Torchwood: Fanfic: What comes next

[m_findlow]

Title: What comes next
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 726 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for oneill's prompt "Any, any, going for a run at two in the morning" at fic_promptly
Summary: Owen never expected death to hurt this much

Owen lay there staring up at the roof in the darkness. Boredom. He was so bored. There was nothing he hated more than being bored. Well, that's what he used to believe. This was somehow worse.

He couldn't sleep. Not just right now in the immediate present, but ever. He was dead, and dead men didn't sleep. He was beginning to learn that there were a lot of things dead men couldn't do. All around him was the sound of silence. Even in the middle of the night there were usually sounds somewhere; the backfire of a car, drunken hooligans wandering the streets aimlessly, goading rubbish bins to take them on, a wail from an overnight freight train off in the distance. But tonight there was nothing. It was as if the whole world had died with him. The silence and the nothingness was killing him, pardoning the pun.

He flipped on the television to try and kill some time, but all he found were endless ads promoting late night adult phone lines. That was even more grating. What would he do with a woman on the other end of the phone, talking dirty to him whilst he lay there, unable to react to any of her teasing and moaning?

Hungry. He couldn't even feel that. Couldn't raid his fridge and force together whatever he had left into some semblance of edible: ham, tomato sauce, pickled onions, wholemeal bread. A complete meal. Dead men didn't eat, nor could they drink themselves into oblivion to pass the time.

He thought about going to the hub, but then he remembered it was the middle of the night; 2am to be precise. He could probably sneak in unnoticed, but then again it might be just as likely that Jack and Ianto weren't asleep in bed. They could be shagging their hearts out right now for all he knew. That pissed him off even more. Why did they get to shag when he couldn't? Right now, he couldn't even luxuriate in the feeling of the satin sheets underneath him.

He shoved himself off the bed. He didn't know where he was going but he had to get out before he went stir crazy. Stepping out into the darkness he looked left and right, seeing the stillness of the night, bathed in sodium light. He strolled down the length of the street and around the corner. It was a night for frost. The chill bothered him in the sense that he couldn't feel it. He'd always moaned about the weather and now he couldn't even do that.

He quickened his pace and before he knew it, he was running, feet pounding the pavement in an endless rhythm as he counted off the steps. The further he ran, the angrier he got. By now he should have been starting to breathe hard, a light sweat breaking out over his skin and slipping down the curve of his spine. He ran across the bridge over the river and headed towards the city centre, passing along street after street, all of it a blur in the speed and darkness.

He growled; something he shouldn't have had breath for. The air rushed past him but he couldn't feel its cold touch. A light rain began but he couldn't feel the water slapping his face either as he ploughed through it. Where was that familiar buzz of adrenaline? He never thought he'd miss the burn in his lungs, the ache in his legs, the twinging pain of the stitch in his side, and the heat of the lactic acid building up in his calves. He never realised just how much he'd loved the pain associated with running. It was the rush that made him feel alive, that cleared his turbulent thoughts by distracting him with physical pain.

By the time his thoughts had stopped swirling around in his head like a violent cyclone, he found himself standing outside the front of the Millennium Centre, its prophetic words glistening white against the blackness of the sky overhead. How had that happened? It was seven miles from his flat and yet didn't feel any of it. The gravity of the situation finally hit him. He was dead. He was never going to feel anything ever again. So why, if he couldn't feel anything, did it hurt so much?