Owen headed back to his place with a sheepish smile on his lips and a pang of true admiration in his heart. This is one hell of a woman I've gotten myself tangled up with, he mused. Comparing her to a particularly fine Scotch was a huge understatement. Never in his life had he felt such electricity with someone from the very first moment, and he marveled at the chain of circumstances that had brought him to this place. Back on leave after a particularly grueling tour in the sandpit, he'd elected to make a quick trip home to see his folks in San Francisco when his connecting flight out of Sea-Tac had been canceled due to fog on the other end. San Francisco International was a shitty airport to have to fly into because the weather was a mess more often than not, and this was not the first time something of this type had happened, so Owen had a backup plan in the form of a favorite hotel and a few entertainment possibilities. Still in uniform from his flight stateside, he had rented a car and was heading over to the hotel when the accident happened that had landed him smack in the middle of a trauma and into the capable hands of one Cristina Yang.
When he thought about it, the odds of this working out differently, resulting in them never meeting, were mind-blowing. She could have been off that evening, or he could have made a yellow light that he had barely missed, thus avoiding the accident completely. Would they have still run into each other eventually? Probably not. If he had not gotten that job offer from the Chief that evening, he would probably have chosen a different city once he was discharged. Seattle was ok, but there were lots of other places to find work and he would likely have ended up in one of them due to weather, salary, or traffic considerations. If he was honest with himself, he had pursued the position to see what, if anything, might happen with her. The pull he'd felt when he'd first met her had been too hard to resist, and he had been drifting so badly at that point that it seemed as good a lifeline as any.
Owen pulled into the garage of his building and got out of the car. He took the stairs to his 4th floor apartment, more to burn off some of his excess sexual energy than anything else. Thankfully his lecture to Cristina about not having control over outcomes had not extended to this arena. You poor slob, he smiled ruefully to himself as he rounded the last landing, you've really got it bad, don't you? How the hell did you ever manage to keep it in your pants tonight, Hunt?
He unlocked the door and stepped into his cold and lonely apartment. The place had not seemed so bad before the prospect of being with Cristina had become more of a reality. Life is short, he thought. Enough bullshit. Time to start living it again.