Ficlet: Barely Coping
May. 11th, 2026 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Barely Coping
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Owen, Katie.
Rating: PG-15
Word Count: 950
Spoilers: Fragments. Set pre-series.
Summary: Owen knows his coping mechanisms are unhealthy, he just doesn’t care.
Written For:
rionaleonhart’s prompt ‘Any fandom, any character, bad coping mechanisms’, at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Owen Harper was a doctor, and proud to be. He’d put himself through medical school, survived residency, with all that entailed, had done everything he needed to do to legally title himself Owen Harper M.D. He knew better than most the dangers of drinking too much and sleeping around, and yet he still did both, practically every night.
And okay, he used protection because he wasn’t a complete moron; he didn’t need to pick up an STD, or get some drunk, careless girl pregnant, especially when he had no intention of ever seeing any of the girls he slept with a second time; he had no interest in relationships. He just wanted no strings attached sex, and he didn’t much care who it was with, just as long as she was legal and willing. Casual was the name of the game: no exchange of phone numbers, no promises, no expectations, no hurt feelings or morning after regrets. Not on his part, anyway. He couldn’t speak for the girls.
No matter how it looked, he wasn’t some misogynist with no interest in women beyond their ability to satisfy his lusts; he’d done the relationship thing already, he’d loved and then he’d lost, in the most tragic way possible, and that was why he was so intent on blotting everything out every night. He had to, just so he could sleep without dreaming of her, so he could make it through one night, and the next, and the next, without her memory torturing him with everything he’d lost and all the plans they’d made, the dreams they’d shared, the future that should have been theirs. If she’d lived, they would have been married by now, maybe getting ready to start a family…
Katie Russell. Smart, funny, sexy Katie, who could swear like a trooper, loved taking long bubble baths, couldn’t keep a houseplant alive for more than a month, watched crap telly, got giggly and silly whenever she drank tequila, said dolphins were her favourite animal, but Owen came a close second… Katie, who he’d loved almost from the moment they were first introduced. Katie, who’d fallen in love with him even though she could’ve done a lot better. Katie, who’d said yes when he’d asked her to marry him, hands shaking so badly with nerves that he’d almost dropped the ring. Katie, who’d died senselessly, her quick wit and bright personality chipped away more and more each day, all because some parasitic fucking alien had used her brain as an incubator for its young. She’d been his world, his future, his reason for living, and then she was gone, and ever since that day…
Getting drunk every night might not be doing his liver, or his bank balance, any favours, but why should he care? The booze dulled the pain of losing his fiancée, while shagging his way through every halfway decent looking bird in Cardiff gave him companionship of a sort for a little while. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could even pretend it was Katie, not some anonymous skirt he wouldn’t even recognise if they ran into each other again. Most of the time he didn’t even bother asking their names, half afraid one of them would say ‘Katie’ and rip his heart wide open again. He was a doctor, and anonymous sex was what the doctor ordered; all the benefits and none of the heartbreak.
As a doctor, his advice to someone in his situation would have been to quit the booze and seek grief counselling, because overindulging in alcohol wasn’t going to help in the long run, but who would give a fuck if he drank himself into an early grave anyway? His mother hated him, his dad had run off with some other woman when he was five, and he didn’t have any other relatives. Katie would have cared, but Katie was gone, and he felt her absence every second of every fucking day, and it was never going to stop hurting. All he could do was try to blot out the memories in any way that worked, and if he went so far off the rails that he got his medical licence revoked, what would it matter? What use was being a bloody doctor anyway, if he couldn’t even save the woman he’d adored?
Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered dragging himself out of bed every day, or at least most days, and going to the Hub, hungover and feeling like death, only to be berated by Jack, pitied by Tosh, and mostly ignored by Suzie. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered going out every night to drink and shag and pass out in some anonymous stranger’s bed, or to go home and collapse into his own bed for a few hours’ drunken slumber, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.
In the end, all he was doing was marking time while shaving a few years off his life, but what else was there to do? If there was no point to anything he did, he might as well just carry on doing what he was doing. Apathy in action; he was an automaton, repeating the same moves over and over because it was easier to do that than to make the effort it would take to change.
The best part of him died when he lost Katie. Now he was coping, just barely, even if his chosen method wasn’t what anyone would describe as healthy. It would do for now, and for the foreseeable future. Maybe someday he’d care enough about himself to come up with a better alternative, but he wouldn’t count on it.
The End
And okay, he used protection because he wasn’t a complete moron; he didn’t need to pick up an STD, or get some drunk, careless girl pregnant, especially when he had no intention of ever seeing any of the girls he slept with a second time; he had no interest in relationships. He just wanted no strings attached sex, and he didn’t much care who it was with, just as long as she was legal and willing. Casual was the name of the game: no exchange of phone numbers, no promises, no expectations, no hurt feelings or morning after regrets. Not on his part, anyway. He couldn’t speak for the girls.
No matter how it looked, he wasn’t some misogynist with no interest in women beyond their ability to satisfy his lusts; he’d done the relationship thing already, he’d loved and then he’d lost, in the most tragic way possible, and that was why he was so intent on blotting everything out every night. He had to, just so he could sleep without dreaming of her, so he could make it through one night, and the next, and the next, without her memory torturing him with everything he’d lost and all the plans they’d made, the dreams they’d shared, the future that should have been theirs. If she’d lived, they would have been married by now, maybe getting ready to start a family…
Katie Russell. Smart, funny, sexy Katie, who could swear like a trooper, loved taking long bubble baths, couldn’t keep a houseplant alive for more than a month, watched crap telly, got giggly and silly whenever she drank tequila, said dolphins were her favourite animal, but Owen came a close second… Katie, who he’d loved almost from the moment they were first introduced. Katie, who’d fallen in love with him even though she could’ve done a lot better. Katie, who’d said yes when he’d asked her to marry him, hands shaking so badly with nerves that he’d almost dropped the ring. Katie, who’d died senselessly, her quick wit and bright personality chipped away more and more each day, all because some parasitic fucking alien had used her brain as an incubator for its young. She’d been his world, his future, his reason for living, and then she was gone, and ever since that day…
Getting drunk every night might not be doing his liver, or his bank balance, any favours, but why should he care? The booze dulled the pain of losing his fiancée, while shagging his way through every halfway decent looking bird in Cardiff gave him companionship of a sort for a little while. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could even pretend it was Katie, not some anonymous skirt he wouldn’t even recognise if they ran into each other again. Most of the time he didn’t even bother asking their names, half afraid one of them would say ‘Katie’ and rip his heart wide open again. He was a doctor, and anonymous sex was what the doctor ordered; all the benefits and none of the heartbreak.
As a doctor, his advice to someone in his situation would have been to quit the booze and seek grief counselling, because overindulging in alcohol wasn’t going to help in the long run, but who would give a fuck if he drank himself into an early grave anyway? His mother hated him, his dad had run off with some other woman when he was five, and he didn’t have any other relatives. Katie would have cared, but Katie was gone, and he felt her absence every second of every fucking day, and it was never going to stop hurting. All he could do was try to blot out the memories in any way that worked, and if he went so far off the rails that he got his medical licence revoked, what would it matter? What use was being a bloody doctor anyway, if he couldn’t even save the woman he’d adored?
Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered dragging himself out of bed every day, or at least most days, and going to the Hub, hungover and feeling like death, only to be berated by Jack, pitied by Tosh, and mostly ignored by Suzie. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered going out every night to drink and shag and pass out in some anonymous stranger’s bed, or to go home and collapse into his own bed for a few hours’ drunken slumber, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.
In the end, all he was doing was marking time while shaving a few years off his life, but what else was there to do? If there was no point to anything he did, he might as well just carry on doing what he was doing. Apathy in action; he was an automaton, repeating the same moves over and over because it was easier to do that than to make the effort it would take to change.
The best part of him died when he lost Katie. Now he was coping, just barely, even if his chosen method wasn’t what anyone would describe as healthy. It would do for now, and for the foreseeable future. Maybe someday he’d care enough about himself to come up with a better alternative, but he wouldn’t count on it.
The End
