Zombie Love:

Making it Work

Chapter Two

The Facts of Life, Such As It Is

Out in the kitchen, Owen tried not to be angry as he waited for the kettle to boil. Tosh should have said something sooner, certainly before she became hypothermic; but she was trying to be sensitive and not hurt his feelings. Try as he might, he couldn't get her to understand that the only real pleasures he had in life now were psychic thrills and one of the biggest was simply making her happy. It bothered him that she couldn't believe that was important to him.

He thought he'd finally gotten through to her when they'd sorted out snogging. With the bitter taste of adrenaline flooding her mouth as she, Owen, and Jamie Burton fled Duroc, Tosh apparently hadn't noticed anything strange about Owen's kiss when he snogged her to get the alien lock picking device away from her. When he'd kissed her good night after their first date, she'd given a little yelp, which he mistakenly took for a sound of delight. So naturally, he'd been a bit put out when he'd planned their next date around a chick flick and a bowl of popcorn on his sofa and she'd turned her head to offer him her cheek every time he leaned in for a kiss.

Determined that they would start snogging in earnest as soon as the credits rolled, Owen muted the volume and turned to Tosh. As he slid his right arm around her waist and his left hand into her hair and pulled her to him, she shoved the popcorn bowl into his gut. He didn't feel it except as an obstruction, so he didn't fully realize how hard she was trying to use it to make him keep his distance. Taking it from her hands and setting it on the coffee table, he pulled her close again and pressed his lips to hers.

His tongue met barred teeth and she pushed him away with a muffled grunt.

"God, Owen! What do you think you're doing?"

"Well, I thought I was going to kiss my girlfriend, but she appears to have other ideas," he replied sarcastically. "If there's some backwards Japanese custom about consenting adults not kissing on the second date, tell me and I will honour it; but I'm not superstitious that way, so if I'm doing something wrong, you need to let me know."

"Backward?" Tosh gasped in shock. "Superstitious?" Giving him a slap that would have stung mightily if he had been able to feel it, she barked, "Twat!"

As it was, Owen stared at her implacably. "Well, then, what is it?" he demanded. "Because I'm pretty sure we've known each other long enough to be snogging by now."

"I – I – It's nothing," Tosh insisted. "I just . . . I don't feel like it."

"Why? Have you had root canal lately? Do you have a crown coming loose?" he teased. "I've got it! You don't want me to find out you wear dentures!"

She couldn't resist the smirk he was giving her and with a chuckle asked, "Do want to get slapped again?"

Owen grew serious. "No, but I do want to know why you won't let me kiss you," he said. "I mean, if you're having second thoughts . . . well, I can't say I won't be hurt, but I . . ."

"Oh, no, it's not that!" Tosh hurried to reassure him. "It's just that I . . ."

"Please don't lie to me," Owen insisted when he saw her averting her eyes.

Tosh sighed and met his gaze. "If you must know, your mouth is terribly dry. It makes your tongue feel like an emery board, and . . . Owen I'm sorry, but you taste like meat that's just a little off."

"Now, don't sugar coat it, Toshiko," he said. "Tell me how you really feel."

Scowling, Tosh said, "I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

"And you really think telling a zombie that he tastes of rancid meat would hurt more than rejecting him every time he tried to kiss you?" Owen asked.

"I was hoping to think of a solution before I had to tell you."

"I see," he nodded sagely and then gave her an impish smirk. "Epic fail." The he just continued to smirk at her as she stuttered and stammered and tried to think of something to say and then finally dissolved in a fit of giggles when she realized she hadn't crushed his sometimes-fragile self-esteem.

Finally catching her breath, she sat upright and asked him, "So it seriously doesn't upset you, what I said?"

Owen shrugged. "I'm not happy about it, but what's to get upset about, really? It's just a fact of . . . for lack of a better word, life, such as it is."

"So, what do we do now?" she asked.

Owen went unnaturally still and Toshiko recognized it immediately as his thinking posture. Where another man would scratch his head or his cheek or rub the back of his neck when thinking, Owen, because his body didn't feel itches or tension the way it used to, would just sit still and cogitate. Tosh was beginning to fidget, another thing Owen never did anymore because he didn't feel nervous energy, when he finally answered.

"Well, you're a genius and I'm bloody brilliant, so I guess now, we fix it."

And that was just what they did. Within two weeks, they had a long-lasting, ingestible lubricant with a mild topical anaesthetic to numb Tosh's taste buds to Owen's faint tang of rotting flesh. It could be mixed with any ordinary extract from the baking aisle at the nearest Tesco, but Tosh preferred some of the more exotic flavours from the Indian and Chinese groceries down the block. It was the perfect solution to their problem and they were both pleased that their colleagues hadn't even seemed to notice the amount of Torchwood time they had devoted to their personal research.

Then, on the day Owen declared the final formula complete in a private IM to Toshiko, to his chagrin and Tosh's abject mortification, Jack came bounding out of his office requesting a sample.

Owen snorted a laugh as he turned off the whistling kettle and started making the tea. He had been mildly embarrassed by the incident. Toshiko had been infinitely humiliated. It had taken her days to be able to look her colleagues in the eye again, but that hadn't stopped her from letting him snog her three nights that first week.

TBC