Author's note: takes place somewhere between Countrycide and Out of Time. Mild spoilers for season 1 (They Keep Killing Suzie).
A guilty conscience needs no accuser
It wasn't something he liked to advertise, but Owen Harper did, in fact, have a conscience. As he sat in a small, badly-lit consulting room in Cardiff General Hospital at nine in the morning on a rare Sunday off, he cursed that fact. He could be at home, eating bacon butties in front of Match of the Day. But no, instead he was here, examining the procession of sad sacks that trailed through the hospital's GUM clinic in a Sunday morning with their halting tales of woe.
The Department of Genito-Urinary Medicine. There was a euphemism for you. Though he supposed if they called it The Department for Sorting Out Inadvisable Shags no-one would come. You might has well have described Torchwood as the Department for Stuff Humans Don't Want to Know About and Wouldn't Believe Anyway if You Told Them. Nah, that wouldn't fit on the SUV and anyway, 'Torchwood' was quicker when you wanted plod out of the way.
He wondered what Jack'd say, if he knew how Owen spent his Sunday mornings. There was a bit in his contract about not working for anyone else, but then again, there was another part about his duty to keep his professional skills in good order, and Jack'd never asked how he intended to do that. Some recent hospital experience was handy when re-registration came around. Owen supposed a weekly shift in A&E or the mortuary would be more relevant; he had thought about it, but not for long; he saw more than enough blood, guts and dead bodies during the week. And sex was always fascinating: the messes people got themselves into; the stupid lies they told. Yeah, Jack'd understand that part, all right.
Owen'd been here twenty minutes this morning and he'd already dealt with two lots of genital warts (one mild and one case of 'Oh my God, who needs aliens when Earth can come up with something this gross all by itself?') Then a split condom: pretty, in tears, long black hair and smudges of eyeliner and mascara where she'd not cleaned her makeup off the night before. Morning after pill for her and no moral lecture from him: God knew, the fact Cardiff wasn't thronged with little Owen Harpers was everything to do with the fact most birds were careful with this sort of stuff and absolutely nothing to do with his own skills in planning ahead.
"Better luck next time," Owen said, handing over the scrawled prescription and receiving a grateful smile in return. 'Get a grip, Harper, you twat,' he told himself sternly as he coudn't help noticing the cheeky flash of tits as she got up and left. A GUM clinic was no place to pick up your next shag. Only an idiot would even contemplate it.
Besides, didn't he have enough problems? 'We'd be amazing,' he'd said, and he'd been right – the sex was amazing. He had to try not to think about Gwen at all if he could or he'd suddenly have a hard-on, wherever he was: the dissection room at Torchwood; the middle of the checkout queue in Sainsbury's. No, he had no complaints about the sex and if it meant distracting visions of a naked, sweaty Gwen straddling him while he was piling curries for one onto the supermarket conveyor belt, it was a small price to pay.
What he hadn't banked on was the other stuff. The tears. The guilt (hers, obviously: Owen'd had learnt a long time ago that guilt was a useless emotion, that feeling bad wouldn't undo the thing you shouldn't have done and it certainly didn't stop you doing it again next time). The effect what they were doing was having at work. He'd been a plonker not to realise how much it'd bother him. It wasn't just the awkwardness with Toshiko or Jack's look of amusement when they flirted – he knew what was going on, of course he did – Jack always knew what was going on; it was downright annoying sometimes.
No, it wasn't that, it was the way Owen had his heart in his throat every time Gwen was in the line of fire. He could date it precisely, that feeling, to that night Suzie'd nearly killed her.
Owen'd watched the minutes tick off as Jack'd driven like the Stig up the motorway, and all the time a cold, dead feeling in his chest told him they would be too late. They damn near were, too. As he knelt on the slimy surface of the quay, holding Gwen's limp body and couldn't find a pulse, smells of seagull shit and mouldy seaweed and ozone all around and the morning sun far too bright, he wondered, not for the first time, how Jack could stand it, all this pointless death in the line of duty.
But she didn't die, not that time, and later that day, Owen took her back to his flat and into his bed and tried to commit every part of her to memory. Her eyes, her freckled skin; the part of her neck where it turned into shoulder. That wasn't just shagging; that was something else; something he wasn't too sure he wanted to put a name to.
The phone ringing outside on the reception startled him back to where he was, and he looked at the next name on the list. Rhys Williams. The name gave him a little jolt, but he told himself not to be so ridiculous. Common name, Rhys, and besides, who gave their real name in a GUM drop-in clinic? No-one with any sense, that was for sure.
The patient lumbered in and sat down in front of him in the single orange plastic chair, and a bubble of hysterical laughter nearly threatened to escape Owen's throat as he looked up. No way. This wasn't happening. That wasn't Gwen's boyfriend sat in front of him, uneasily perched on a plastic chair several sizes too small for his bulk. He reminded Owen of a dog he'd once seen in some guy's house; a great shaggy black Labrador crammed into a Victorian armchair, paws splayed over the edge.
Owen should hand over to a colleague; pretend he needed to take a leak. The doctors weren't supposed to see people they knew, anyway; strictly against the rules, that. But Rhys had no idea who he was, and squashing down a feeling of disgust at himself, Owen knew he wasn't going to send him away.
"What seems to be the trouble?" he asked, as reassuringly as possible.
"Well, it's the waterworks," Rhys said, eventually, as though it was the most embarrassing thing he'd ever had to admit. Gradually, the story came out, with patient questioning from Owen. He could be patient, when it was in his interests.
The girlfriend worked a lot. She'd been working late a couple of Fridays ago, and Rhys had gone out drinking, with some mates, just with the boys from work. He wasn't sure what'd happened; a bet. But he'd woken up somewhere he didn't live, and it wasn't at one of his mates' houses, either. And now he had this burning feeling when he peed…
"So, have you told your girlfriend about this?" Owen asked casually, spinning round on his chair to fetch a new syringe from the pile in the drawer.
"No!" said Rhys, sounding traumatised. "She'd lamp me one. She thinks I slept on Gareth's sofa."
Well, I don't know, thought Owen, stripping the plastic off the syringe and chucking it in the bin. She might just be more understanding than you'd think. Two Fridays ago, Gwen had been working, that much was true. They'd chased a Weevil all the way round the docks and finally trapped it down by the containers, but it'd disappeared into the Rift again.
Full of frustration and adrenalin, Owen'd screwed Gwen right there, up against the rusty metal of the container, her legs round his waist and her gasps of pleasure mingling with the slap of salty water against the concrete edges of the quay behind them. Then they'd gone back to his place and had a shower to get the mingled sweat and Eau-de-Weevil off, had a row about the rust marks on Gwen's favourite black leather jacket and well, basically, neither of them got any sleep that night.
"It's probably nothing," Owen said, as Rhy shifted nervously on the uncomfortable plastic seat. "Make a fist." He swabbed Rhys's meaty forearm and tapped the syringe to get the air out. Shame this one hadn't been in the woods the other week; the cannibals wouldn't have given the rest of them a second look if they'd had the prospect of this for their freezer. He drew blood from the vein, and Rhys looked away. Owen methodically labelled the sample and handed over a plastic cup with a lid.
"There's a Gents in the reception," he said. "Use this and put in the blue tub by the door as you go out. Mind you get the lid screwed on tight. The receptionists hate swabbing up pee before lunch on a Sunday. Ruins their whole day."
He rummaged in the drawer for a clinic leaflet. "Call this number in a week and they'll have the results for you. You don't have to give a name or anything. And try not to worry." To his surprise, he found he meant it. "I see people here every week; hundreds of them. Everyone does stuff like this when they've had a few; it doesn't mean you're a bad person."
Rhys thanked him, took the leaflet and left the room, looking marginally comforted.
Why did Gwen's other half have to be a nice guy, someone he could imagine going for a beer with? Why couldn't he be a twat?
Yeah, Owen Harper had a conscience. He might keep it for special occasions, but it was going to take a hell of a lot more genital wart prescriptions to make him feel good about himself today.