for justprompts... Third wheel

The Cardiff night rests heavily over the city.

The cold whip of the rain trails across Gwen's skin, like an icy finger, like death tickling down the curve of her neck.

She shivers.

The rain washes the streets, the puddles ripple beneath the remaining drops that fall. Ahead of her, Jack and Ianto trot, buried deep in the warmth of their jackets. They lean into one another now and again, brushing their arms together and swerving around puddles.

Gwen struggles against the biting air, and the two figures seem to move further ahead.

She wonders how they feel the absence. For Gwen, there should be footsteps beside her, the overwhelming splash of boots through street water. There should be the shouting of five voices through the rain and night air, all laughing and tripping and joking.

Instead, now and again rises a mutter she can grasp between the two ahead, and a word or two here and there that loses its meaning in the wind.

She says nothing.

They have each other. She has them, sometimes, but mostly it is quiet and lonely, the cups of coffee cooling on the desks and muted whispers across halls. She always sits on the opposite side of the boardroom table from them. It was never deliberate. Just how things worked out.

A splash on the street grabs her attention, and when she looks up, Jack beckons to her. "Come on, Gwen!" he shouts, he smiles, and she smiles back. She trudges through the forming flood, her trainers soaked, her jacket wrapped taut around her body.

He turns back to Ianto, his lips forming lost words.

"I'm coming," she offers, and it is stolen by the wind.

She never quite catches up.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Third wheel
Verse: Canon/Open
Word Count: 287

I'm on with everyone now...

for relativeprompts... "Now that the universe is ending…"

Now that the universe is ending, she thinks a lot about Rhys.

Not that she hadn't before. After all, when you live, laugh, and sleep with someone, they tend to become an innate part of your existence.

But there were times when she could banish him from her thoughts. When work was really awful. When the world seemed to weigh upon her like a mountain. When she was sleeping with Owen.

It wasn't that he was ever far, but he skirted on the outline of her memory. Like a child, grasping to the rails of a ice skating rink, afraid to let go and fall from the safety of his grasp into the cold.

Now that the universe is ending, she thinks about him constantly.

Stupid things, she knows. Like how he'll miss Wife Swap when she doesn't get home in time to record it. How he will sit, alone in thier flat, comforted by the flickering television, waiting for her to come home. And she won't, and she'll call of course, and she wonders if he grasps the phone in his broad hands and tosses it back and forth without ever looking. If he waits attentively for it to ring and jumps, anyway, when she finally calls.

She does her job, like normal, talks to her workmates, like normal. Everything is like normal except for the strange, constant knowledge that, for once, he is always in the back of her mind.

She fights the obvious, heartbreaking truth. The fact that, for years, she had grown so used to him, she had taken him for granted. She clung to him like a habit. He would always be there, waiting on the rails of her mind, patiently, until she took his hand again.

Now she goes home and grasps his hand in her own. She curls close to him, resting against his body, feeling his breath tickle her hair, his heartbeat thumping against her ear, the smell of him surrounding her. She holds him, appreciating every bit of him, and in the morning, she hesitates just a bit longer before she lets him go again.

It's all she can do not to cling to him longer.

Now that the universe is ending.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: "Now that the universe is ending…"
Verse: Canon/Open
Word Count: 370
Notes: This is my first for relativeprompts. Please tell me if I broke any rules.