Disoriented Cosmos {A Torchwood Story} [COMPLETED]

30. We All Need Some Spice In Winter

Winter falls on Cardiff overnight - all of a sudden the streets are permanently white instead of wet (but also still wet), and on Queen Street stalls are being set up bearing various gifts and knick-knacks.

My second ever Christmas. Well, that I know of.

As they did last winter, Tosh and Jack hang up twinkly lights around the railings of the Hub and place funny dancing Santas and elves on everyone's desks, obviously to Suzie's disagreement. But you can't disagree with the boss, especially since last week he saved your ass from a Weevil that had enough brains to creep silently for once. So she lets it go, and more than once Owen has to run to the front door masquerading as an information desk and listen to bad singers warble through the same songs over and over that he calls Christmas Carols, even though it's only November.

"Are they named after a woman called Carol?" I ask him after the fourth call, and Tosh laughs good naturedly at me.
"No! Carol used to mean dance or celebration; the people who sing Christmas carols are celebrating winter and want to share it with their fellow men."
"Why would you celebrate winter? It's bloody freezing," Suzie remarks, shivering at her desk to prove her point. I feel a little stab of sympathy for her - I'm told that Christmas is a time for family and togetherness, and poor Suzie barely has a family anymore. I don't need to listen in on her private conversations with Jack to know that her father's cancer is getting worse, and her siblings refuse to talk to her because of him. I don't know why though.

"Well I think it's a good bit of fun, and we should keep doing it," Jack says, slinging his arm round my shoulder and giving me a cheerful side hug. "You know," he begins, holding a finger in the air, "it's Welsh tradition at Christmas to take a horse's skull round everyone's houses and sing with it, and if you lose the singing challenge, the skull comes into your house and takes all your alcohol."
"Bull!" Owen remarks, and our boss shakes his head.
"I read about it, seriously. Well, I might've gotten some stuff wrong, but that's the gist of it. You have a rap battle with a skeleton and if you lose it gets your booze. Hey, that rhymes!"

We all groan as Jack begins to say cheesy rhymes and we turn back to our work. I decide to abandon my filing on reports of something called Bad Wolf and skip down to the lab to see Owen. Not for any particular reason; I just want to.

My flatmate is hunched over a dissected corpse, analysing it with a fine-brush scanner. I whistle to alert him to my presence, and immediately he looks over his shoulder to me and smiles that crooked grin I kind of melt for by now.
"Well if it isn't Evy."
"Evelina," I correct automatically, although the name might actually be growing on me by now. I hop down the steps and peer over his shoulder. "That guy has nice legs."
"What?" he says incredulously. "How can a skeleton have nice legs? They're bones!"
"Well maybe they have nice bones," I retort with a smirk, crossing my arms, and Owen puts the scanner down and leans his back on the table. He crosses his arms too.
"What do you want Evy?"

I open my mouth, about to say some funny comeback, but strangely it doesn't come to me. All I can think about is him. I want to say that I want... him.
What the fuck? Here I am, a year out of a drug ring, wanting to do various things that just popped into my head with my flatmate-with-benefits. Something must not be right; around him, I'm not thinking straight. Oh my God, is this what sexual attraction feels like? The throbbing in my body attests to the fact that, indeed, it is.

He's still staring at me, a little concerned by now, so I just say, "I'm going home," and run up the steps.
I shovel some paperwork into my bag so I can say I'm working from home, say goodbye to Tosh, then run by the coat rack to grab my jacket and go through the cog door.
I opt for the stairs, too much energy to wait for the lift, and once I'm outside the inconspicuously normal looking door I run up one of the docks and yell.

This is what I call sexy panic.

I scream out all my frustrations at Owen and my past and my own weird abnormal self to the water, and the soft breeze carries them away. I stay a few more moments, getting my breath back. I don't know what's wrong with me: I'm feeling things I can't remember ever having before; I can't remember my life before a drug ring; I can't even tell what I'm going to do next.

I stalk back to my flat, head down even when I'm crossing roads, unable to think about anyone else but Owen. And how much I want him.

I want him so much.

I don't know where this has all come from, but I want Owen so badly I can't stop expelling all my boundless energy. I keep thinking of his mouth and his tongue, and if given the chance where his mouth and tongue would travel, and would it travel quickly or slowly, and while his mouth and tongue were moving where would his hands be, would they be in the same place or in different places, and how long would it take him to figure out the parts of me that are more sensitive, the parts that I would willingly let him explore in.

I can't take it anymore. As soon as I hear his keys in the door hours later, I'm up off the sofa I've been sitting in conflict on, and as soon as he opens the door I've jumped on him and we're kissing urgently, passionately, as if we've just been biding our time for this to happen. I hear the door bang shut behind him and his hands start to move along my back and feeling my hair and spine and ass. When he gets to my ass I jump in shock and he moves his hand away and secures it to my waist where he knows it's okay instead. My lips land on his again and he starts walking to my bedroom, where he sits me down gently on the bed then takes off his shoes and sits down next to me. I go to kiss him again, my hands stopping just short of the hem of polo ready to take off, but he moves away just slightly. His face is wary.

"Evelina? Are you sure you want to do this with me? After everything?"
I look at him. I don't know why, but right now he is every hope I've had for a normal life.
"Most definitely."