you want to know how it works?” she asks. “You feel it too, don’t you? It’s all around us - like waves in the air, pushing us down. Maybe it’s to do with the rift, but it can’t be just that. Otherwise it would happen all the time.”
“If you ask me, the rift is a damage to reality in itself,” Owen replies, with an exasperated sigh. “No idea what caused it. Maybe some grand cosmic catastrophe, maybe a bored alien with a reality cutter, and if it happened all the time, how would we know? How do these people around us know?” He gestures to the couple sitting on the table beside them, to the family just coming though the door, to the waitress. “And to answer your question: No, I don’t want to know. I’m plainly not interested. It happened and that’s enough for me. Can’t you once, just once, simply accept things the way they are?”
Tosh stares at him in surprise. Then, much to his surprise, her face softens with a small smile.
“Ah,” she says quietly. “Magic.”
“Yes,” Owen confirms. “Magic. We don’t need an explanation for everything, not anymore. For once let there be magic. When else, if not now?” He sounds a bit like a romantic fool, he realises, and hastily looks down. His voice is all cool and indifferent again when he asks, “What do you want to eat?”
For the first time since entering the restaurant the Asian woman has a look at the menu, but sensing Owen’s impatience she chooses quickly. Playing the gentleman it is the doctor who gets up to take their food. He returns a few minutes later with two plates, which he positions beside the glasses of wine he’s taken before.
“They didn’t have what you wanted so I took something similar,” he apologizes. “Hope it’s okay.”
“What we do is wrong anyway.” Tosh shrugs and doesn’t seem to feel particularly guilty.
“Well, I don’t see anyone complaining, do you?”
Owen surprises his friend by picking up the candle positioned in the middle of their table and taking it over to the next table, where he lights it on the candle burning between the couple dining there. The two of them look at him with indignation writ all over their faces, but once he’s left, they turn back to their meals with only small frowns that vanish after another second.
Owen places the candle between them and Tosh smiles brightly and is smart enough not to say anything about him being romantic.
“Wouldn’t be a proper date without candlelight,” Owen justifies his action, somewhat uncomfortably, aiming for a nonchalant voice.
“You’re right,” Tosh agrees with a warmth in her eyes that see through his pretence. “Thank you, Owen.”
“Yeah. Don’t mention it.” He means it. All this is a bit embarrassing.
They enjoy their meal, both silently amused by the fact that it is for free.
“On a proper date I should be paying,” Owen muses when they have finished eating and the only thing left to devour is the wine.
“On a proper date you would have picked me up at home and I would have let you wait for hours trying to find the perfect outfit,” Tosh points out and Owen thinks she is right and that he is quite lucky. “Still, this is as proper a date as well ever have. I’m glad to be here.”
“Me too,” the doctor admits. They clink glasses.
“You know, it is magic,” Tosh suddenly says. “Who cares if it was caused by some kind of rift-stuff?”
“Rift-stuff,” Owen echoes.
“All right, I’ll stop already.”
He grins, unexpectedly. “I think this is the most unscientific expression I have ever heard you use.”
“Sorry,” she apologizes. “Won’t do it again.”
“Oh, please do.” Owen leans back in his chair with a twinkle in his eyes. “I like it when you talk dirty.”
“If it affected us because we’ve been exposed to the rift for so long,” Tosh thinks out loud, her mind never stopping once it has wrapped around something, “then I would have expected Tommy to be here as well. After all he’s been lying on top of the rift for ninety years.”
With a sigh Owen leans forward again. “Tosh,” he says.
“Yes, I know. No talking about reasons.” She looks up when Owen’s hand covers hers.
“Tosh,” he says again, more softly this time. Their eyes lock. “I don’t want Tommy to be here.”
With the flame of the candle between them she searches for something in his face, and when she finds it they rise from their seats, his hand still on hers, and lean closer. Her lips are slightly parted and he thinks that this is long overdue, that the first time doesn’t really count because it’s been a trick, because he didn’t feel anything, and that he wants to do it properly this time. He feels her breath on his face as her lips are but a heartbeat away from his and thinks that they both deserve this.
A loud shriek drives them apart just before their lips touch, and Owen curses silently even as he stares down at the waitress who’s fallen over his dropped jacket, the tray she was carrying crashing to the ground. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything, and the time for him to make up for it is quickly running out. This is a gift, every sensation a miracle and he only now realises how much he’s missed the simple feeling on another’s skin touching his.
Not much longer now. Still, if the last skin he touches is Tosh’s, if the last things he tastes are her lips, it would be perfectly fine with him.
More than fine.
But for that to happen he’ll have to kiss her first, eventually. It’s true: somehow they miss every chance presented to them.
Tosh takes her bag after helping the confused waitress back to her feet.
“Let’s go,” she says.
-
Following the rules of a proper first date Owen takes her to the movies. The sun is stetting already, and the waves washing over them, holding them down, are less heavy now. At some point in space and time something happened and send ripples though the fabric of reality, but the waves have almost passed over the points in time that marked the lives of Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. They don’t mention it as they stand before the cinema.
“Which one do we watch?” she asks. “I haven’t been watching a movie for ages. What’s being shown at the moment?”
“There’s a sci-fi movie,” Owen observed, looking at the posters outside the building. “A romance, a thriller… Since this is a date we should pick the romance, or something boring.”
“Why?” Tosh looks genuinely confused. “Why deliberately waste money on something boring?”
“Because,” Owen tells her, surprised she doesn’t know this basic rule of dating, “if it’s boring there’s no point in watching the movie and the couple sooner gets to making out. Romance movies have the same effect: The guy bears it in favour of getting the girl in the mood.”
Tosh grimaces at this little romantic description of the laws of dates.
“I’ve never had a liking for love stories,” she admits. “And if this is the last movie I’ll ever see I actually want to see it.” Somehow it’s a relief to get a confirmation that it isn’t only Owen who sabotages their chances for romance, but right now he can’t enjoy it.
No one stops them from entering without paying. They end up watching the sci-fi movie, and it is actually quite good. Owen expected Tosh to complain about the science all the time, but she sits attentive and quiet and just enjoys the plot of the movie in complete disregard of obvious holes in the logic, or Owen’s arm around the back of her seat. There is no romance to speak of the in the story, but toward the end, when one after the other character dies a heroic death, Tosh leans onto his shoulder and he strokes her hair and her cheek.
They are sitting in the last row, ignored by everyone. While the end credits are running over the screen and the other viewers leave, Owen turns his friend’s face toward his and leans in.
The credits end with an extra scene that adds one last shock effect. Lost in each other as they are, they don’t even notice until on screen a girl screams, making both of them jump, just before the gab between their lips is closed.
The waves slowly ebb away. When they step outside there is daylight and it shouldn’t be. Reality is collapsing, for them.
Fog caresses the street beneath the grey shroud of the morning sky. Apart from them the street is empty. The entire city seems empty but for one car passing by.
The freezing air is almost a narrative necessity. It makes Owen take off his jacket and drape it around Toshiko’s trembling shoulders. She leans closer to him and together they walk down the street until they don’t feel the cold anymore.
Their breath is no longer visible in the still air.
But Owen still feels Tosh pressing against him. She is still warm, still real, and her hair is still soft beneath his fingers.
She doesn’t smile, but looks as if she might.
This time her hand his lying on the back of his neck and he’s holding her face between his palms, and when a raven cries in the last possible moment, startling them, Owen curses under his breath and kisses her anyway. It doesn’t taste like he expected, if he’s expected anything at all - Tosh’s lips taste of snow, but they are warm and soft and he wonders what she’s thinking now, if she’s thinking anything at all.
Owen thinks that this was well worth the wait. Better late than never, they say. It’s a chance they got thanks to the rift, thanks to some event taking place somewhere in time and space, causing ripples that are almost gone. It’s magic.
It’s enough.
The world fades slowly. This time Owen isn’t shouting, isn’t angry and scared, and Tosh isn’t crying as the light comes.
They hold hands.
September 10, 2008