TW Fic: Got That Friday Feeling Again (2/4)
Title: Got That Friday Feeling Again (2/4)
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Groundhog Day
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Ianto, Jack, Gwen, Archie, Twelve, Clara
Pairings: Owen/quite a lot of people, Jack/Ianto, past Owen/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys
Words: 18000 (4000 this part)
***
Chapter One
***
Chapter Two
***
Tosh had questions, lots of questions: anything he'd observed yesterday, anything he remembered happening differently today, people he'd seen, anything he'd touched or dropped. She brought out three scanners from her bag that, strictly speaking, should never have left the Hub. Jack helpfully retrieved four more thanks to Archie's inventory. Each alien artefact hummed and scanned Owen until he was sure he'd wind up mutated with three-headed sperm.
"You'll be fine," Jack said, but he said it in his 'lying to get someone to shut up' voice.
Ianto went out for sandwiches at lunchtime and came back whinging about the snowy roads. Owen found himself facing the same bland sandwich he'd eaten yesterday as he listened to Gwen complain about not seeing Rhys. "Look on the bright side," Owen said. "If we really are in a time loop, he won't notice you're gone."
"I'll notice," she replied, but seemed appeased. She wouldn't notice, not the way Owen would.
The afternoon saw them all on the search for the ghost artefact, which Owen couldn't remember the location of, and for the time loop artefact, which could be anything, and any artefact Tosh might like to pop into the boot before they went home, which were many. Archie helped out, identifying unmarked boxes and telling the same stories he'd told yesterday. As the sky darkened, Jack offered to call off the hunt, but no one took him up on it. Owen supposed he ought to feel grateful. Instead he felt irritated, sure they'd expect his gratitude, and he grumbled as room after room turned up nothing.
Gwen said, "This place isn't so bad. Lots of space. We can kip here tonight. Might break the loop?" The expressions on Tosh and Jack's faces were dubious, Owen noticed, and they'd be in the best position to say.
"That sounds great," he said, because why the fuck not? Torchwood House was haunted, and the bed and breakfast was a time vortex.
Ianto ducked out to the SUV and came back with a hamper of food. "I thought we might stay. Provisions for later. Archie, is there a kitchen somewhere?"
Archie grinned. "Only the largest you've ever seen." He guided Ianto away, praising the culinary masterpiece that was the main kitchen of the manor house to someone who lived entirely on takeaway and caffeine.
As they returned to their task, Gwen sidled into the same room where Owen was working. "How are you doing, Owen? Only, this has to be pretty difficult to deal with, yeah?" She smiled kindly in the uneven light, flickering bulbs warning of the precarious electrical wiring installed throughout the older areas of the building.
"I'm fine." He kept the annoyance out of his voice. Gwen hadn't spoken to him much after they'd broken things off, until Jack went away and everything went to shit. These days she pretended nothing had ever happened, and had started mothering him along with the rest of the team. Even after Jack's return, she'd drop by for chats, or try to cozen them all into sing-a-longs in the car. She meant well. If Gwen sometimes mistook their top secret alien fighting organisation for a wayward Girl Guide troop, at least the biscuits were good.
"You've just done the one loop? Maybe it'll just be that, then."
"Sure." He offered her a quick smile. "Since you're here, can you help me inventory this room? We'll get done faster."
"My thoughts exactly." She dove right in, carefully marking off everything they found. Denebian flutes, three. Itching ray, origin unknown. Gr'nak herbicide, one kilo. Had there ever been any categorisation to this stuff?
He half-listened to Gwen's chatter as they worked, putting in grunts and nods as he thought appropriate. Wedding plans. Something her mum wanted her to reserve at the resort, and her bridesmaids agreed. An unexpected ache hit him in his sternum, caught in a quick memory of Katie fussing over dresses and table decorations and invitations for guests who never came.
"You know, Gwen, if I'm the one in a time loop, nothing you lot do matters. You could go right now and have one off with Captain Charm, and you wouldn't even feel guilty in the morning."
Gwen coloured red and looked as though she was about to punch him. Instead, she took a breath and said, "Good to know your experience hasn't changed you." She threw the inventory to the floor and stormed out.
Fine. He liked it quiet. After a few minutes, he knew he wasn't going to find anything. Too wound up, too annoyed. Whatever. He could stay here and not be bothered by concerned co-workers. God, he hoped he woke up tomorrow with whatever the fuck this was completed. He tried settling in for a nap, but woke almost immediately when Ianto came into the room.
His head swivelled, looking for Owen before finding him in his cosy little corner. His mouth turned in a disapproving frown. "If you're awake, Tosh has found something."
"Time loop?"
"The holoprojector you talked about." Ianto had remained sceptical all day about Owen's story. For the first time, he looked like he might actually believe Owen wasn't pulling some kind of prank.
"You lot play with the projector. I'm going to go back to searching."
"Pillows are in the chest down the hall," Ianto said.
"Fuck off."
By supper, none of them had found the time machine or whatever the fuck it was, and Gwen had worked out the basics of the stupid holoprojector. Whilst the others laughed and chatted in the ridiculously formal dining room, the large windows looking out onto the gathering snow, Owen prayed his day would end normally and turn into tomorrow.
He dove back into the storage areas with renewed vigour. Something in here had done this to him. Had to be. Much later, and still no luck, Archie helped them find the old bedrooms, of which there were plenty. The beds were musty and the sheets were forty years old, back from when this facility had still been active rather than a relic. The bedbugs colonies were probably older than some cities in the States.
"I have my own little room here," said Archie. "The office is in the city, but I like staying here of a night. Reminds me of better times."
Jack said, "You took over after the better times were almost done."
"Says you." He winked at Jack and turned in, wishing them all a good night. He unlocked five bedrooms. Owen half-expected Jack to suggest they pile into one room for safety's sake, and also for him to cajole them all into that orgy he'd been planning. But no. The girls went into their rooms, and Owen went into his, and he was positive the room next to his stayed empty, saving him from listening to two blokes fucking.
Now there was a thought. He knew if he knocked on Toshiko's door, tonight or any other night, she'd let him in. And that, he admitted to himself, was why he never did. He'd gone for Gwen because he'd known she loathed him, and herself for wanting him. That was a challenge, and challenge meant passion without emotion getting in the way of getting off. Tosh wanted emotion and shared breakfasts, and things Owen had no intention of ever experiencing again. Better to screw and sneak away. Better not to feel, and keep from feeling bad ever again.
Unable to sleep with these thoughts in his head, he had one himself and slipped into an unhappy sleep.
***
The Spice Girls woke him to tell him what he had to do to be their lover. Owen cracked his eyes open enough to see that he was back in his bed at the B&B. He punched the alarm until it broke, and settled back amongst the quilts.
Half an hour later, there was a knock on the door.
"It's going to snow, and the ghost artefact is in room seven. Call Archie."
"Owen."
He refused to answer, snuggling deeper into his blankets. Outside, he listened to one side of a conversation where Jack tried not to lose his temper with the director of Torchwood Glasgow.
"Owen? Say for a minute you're right. How did you know that?"
"I'm omnipotent."
The door broke down ten seconds later. Jack had his Webley out. The others hovered in the doorway. Owen blinked at them. He looked at Jack. "Time loop. I'm sleeping in."
Jack lowered his gun. He glanced at the rest of the team. "Take a walk. I need to have a talk with Owen."
"Skip it. You gave me the talk already." Owen rolled over. "You lot go play in the manor house. I'm staying here. Might go out for lunch." He refused to say another word.
When he was sure they'd gone, he pulled on his clothes. He stuffed the rest of his things into his duffle, grabbed a pastry from the table on his way out the door, and stepped into the cold September morning. There was the young mum, already down the road with her kiddies. The grannies were almost out of sight. The homeless bloke lurked in his usual place as Owen passed by, ignoring his muttered plea for spare change. Owen turned away from where the SUV had been parked and examined the vehicles he came across until he found an unlocked door.
Sliding into the driver's seat, Owen did his best to act like this was his car as he worked under the steering column. He hadn't lifted many cars in his youth, but he knew enough. Within five minutes, the car choked to life. Owen drove towards the highway. He could explain later. He just had to get out of this fucking village and get past the fucking time bubble. He could phone the team later.
He hit a patch of ice not a kilometre out of town. He had seconds to react, turning uselessly into the skid, mouth caught in an obscenity as he slammed into a tree.
***
"So tell me what you want, what you really really want!"
Owen swore.
He managed until breakfast and the tale of Archie and the missing loch. He excused himself back up to his room, where he shot himself.
Moments later, the Spice Girls told him what they really, really wanted. He spent the day feeling more hungover than usual.
***
On good days when he planned perfectly, he could go into Glasgow proper, but he was still stuck. He tried several times to buy his way onto a flight out of Scotland, but he never managed to get off the ground, and the one time he was desperate enough to steal a small private plane, he wound up dead.
He tried walking. He woke up in the same bed listening to the same song.
He tried sailing away on the Clyde. He drowned.
***
Time … passed.
It was impossible to track the passage of days, the same day again and again. He couldn't draw hash marks on his wall, or keep a diary, or write on his own skin, without greeting a bare, blank slate the next morning. He could keep a mental count, had he remembered to start before he lost track after at least a month of Fridays. The truth was, he couldn't recall how long he'd been here. He thought there had to be a difference from the very first day but fuck if he could sort it out.
Morning meant breakfast with the team and a trip out to Torchwood House accompanied by the weather report and Archie's apology. Owen would fuck around for about fifteen minutes, then go to the room where the fucking ghost holoprojector was, thus freeing up the rest of his day before the snow hit.
The young mummy with the kids was named Grace. She liked Oasis and sticky toffees, which Owen learned to fake an interest in around ten o'clock when she dropped the kiddies at pre-school. Their dads had left her when she was pregnant with each one, and she still hated Jim but Steve paid support on time and Grace missed him. She didn't ask a lot of questions. He could usually get into her knickers by noon, half-past on days he bought her lunch. Grace was wet and willing, making the same half-sob every day he slid into her for the first time. Owen tuned her out when she chatted after, taking in a light doze before he dressed and left her there shouting at him.
Finding further companionship wasn't any more difficult than avoiding Team Tossers with a little planning. Owen could meet up with Tamara MacCombe as she joined her mates for lunch at the pub, and he could eat out that night. Joscelyn Black worked on the committee for the Autumn Festival because her maiden Aunt Fran was the head, and Joscelyn was fucking amazing at head.
He spent what might have been months slouching his way from orgasm to orgasm. His days reset, leaving him satisfied and single every morning.
***
It was possible, if one spent several weeks and all his money, to purchase every Lotto scratchcard in a five kilometre radius. After that study, Owen could drop by three particular establishments and walk out with a total of five thousand pounds any time he wished, and a useless ticket in his pocket worth one hundred thousand he'd never be able to collect. As he didn't have to worry about investing in his future, he spent several more weeks discovering how much fun he could purchase in a single day.
This turned out not to be as much fun as he'd hoped. There were only so many more women he could impress flashing his extra cash around. The little village didn't have much of a night life. When he made it into Glasgow itself, he only wound up in trouble and often wound up dead. He could buy expensive meals for everyone he met, from the hot girls to Charlie the pan-handling hobo, but no one remembered or gave a shit the next day.
One day, he flicked open his mobile and began flipping through the contacts list. He would call his mother and he would tell her he was rich.
She would be impressed. Or she would be bored. She would say he'd finally made something of himself. Or she'd ask if he thought he was better than her. She'd ask him what he intended to do with the money, and remind him money couldn't buy one fucking minute of happiness unless he spent it on a whore. Or she'd ask him for a loan.
His hands shook as he reached her name. Before he could make himself press the number, he threw the phone against a wall, shattering it.
***
"So tell me what you want," said Ginger Spice, and Owen hit the alarm before Scary could get her say. He lay under the covers for a minute. Last night had been spent in Christie's flat, or was it Maisie's? No, Maisie had the distracting nystagmus, and Chrissie complained about her mum after sex. Kirstie's flat.
He got out of the bed he woke up in every morning, and for the first time in ages, decided he was bored enough to go in to work and search for what the fuck was causing this loop. He made his way downstairs, selected bacon and toast and several pastries, and then budged up a place at the Torchwood table.
"And then, Archie said, 'I swear, the loch was here yesterday!'" Jack laughed, the girls tittered, Ianto rolled his eyes. Just like every morning.
Owen said, "I don't intend to spend my day with three of you all bitchy from low blood sugar. Eat these." He shoved a large pastry each in front of Tosh, Gwen, and Ianto. "Prescription from your doctor."
***
Hiding the holoprojector was even easier than locating it every damn day. He had a nice spot behind three boxes where no one ever looked. Chuck it back in the corner, spend the rest of the day searching for his real problem. He started with random searches and realised rapidly that would get him nowhere, and only a methodical investigation in each room one by one would ever get him out of here.
He planned his days around searching, and the nights he didn't spend getting laid, he spent catching up on medical journals he'd meant to read, and trying unsuccessfully to teach himself extra-dimensional physics.
One snowy afternoon when he'd let the team find the holoprojector early, he wandered the shelves of the local library, vainly searching for the right book to read to get him out of this mess. As he turned a corner he'd turned a dozen times, he nearly crashed into a hot girl he didn't recognise. This was enough to startle him out of his thoughts. He'd met every hot girl in the village, and he knew every face in this library. He could set his watch by the exact minute each one would walk by.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
Behind her, an older bloke walked up in a hurry, all annoyance and grey eyebrows. "I told you this was pointless," he muttered in a local accent which didn't fool Owen for a second.
"I saw you. The first day we were here. I remember."
"Sorry, just leaving," said the hot girl with an absent smile. Owen grabbed her arm.
"Wait. You were here, and you haven't been here since." He was cracking up. He knew he'd been cracking up. Now the timeline was changing on him. "You're different!"
"Oh good, someone with half a brain," said Eyebrows. "Clara, I think we can break free of the bubble if we leave at the right time."
"It's a fucking time bubble!" Owen shouted, earning him stern glares from the approaching librarians. He ignored them. "You know about it!"
Clara tilted her head at him oddly. "Yeah. We know. But how do you?"
"I've been fucking stuck here for fucking months with you!"
Okay, the librarians were really quite close now, and very cross, and Owen didn't fucking care. He thought about his actual honest-to-fuck Torchwood training. He stared at Eyebrows. "You're the Doctor."
"Oh, you've heard of me?" Eyebrows asked, instantly flattered.
"Yeah, Jack can't fucking tell us enough."
"Sir," said Maisie Stephens. She was blonde and youngish and she'd worked at the library for six years and could be talked into bed with a lot of booze or a carefully-purchased book, "you are disturbing the other patrons. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"Jack?" asked Clara, confused. "I know that name."
"Yes," said the Doctor, frowning.
"Sir!" said Maisie.
"You cannot tell Jack I'm here. I'm not from the correct part of his timeline. If we meet now, it could jeopardise his future involvement with my timeline and interfere with the natural occurrence of...."
Owen had already jammed his finger in his ear. "Jack, the Doctor is here. We'll meet you outside the library in two minutes." He smiled at Maisie. "Sorry, miss. We'll be going."
He grabbed Clara's hand, assuming the Doctor wouldn't abandon another companion as easily as he had Owen's boss. He half-escorted, half-dragged her to the entrance. An out of breath Captain Jack came running round the corner just as Eyebrows stepped outside.
Owen was sure he heard Eyebrows mutter a swear word before he said, "Jack! Didn't expect to find you here."
Jack stopped short when he saw them, trotting closer. Behind him, Owen heard more running. The other three followed, Ianto closest at Jack's heels, and wouldn't that be fun to watch, eh?
"Doctor. Changed things up, have you?"
Eyebrows put on the fakest smile Owen had ever seen. "Nothing to worry about. How many time loops have you been through so far?"
"A thousand or so," said Owen, as Jack said, "What time loops?"
***
They retired to the pub. Jack and the Doctor sat opposite each other. Owen sat in the middle, getting peppered with questions. The rest of the little group clustered around exactly as Owen would have expected, with Ianto and Gwen flanking Jack, Clara at the Doctor's side and her skirt unfortunately hidden from view under the table. Tosh sat across from Owen giving him sympathetic smiles.
"We've been through twice before," Clara said around her wine spritzer. "We keep bouncing back here."
"Small fuss," the Doctor said, locking eyes with Jack. "Hardly a bother. We'll get out this time."
"Are you causing this?" Owen asked. He'd caught up the others briefly on his predicament. They had accepted, with varying degrees of grace, his explanation that he'd been tired of telling them every loop. Ianto still didn't seem to believe him, even with the Doctor sitting right fucking there, but currently he was too busy trying to signal Clara to stop casting flirting glances at You Know Who to bother rolling his eyes at Owen.
"We didn't," the Doctor said. "We came for a quick visit. Something you did must have trapped us here."
"I didn't do anything," said Jack reproachfully. "This is the first I've heard about it." He gave a sidelong look to Owen, but he'd accepted the update without comment. "By the way, when we're done here, I need a word with Owen."
"Got the lecture, thanks. Won't shag Captain Bad Touch any time soon." This earned him glares from around the table and a shrug from Jack.
"Do you have any ideas?" asked Clara. This was addressed not to Owen or the Doctor, but to Toshiko, whom she'd successfully identified as the only person in the room less concerned with who was shagging whom and more with who was fucking with space-time.
"I have to know more about what's going on." Tosh looked at Owen with a weak smile. "You said you've gone through hundreds of loops. Can you remember if you touched anything in the first one that would have done something like this?"
Owen shook his head. "I've been through my original room. I've been through the rooms you lot went through the first day. I can't find anything."
The Doctor asked, "Is there some lesson you need to learn? There are some semi-omnipotent beings floating around who ought to know better but love to put humans through the ringer." He grinned without humour. "Done it myself."
Owen sat back. Could this be a simple matter of having to repent his sins? "They're not specific enough for me to know. And why would you lot be trapped in here with me?"
"For them, it's just one day. We've bounced back in the TARDIS twice. But you, you're reliving day after day. Maybe you were a naughty boy." The Doctor leaned close, leering. "What did you do?"
Jack kept his distance now, watching the two of them. He glanced over at Clara. "I've met two regenerations so far. I've watched seven others from a distance. You've got yourself an odd one on your hands."
Clara sipped her wine spritzer. "So I've noticed."
After another round of drinks and many rounds of questions, they adjourned to the TARDIS. Jack gave a quick explanation to the team, which Tosh drank up, Gwen nodded along to uncomprehendingly, and Ianto ignored in favour of making sarcastic comments under his breath. Owen went to the control in the centre of the room, getting his hands slapped for his trouble as he reached out.
"No," said the Doctor, as if scolding a dog. "She's already upset." He twitched his head over his shoulder at Jack.
"Hey," Jack said, resting his own hand on the console in a fashion that would have got him arrested in half a dozen of the clubs in Cardiff. "The TARDIS and I go way back. She likes me."
"Will this fix the loop?" Owen asked, not wishing to hear about that one time, or several times, his boss shagged the time machine.
"Could be," the Doctor said distractedly, and he threw a lever Owen swore had only grown there that minute.
Several things happened at once. They involved sparks, screams, and a powerful sense of a powerful being angry at him in a powerful and very personal manner.
Owen closed his eyes.
"So tell me what you want, what you really really want!"
He opened his eyes in his borrowed bed in the B&B.
"FUCK!!!!!"
***
Chapter Three
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Groundhog Day
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Ianto, Jack, Gwen, Archie, Twelve, Clara
Pairings: Owen/quite a lot of people, Jack/Ianto, past Owen/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys
Words: 18000 (4000 this part)
***
Chapter One
***
Chapter Two
***
Tosh had questions, lots of questions: anything he'd observed yesterday, anything he remembered happening differently today, people he'd seen, anything he'd touched or dropped. She brought out three scanners from her bag that, strictly speaking, should never have left the Hub. Jack helpfully retrieved four more thanks to Archie's inventory. Each alien artefact hummed and scanned Owen until he was sure he'd wind up mutated with three-headed sperm.
"You'll be fine," Jack said, but he said it in his 'lying to get someone to shut up' voice.
Ianto went out for sandwiches at lunchtime and came back whinging about the snowy roads. Owen found himself facing the same bland sandwich he'd eaten yesterday as he listened to Gwen complain about not seeing Rhys. "Look on the bright side," Owen said. "If we really are in a time loop, he won't notice you're gone."
"I'll notice," she replied, but seemed appeased. She wouldn't notice, not the way Owen would.
The afternoon saw them all on the search for the ghost artefact, which Owen couldn't remember the location of, and for the time loop artefact, which could be anything, and any artefact Tosh might like to pop into the boot before they went home, which were many. Archie helped out, identifying unmarked boxes and telling the same stories he'd told yesterday. As the sky darkened, Jack offered to call off the hunt, but no one took him up on it. Owen supposed he ought to feel grateful. Instead he felt irritated, sure they'd expect his gratitude, and he grumbled as room after room turned up nothing.
Gwen said, "This place isn't so bad. Lots of space. We can kip here tonight. Might break the loop?" The expressions on Tosh and Jack's faces were dubious, Owen noticed, and they'd be in the best position to say.
"That sounds great," he said, because why the fuck not? Torchwood House was haunted, and the bed and breakfast was a time vortex.
Ianto ducked out to the SUV and came back with a hamper of food. "I thought we might stay. Provisions for later. Archie, is there a kitchen somewhere?"
Archie grinned. "Only the largest you've ever seen." He guided Ianto away, praising the culinary masterpiece that was the main kitchen of the manor house to someone who lived entirely on takeaway and caffeine.
As they returned to their task, Gwen sidled into the same room where Owen was working. "How are you doing, Owen? Only, this has to be pretty difficult to deal with, yeah?" She smiled kindly in the uneven light, flickering bulbs warning of the precarious electrical wiring installed throughout the older areas of the building.
"I'm fine." He kept the annoyance out of his voice. Gwen hadn't spoken to him much after they'd broken things off, until Jack went away and everything went to shit. These days she pretended nothing had ever happened, and had started mothering him along with the rest of the team. Even after Jack's return, she'd drop by for chats, or try to cozen them all into sing-a-longs in the car. She meant well. If Gwen sometimes mistook their top secret alien fighting organisation for a wayward Girl Guide troop, at least the biscuits were good.
"You've just done the one loop? Maybe it'll just be that, then."
"Sure." He offered her a quick smile. "Since you're here, can you help me inventory this room? We'll get done faster."
"My thoughts exactly." She dove right in, carefully marking off everything they found. Denebian flutes, three. Itching ray, origin unknown. Gr'nak herbicide, one kilo. Had there ever been any categorisation to this stuff?
He half-listened to Gwen's chatter as they worked, putting in grunts and nods as he thought appropriate. Wedding plans. Something her mum wanted her to reserve at the resort, and her bridesmaids agreed. An unexpected ache hit him in his sternum, caught in a quick memory of Katie fussing over dresses and table decorations and invitations for guests who never came.
"You know, Gwen, if I'm the one in a time loop, nothing you lot do matters. You could go right now and have one off with Captain Charm, and you wouldn't even feel guilty in the morning."
Gwen coloured red and looked as though she was about to punch him. Instead, she took a breath and said, "Good to know your experience hasn't changed you." She threw the inventory to the floor and stormed out.
Fine. He liked it quiet. After a few minutes, he knew he wasn't going to find anything. Too wound up, too annoyed. Whatever. He could stay here and not be bothered by concerned co-workers. God, he hoped he woke up tomorrow with whatever the fuck this was completed. He tried settling in for a nap, but woke almost immediately when Ianto came into the room.
His head swivelled, looking for Owen before finding him in his cosy little corner. His mouth turned in a disapproving frown. "If you're awake, Tosh has found something."
"Time loop?"
"The holoprojector you talked about." Ianto had remained sceptical all day about Owen's story. For the first time, he looked like he might actually believe Owen wasn't pulling some kind of prank.
"You lot play with the projector. I'm going to go back to searching."
"Pillows are in the chest down the hall," Ianto said.
"Fuck off."
By supper, none of them had found the time machine or whatever the fuck it was, and Gwen had worked out the basics of the stupid holoprojector. Whilst the others laughed and chatted in the ridiculously formal dining room, the large windows looking out onto the gathering snow, Owen prayed his day would end normally and turn into tomorrow.
He dove back into the storage areas with renewed vigour. Something in here had done this to him. Had to be. Much later, and still no luck, Archie helped them find the old bedrooms, of which there were plenty. The beds were musty and the sheets were forty years old, back from when this facility had still been active rather than a relic. The bedbugs colonies were probably older than some cities in the States.
"I have my own little room here," said Archie. "The office is in the city, but I like staying here of a night. Reminds me of better times."
Jack said, "You took over after the better times were almost done."
"Says you." He winked at Jack and turned in, wishing them all a good night. He unlocked five bedrooms. Owen half-expected Jack to suggest they pile into one room for safety's sake, and also for him to cajole them all into that orgy he'd been planning. But no. The girls went into their rooms, and Owen went into his, and he was positive the room next to his stayed empty, saving him from listening to two blokes fucking.
Now there was a thought. He knew if he knocked on Toshiko's door, tonight or any other night, she'd let him in. And that, he admitted to himself, was why he never did. He'd gone for Gwen because he'd known she loathed him, and herself for wanting him. That was a challenge, and challenge meant passion without emotion getting in the way of getting off. Tosh wanted emotion and shared breakfasts, and things Owen had no intention of ever experiencing again. Better to screw and sneak away. Better not to feel, and keep from feeling bad ever again.
Unable to sleep with these thoughts in his head, he had one himself and slipped into an unhappy sleep.
***
The Spice Girls woke him to tell him what he had to do to be their lover. Owen cracked his eyes open enough to see that he was back in his bed at the B&B. He punched the alarm until it broke, and settled back amongst the quilts.
Half an hour later, there was a knock on the door.
"It's going to snow, and the ghost artefact is in room seven. Call Archie."
"Owen."
He refused to answer, snuggling deeper into his blankets. Outside, he listened to one side of a conversation where Jack tried not to lose his temper with the director of Torchwood Glasgow.
"Owen? Say for a minute you're right. How did you know that?"
"I'm omnipotent."
The door broke down ten seconds later. Jack had his Webley out. The others hovered in the doorway. Owen blinked at them. He looked at Jack. "Time loop. I'm sleeping in."
Jack lowered his gun. He glanced at the rest of the team. "Take a walk. I need to have a talk with Owen."
"Skip it. You gave me the talk already." Owen rolled over. "You lot go play in the manor house. I'm staying here. Might go out for lunch." He refused to say another word.
When he was sure they'd gone, he pulled on his clothes. He stuffed the rest of his things into his duffle, grabbed a pastry from the table on his way out the door, and stepped into the cold September morning. There was the young mum, already down the road with her kiddies. The grannies were almost out of sight. The homeless bloke lurked in his usual place as Owen passed by, ignoring his muttered plea for spare change. Owen turned away from where the SUV had been parked and examined the vehicles he came across until he found an unlocked door.
Sliding into the driver's seat, Owen did his best to act like this was his car as he worked under the steering column. He hadn't lifted many cars in his youth, but he knew enough. Within five minutes, the car choked to life. Owen drove towards the highway. He could explain later. He just had to get out of this fucking village and get past the fucking time bubble. He could phone the team later.
He hit a patch of ice not a kilometre out of town. He had seconds to react, turning uselessly into the skid, mouth caught in an obscenity as he slammed into a tree.
***
"So tell me what you want, what you really really want!"
Owen swore.
He managed until breakfast and the tale of Archie and the missing loch. He excused himself back up to his room, where he shot himself.
Moments later, the Spice Girls told him what they really, really wanted. He spent the day feeling more hungover than usual.
***
On good days when he planned perfectly, he could go into Glasgow proper, but he was still stuck. He tried several times to buy his way onto a flight out of Scotland, but he never managed to get off the ground, and the one time he was desperate enough to steal a small private plane, he wound up dead.
He tried walking. He woke up in the same bed listening to the same song.
He tried sailing away on the Clyde. He drowned.
***
Time … passed.
It was impossible to track the passage of days, the same day again and again. He couldn't draw hash marks on his wall, or keep a diary, or write on his own skin, without greeting a bare, blank slate the next morning. He could keep a mental count, had he remembered to start before he lost track after at least a month of Fridays. The truth was, he couldn't recall how long he'd been here. He thought there had to be a difference from the very first day but fuck if he could sort it out.
Morning meant breakfast with the team and a trip out to Torchwood House accompanied by the weather report and Archie's apology. Owen would fuck around for about fifteen minutes, then go to the room where the fucking ghost holoprojector was, thus freeing up the rest of his day before the snow hit.
The young mummy with the kids was named Grace. She liked Oasis and sticky toffees, which Owen learned to fake an interest in around ten o'clock when she dropped the kiddies at pre-school. Their dads had left her when she was pregnant with each one, and she still hated Jim but Steve paid support on time and Grace missed him. She didn't ask a lot of questions. He could usually get into her knickers by noon, half-past on days he bought her lunch. Grace was wet and willing, making the same half-sob every day he slid into her for the first time. Owen tuned her out when she chatted after, taking in a light doze before he dressed and left her there shouting at him.
Finding further companionship wasn't any more difficult than avoiding Team Tossers with a little planning. Owen could meet up with Tamara MacCombe as she joined her mates for lunch at the pub, and he could eat out that night. Joscelyn Black worked on the committee for the Autumn Festival because her maiden Aunt Fran was the head, and Joscelyn was fucking amazing at head.
He spent what might have been months slouching his way from orgasm to orgasm. His days reset, leaving him satisfied and single every morning.
***
It was possible, if one spent several weeks and all his money, to purchase every Lotto scratchcard in a five kilometre radius. After that study, Owen could drop by three particular establishments and walk out with a total of five thousand pounds any time he wished, and a useless ticket in his pocket worth one hundred thousand he'd never be able to collect. As he didn't have to worry about investing in his future, he spent several more weeks discovering how much fun he could purchase in a single day.
This turned out not to be as much fun as he'd hoped. There were only so many more women he could impress flashing his extra cash around. The little village didn't have much of a night life. When he made it into Glasgow itself, he only wound up in trouble and often wound up dead. He could buy expensive meals for everyone he met, from the hot girls to Charlie the pan-handling hobo, but no one remembered or gave a shit the next day.
One day, he flicked open his mobile and began flipping through the contacts list. He would call his mother and he would tell her he was rich.
She would be impressed. Or she would be bored. She would say he'd finally made something of himself. Or she'd ask if he thought he was better than her. She'd ask him what he intended to do with the money, and remind him money couldn't buy one fucking minute of happiness unless he spent it on a whore. Or she'd ask him for a loan.
His hands shook as he reached her name. Before he could make himself press the number, he threw the phone against a wall, shattering it.
***
"So tell me what you want," said Ginger Spice, and Owen hit the alarm before Scary could get her say. He lay under the covers for a minute. Last night had been spent in Christie's flat, or was it Maisie's? No, Maisie had the distracting nystagmus, and Chrissie complained about her mum after sex. Kirstie's flat.
He got out of the bed he woke up in every morning, and for the first time in ages, decided he was bored enough to go in to work and search for what the fuck was causing this loop. He made his way downstairs, selected bacon and toast and several pastries, and then budged up a place at the Torchwood table.
"And then, Archie said, 'I swear, the loch was here yesterday!'" Jack laughed, the girls tittered, Ianto rolled his eyes. Just like every morning.
Owen said, "I don't intend to spend my day with three of you all bitchy from low blood sugar. Eat these." He shoved a large pastry each in front of Tosh, Gwen, and Ianto. "Prescription from your doctor."
***
Hiding the holoprojector was even easier than locating it every damn day. He had a nice spot behind three boxes where no one ever looked. Chuck it back in the corner, spend the rest of the day searching for his real problem. He started with random searches and realised rapidly that would get him nowhere, and only a methodical investigation in each room one by one would ever get him out of here.
He planned his days around searching, and the nights he didn't spend getting laid, he spent catching up on medical journals he'd meant to read, and trying unsuccessfully to teach himself extra-dimensional physics.
One snowy afternoon when he'd let the team find the holoprojector early, he wandered the shelves of the local library, vainly searching for the right book to read to get him out of this mess. As he turned a corner he'd turned a dozen times, he nearly crashed into a hot girl he didn't recognise. This was enough to startle him out of his thoughts. He'd met every hot girl in the village, and he knew every face in this library. He could set his watch by the exact minute each one would walk by.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
Behind her, an older bloke walked up in a hurry, all annoyance and grey eyebrows. "I told you this was pointless," he muttered in a local accent which didn't fool Owen for a second.
"I saw you. The first day we were here. I remember."
"Sorry, just leaving," said the hot girl with an absent smile. Owen grabbed her arm.
"Wait. You were here, and you haven't been here since." He was cracking up. He knew he'd been cracking up. Now the timeline was changing on him. "You're different!"
"Oh good, someone with half a brain," said Eyebrows. "Clara, I think we can break free of the bubble if we leave at the right time."
"It's a fucking time bubble!" Owen shouted, earning him stern glares from the approaching librarians. He ignored them. "You know about it!"
Clara tilted her head at him oddly. "Yeah. We know. But how do you?"
"I've been fucking stuck here for fucking months with you!"
Okay, the librarians were really quite close now, and very cross, and Owen didn't fucking care. He thought about his actual honest-to-fuck Torchwood training. He stared at Eyebrows. "You're the Doctor."
"Oh, you've heard of me?" Eyebrows asked, instantly flattered.
"Yeah, Jack can't fucking tell us enough."
"Sir," said Maisie Stephens. She was blonde and youngish and she'd worked at the library for six years and could be talked into bed with a lot of booze or a carefully-purchased book, "you are disturbing the other patrons. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"Jack?" asked Clara, confused. "I know that name."
"Yes," said the Doctor, frowning.
"Sir!" said Maisie.
"You cannot tell Jack I'm here. I'm not from the correct part of his timeline. If we meet now, it could jeopardise his future involvement with my timeline and interfere with the natural occurrence of...."
Owen had already jammed his finger in his ear. "Jack, the Doctor is here. We'll meet you outside the library in two minutes." He smiled at Maisie. "Sorry, miss. We'll be going."
He grabbed Clara's hand, assuming the Doctor wouldn't abandon another companion as easily as he had Owen's boss. He half-escorted, half-dragged her to the entrance. An out of breath Captain Jack came running round the corner just as Eyebrows stepped outside.
Owen was sure he heard Eyebrows mutter a swear word before he said, "Jack! Didn't expect to find you here."
Jack stopped short when he saw them, trotting closer. Behind him, Owen heard more running. The other three followed, Ianto closest at Jack's heels, and wouldn't that be fun to watch, eh?
"Doctor. Changed things up, have you?"
Eyebrows put on the fakest smile Owen had ever seen. "Nothing to worry about. How many time loops have you been through so far?"
"A thousand or so," said Owen, as Jack said, "What time loops?"
***
They retired to the pub. Jack and the Doctor sat opposite each other. Owen sat in the middle, getting peppered with questions. The rest of the little group clustered around exactly as Owen would have expected, with Ianto and Gwen flanking Jack, Clara at the Doctor's side and her skirt unfortunately hidden from view under the table. Tosh sat across from Owen giving him sympathetic smiles.
"We've been through twice before," Clara said around her wine spritzer. "We keep bouncing back here."
"Small fuss," the Doctor said, locking eyes with Jack. "Hardly a bother. We'll get out this time."
"Are you causing this?" Owen asked. He'd caught up the others briefly on his predicament. They had accepted, with varying degrees of grace, his explanation that he'd been tired of telling them every loop. Ianto still didn't seem to believe him, even with the Doctor sitting right fucking there, but currently he was too busy trying to signal Clara to stop casting flirting glances at You Know Who to bother rolling his eyes at Owen.
"We didn't," the Doctor said. "We came for a quick visit. Something you did must have trapped us here."
"I didn't do anything," said Jack reproachfully. "This is the first I've heard about it." He gave a sidelong look to Owen, but he'd accepted the update without comment. "By the way, when we're done here, I need a word with Owen."
"Got the lecture, thanks. Won't shag Captain Bad Touch any time soon." This earned him glares from around the table and a shrug from Jack.
"Do you have any ideas?" asked Clara. This was addressed not to Owen or the Doctor, but to Toshiko, whom she'd successfully identified as the only person in the room less concerned with who was shagging whom and more with who was fucking with space-time.
"I have to know more about what's going on." Tosh looked at Owen with a weak smile. "You said you've gone through hundreds of loops. Can you remember if you touched anything in the first one that would have done something like this?"
Owen shook his head. "I've been through my original room. I've been through the rooms you lot went through the first day. I can't find anything."
The Doctor asked, "Is there some lesson you need to learn? There are some semi-omnipotent beings floating around who ought to know better but love to put humans through the ringer." He grinned without humour. "Done it myself."
Owen sat back. Could this be a simple matter of having to repent his sins? "They're not specific enough for me to know. And why would you lot be trapped in here with me?"
"For them, it's just one day. We've bounced back in the TARDIS twice. But you, you're reliving day after day. Maybe you were a naughty boy." The Doctor leaned close, leering. "What did you do?"
Jack kept his distance now, watching the two of them. He glanced over at Clara. "I've met two regenerations so far. I've watched seven others from a distance. You've got yourself an odd one on your hands."
Clara sipped her wine spritzer. "So I've noticed."
After another round of drinks and many rounds of questions, they adjourned to the TARDIS. Jack gave a quick explanation to the team, which Tosh drank up, Gwen nodded along to uncomprehendingly, and Ianto ignored in favour of making sarcastic comments under his breath. Owen went to the control in the centre of the room, getting his hands slapped for his trouble as he reached out.
"No," said the Doctor, as if scolding a dog. "She's already upset." He twitched his head over his shoulder at Jack.
"Hey," Jack said, resting his own hand on the console in a fashion that would have got him arrested in half a dozen of the clubs in Cardiff. "The TARDIS and I go way back. She likes me."
"Will this fix the loop?" Owen asked, not wishing to hear about that one time, or several times, his boss shagged the time machine.
"Could be," the Doctor said distractedly, and he threw a lever Owen swore had only grown there that minute.
Several things happened at once. They involved sparks, screams, and a powerful sense of a powerful being angry at him in a powerful and very personal manner.
Owen closed his eyes.
"So tell me what you want, what you really really want!"
He opened his eyes in his borrowed bed in the B&B.
"FUCK!!!!!"
***
Chapter Three