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torchwood fic: dance without sleeping
It's possible I'll regret posting this while the new episode is actually airing. :) But, I can't sit on it any more! Lots and lots of love to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
azarsuerte and urbanbluesky for looking this over and pointing out some of my more obvious American word choices. Any errors that might remain are mine and mine alone!
Title: Dance Without Sleeping
Pairing: Jack/Gwen
Rating: R
Spoilers: None specific, maybe "They Keep Killing ..." if you squint.
Summary: Ten years after joining Torchwood, Gwen still lives with its particular demons. So does Jack. Sometimes, the demons are all they have to keep them company.
After ten years, Gwen still wasn’t sure when Jack was kidding.
“Biggest head you’ve ever seen,” he was telling Padma, their new secretary, when Gwen walked into his office. “I mean, this thing was just a gigantic head, tall as me, in a big jar. Creepy as hell, but rumor has it that he’s the oldest living creature in the universe. I always wondered if he had a whole body, a million years ago or so, and it just rotted away as he got older. Wouldn’t that be odd?”
“Remind me to never rule out plastic surgery,” Padma said dryly. Without turning to look at Gwen, she held out a file. “Results on the search for Alice Drysdale. No living relatives, never married, had a tumor removed from her leg six years ago. Oddly enough, that’s about when the reports of disappearing wild dogs started cropping up.”
Gwen stepped forward so that she could see the perfectly serious expression on Padma’s face. “Her tumor caused the wild dogs?”
“Unlikely. But I’m not fond of coincidences, either. Should I give the file to Andrew to look into it?”
Gwen handed it back and nodded. “Please. And find out when Maria will have the results on those soil samples.”
Padma nodded to both of them, before turning on her heel and walking out of the office. Jack watched her retreating form. “She always wears skirts. Ever wonder what her ass would look like in jeans?”
“Can’t say that I have, no.”
“Such a limited mind.” Jack tsked, then motioned to the empty chair across from him. “Tumor. Wild dogs. Theories?”
Ten years had stretched Gwen’s mind enough that she spoke almost automatically. “The avatars of the Minexian warriors were dogs. Do you think they came back through the Rift? They did protect people who were too ill to care for themselves.”
“Good thought, but if Alice has been healthy for six years, why are they still here?”
The conversation continued, and only in a tiny corner at the back of her mind did Gwen still wonder how this all had become routine. Ordinary, even, to puzzle a reason why ghost dogs had mauled a bicyclist in a quiet Cardiff neighborhood.
Across from her, Jack leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on his desk. His face was still as handsome and smooth as the day she’d sat across from him in a pub, that first time. Would be, apparently, when Gwen was old and wrinkled. Unfair, is what it was, even if he would trade every weird superpower he had for the ability to die. Gwen touched her own face, without thinking. Forty approached, and she’d started seeing lines around her eyes. Padma was more than a decade her junior … “Was I ever that young?” she said suddenly, interrupting Jack’s thought about talismans that could bind some alien race or another into animal form.
“That young … what?”
“As Padma. Sometimes I can’t believe I was ever that young.”
Jack smiled. “You’re all just children. Barely alive, at that. Hardly past your first baby steps, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Does that make you a dirty old man?”
“God, I hope so.”
Gwen smiled at his familiar leer. In this job, sexual harassment was a welcome reminder. Of life – of what passed for normalcy. Maybe, sometimes, of love.
Sometimes, Gwen was mostly sure she’d gone mad.
***
Gwen prodded Padma to come out for a drink after work. It had become a ritual to get the new secretary drunk after the pterodactyl ruined their first desk. (The last one – secretary, that is – had gotten trashed on four pints and announced to the entire bar that she was heading off to behead a prehistoric creature so that she could mount its head on her wall. The next morning, Jack sent her back to London with a heavy dose of retcon and a note that said “try again”.) Padma, however, sipped her wine carefully. Only after the third glass did she start to tell Gwen stories.
“My parents loved Wales,” she said, rather wistfully. “My father went to university in Cardiff, and fell in love with it. They used to rent a little house down here for our holidays, and they always swore that they’d retire down here when they could. The air is so much cleaner than in London, they said. They always felt healthier and happier when they were down here.”
“What happened to them?” Gwen asked. The past tense never boded well for a happy ending.
“Car crash. Just over a year ago. Feels like a lifetime, some days. Like today.” Padma looked over her glass, dark eyes shining.
“I’m sorry.” Gwen took a sip of her own drink, then shook her head. “This job, it does that, doesn’t it? Makes normal life seem like some sort of far-off dream?”
“It’s a blessing, really,” Padma said. “Normal life … hurts. It’s messy.”
“More so than pterodactyl droppings?”
“Much.”
The women laughed, and Gwen leaned her elbows on the table. “So, you asked for the transfer to Cardiff, then?”
“Actually, no.” Padma signaled the waitress to bring another round. “I was still working in London, just going through the motions, really, when Mr. Jones came to see me. He asked how I’d like making tea for a cave full of mad people. I told him it couldn’t be that much different than what I was doing there, except that I’d be sure to have a good cup of tea. I had no idea what it was about until the dossier on Torchwood Three landed on my desk the next day.” The corners of her mouth quirked upwards. “I’m grateful to him, really. My parents would be happy to see I’m living in Wales, you know, except for the whole part about the aliens.” She considered her statement; the tiny smile turned into a full blown grin. “No, no, not even that would deter my dad. If I’d told him there were bunches of aliens in Cardiff, he would’ve been down here with a camera and a butterfly net before I could finish my sentence. I miss him – them, but you know what the damnedest thing is, Gwen? It feels like it might be all right now. Even considering the pterodactyl shit.”
The next morning, Gwen dashed off a quick email to Ianto – “Thanks. For Padma.” The response came almost immediately. “Welcome. I’m almost sorry I sent her– whoever made the coffee this morning ought to be fired immediately.” When she told Jack why she was laughing, he made a face. “Serves him right for going corporate on us.” The bitterness, Gwen knew, was real, even if Jack would never admit it.
Padma was right. Aliens were easy. People – real, human people – hurt.
***
“The Americans want to know if we’ve ever seen an alien that looks like a bipedal cow,” Andrew called from across the room.
Gwen furrowed her brow. “Not in my experience, admittedly limited. Jack?”
“I’ve seen a bipedal equine race, but not a cow. Like, black and white spotted, goes ‘moo’, the whole shebang?”
“Apparently. They’re all stumped.”
Gwen gave it five minutes – an overestimation, because in three and a half minutes, her email notification popped up. “It is NOT a bipedal cow. Jeremiah is an idiot. The black spots were just dirt. I’m off to observe the autopsy – more later!”
“Tosh says it’s not a cow,” she told the room. “Or, at least, it doesn’t actually look like one. So ignore Jeremiah’s message.”
“As usual,” Jack muttered.
When Gwen came back from lunch, she had a longer email waiting.
Gwen –
So, this thing hasn’t got a heart! At least, not one that any of us can identify as such. Isn’t that interesting? I’ve never observed any mostly sentient, organic creature that didn’t have something that we could prove anchored some sort of circulatory system. Edward can’t wait to compare his notes with the Torchwood files. I bet we’re going to have to fight like hell to keep London from taking it from us, though. I wonder if Ianto will help us hide our computer searches?
Anyway. How’s life back in Cardiff? Anything new and exciting happening this week? Out here, if Edward and Callie and I can get the weekend off, we’re going to drive to the Grand Canyon. I can’t believe I’ve been working in Nevada for three years without ever seeing the Grand Canyon. Shows how often we get off the base here! I’ll send pictures if we make it there.
Give my regards to Jack. Miss you!
Love,
Tosh
Above her desk, Gwen had posted a photo of Tosh and her coworker Callie, posed on some mountain or another in the Rockies. More than three years since the American government had decided to call on Torchwood for help identifying some of their decades-old alien artifacts – Tosh had been one of the first volunteers to jump continents, shocking Jack and Gwen. Tosh had given Jack an entire spiel about scientific discovery and historical curiosity, but later, she’d confided in Gwen. “I feel like I’ve lost my soul, down here,” she said. “All that’s happened … maybe it’ll be different over there.”
Apparently, it was. Gwen envied her, every once in a while.
She didn’t give Jack Tosh’s regards.
***
Everyone sat at the table, recovering from a too-late dinner and chatting about everything except disappearing wild dogs, when Andrew suddenly sat up straight and contemplated his glass of whiskey. “It’s the 15th,” he announced.
“For another hour, yes,” Jack answered. “So what?”
Maria nodded at Andrew and held out her glass. “We almost missed it this month. That’s what we get for being down in the dungeon.”
“What’s so special about the 15th?” Padma wondered.
“Do you remember Nina Crichton?” Andrew asked her.
Padma nodded. “The girl who helped the two Beran prisoners escape.”
“I heard about that,” Jack said. “I always thought they were pretty stupid for trying to contain Berans in the first place. I figured someone up there in London had to know that Berans have the ability to influence human minds. Otherwise, I would have told someone.”
Maria shot him a look – bitterness, Gwen wondered? “That would have been helpful information. They started a firefight in the storage room, trying to find their information pods. Three of our team members were killed.”
Jack simply shrugged. Andrew ignored him and held up his glass in a toast. “It happened on the 15th. We remember them every month, same day … figured it was appropriate; the whole damned thing was started by a traitor, and the Ides of March and all. Anyway.” He closed his eyes. “To Michael Taylor.”
“To Regina Mason,” Maria added.
“And to Christopher Abdullah.” Andrew started to bring his glass down to drink, then held it back up and looked over at the end of the table, where the other three stared down at them. “Any of you lose anyone in the line of duty? Torchwood seems to do that to people.”
Padma shook her head. “I’ve been lucky that way. But I’ll toast your friends.” She held up her glass.
Gwen and Jack exchanged a look. “We’ve lost two, since I’ve been here,” she said softly.
“One,” Jack corrected, his face going hard. “We’ve lost one in the line of duty. Only one.” He fixed his gaze on Gwen. “Traitors don’t count.”
Gwen simply closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye, she could see the amber liquid of her scotch swirling around ice cubes as she held it up. Amber liquid, and red blood, and dark dirt smears on pale skin. She spoke quickly, to drown out the sound of death in her ears. Her voice was nearly a whisper, and didn’t help at all. “To Owen Harper.”
“To Owen,” Jack echoed. Gwen knew that his glass held water, but that he’d break out his own bottle of scotch when he went back to his office.
The table drank, and Gwen felt Jack’s hand on her leg, underneath the table. She opened her eyes and met his gaze. His face had softened. She shook her head at him.
“Can I ask,” Maria said, swallowing the last of her drink, “what happened to your Owen? I’m just curious.” Her voice was tentative. Looking for a connection. A bond. Gwen knew that she and Jack seemed insular to the newer members of their team. They knew things – had seen things – that no one from London’s clean and ordered office could possibly understand. Explanations were fruitless. No words could describe it.
Gwen didn’t realize she’d pushed back from the table until she heard Padma’s voice calling after her, softly. She didn’t stop, however, until she’d reached the sink, where she attempted to scrub the blood off of her hands, blood that had been under the surface of her skin for more than five years. From afar, she heard Jack. “Leave her. And no, Maria, you can’t ask.”
***
Gwen didn’t know when her relationship with Jack had changed.
Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew precisely when sex had entered the equation. Three years ago, just after Tosh left, the day she’d been out shopping and run into Rhys. Rhys, his wife Helen, and their beautiful toddler, Bronwen. Bronwen had her mother’s blonde hair and her father’s open-hearted smile, and Gwen had managed a smile for her and a hug for Rhys, congratulating him. She couldn’t quite bring herself to speak to Helen, with her overly large mouth and pretty green eyes. The woman Gwen would never be, not now.
She’d come into work late that evening, told their secretary – was it Clive at that point, or was it Teresa? – she needed to finish some reports, and had headed immediately for Jack’s office and his private alcohol stash. She no longer kept any at home - not after she’d smashed a window and ended up in the emergency room. It was better that way, when nightmares of Owen could show up at any point in time.
She sat in Jack’s chair and drank from his glass, and didn’t hear him come up behind her until his hands were on her shoulders, warm and comforting, like he’d done a hundred times before. She leaned into him, and suddenly the pressure was different. Heavier. She looked up at him, and a moment later, his lips were on hers. Hot. Seeking.
Alive.
They sought each other out, when life was needed. Gwen figured, in some ways, Jack needed her more than she needed him, but eventually their needs blended into each other, so that she was no longer sure where his scars ended and hers began. Not that she knew what half his scars were. The ones she already knew about were bad enough. He could keep the rest of them to himself. She wasn’t strong enough.
Gwen found Jack in his office that night, after everyone else had gone home – she’d sent Padma on her way after refusing an offer of a drink, nice girl, but she just couldn’t help this ache – and, when he leaned back in his chair, straddled his lap without a word. His mouth found the hollow of her throat immediately, and his teeth scraped skin hard enough to cause a gasp. Jack knew, by now, that her nightmares didn’t care for gentle. Pain washed away pain.
Her t-shirt came up over her head, tangling around her wrists long enough that Jack could lean over to her breasts before she had a chance to capture his mouth like she wanted to. The feeling of his mouth, warm and wet, on her nipple made her squirm, but she moaned softly from frustration. She needed to taste him. He tasted like no other man she’d ever kissed. He tasted like this place, this job … like she was drowning in it, suffocating. She craved it.
He refused her his mouth, however, until they were both naked and sweating, until she was poised to take him inside of her and ride until her mind was blank and numb. Only then, when they were on the verge of forgetting where they were, did he kiss her. To remind her, maybe. To anchor her. His tongue and his cock invaded her body at the same time, and she buried her hands in his hair to make sure he stayed there. She needed this. She needed as much of him as possible. She needed to drown.
They moved in rhythm for minutes – hours – days – fused at every juncture, eyes wide open and daring the other to blink, until finally Gwen’s body plummeted over the edge in a wave of shudders and tiny sighing noises. She buried her face in his shoulder and barely felt when he shuddered to a stop.
Once, a while before, as she’d dressed and prepared to go home, he asked, “Why do you stay here?”
T-shirt in hand, she turned to stare. “What?”
“Everyone else has gone. Why do you stay?”
She laughed, and tried not to make it sound as humorless as it felt. “Where else would I go, Jack? This is home.”
He stood up, naked and unashamed, and cupped her cheek with his palm. “Home’s not always a place, you know. Home is people, or at least, so I’m told.”
“I know.” She reached up to touch his face, then pulled back and pulled her shirt over her head.
This time, she stayed curled up in his lap until her leg fell asleep. She cursed when the thousands of tiny pinpricks caused her to stumble against his desk as she tried to stand up. Jack chuckled and reached out to steady her. “Feeling better?”
“I guess.”
“Thanks for the compliment, there.”
She made a face at him. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Before she moved out of reach, Jack grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “Go home and get some sleep,” he said. “We have an appointment to talk to Alice Drysdale in the morning.”
“Have we figured out where her wild dogs are coming from?”
“Maria thinks that someone’s dumped LSD in the water supply over there, judging by the content of the soil, but I’ve never heard of an acid trip that would make seven different people see the same imaginary dogs. I still wonder if the Minexians have something to do with it.”
“Well, won’t know until we get there, I guess.”
“Come on, don’t you even have a guess? A wager?”
“I wager that, whatever it is, it will eventually require us to teach Padma where we keep the real first aid kit.”
“Pessimist.”
Gwen finished dressing and smiled as she slung her purse over her shoulder. “Good night, Jack.”
Jack sat in his chair, naked, as vulnerable-looking as Gwen ever saw him. Still, his vulnerability came with a thin sheen of carelessness, a casual-looking quirk of his lips that made Gwen want to ask where his defenses came from. If he could teach her how to replicate them. He winked at her. “Sweet dreams.”
She appreciated the thought, but as usual, it would be better to wish her no dreams at all. After ten years, pure darkness was the sweetest sight of all.
azarsuerte and urbanbluesky for looking this over and pointing out some of my more obvious American word choices. Any errors that might remain are mine and mine alone!Title: Dance Without Sleeping
Pairing: Jack/Gwen
Rating: R
Spoilers: None specific, maybe "They Keep Killing ..." if you squint.
Summary: Ten years after joining Torchwood, Gwen still lives with its particular demons. So does Jack. Sometimes, the demons are all they have to keep them company.
After ten years, Gwen still wasn’t sure when Jack was kidding.
“Biggest head you’ve ever seen,” he was telling Padma, their new secretary, when Gwen walked into his office. “I mean, this thing was just a gigantic head, tall as me, in a big jar. Creepy as hell, but rumor has it that he’s the oldest living creature in the universe. I always wondered if he had a whole body, a million years ago or so, and it just rotted away as he got older. Wouldn’t that be odd?”
“Remind me to never rule out plastic surgery,” Padma said dryly. Without turning to look at Gwen, she held out a file. “Results on the search for Alice Drysdale. No living relatives, never married, had a tumor removed from her leg six years ago. Oddly enough, that’s about when the reports of disappearing wild dogs started cropping up.”
Gwen stepped forward so that she could see the perfectly serious expression on Padma’s face. “Her tumor caused the wild dogs?”
“Unlikely. But I’m not fond of coincidences, either. Should I give the file to Andrew to look into it?”
Gwen handed it back and nodded. “Please. And find out when Maria will have the results on those soil samples.”
Padma nodded to both of them, before turning on her heel and walking out of the office. Jack watched her retreating form. “She always wears skirts. Ever wonder what her ass would look like in jeans?”
“Can’t say that I have, no.”
“Such a limited mind.” Jack tsked, then motioned to the empty chair across from him. “Tumor. Wild dogs. Theories?”
Ten years had stretched Gwen’s mind enough that she spoke almost automatically. “The avatars of the Minexian warriors were dogs. Do you think they came back through the Rift? They did protect people who were too ill to care for themselves.”
“Good thought, but if Alice has been healthy for six years, why are they still here?”
The conversation continued, and only in a tiny corner at the back of her mind did Gwen still wonder how this all had become routine. Ordinary, even, to puzzle a reason why ghost dogs had mauled a bicyclist in a quiet Cardiff neighborhood.
Across from her, Jack leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on his desk. His face was still as handsome and smooth as the day she’d sat across from him in a pub, that first time. Would be, apparently, when Gwen was old and wrinkled. Unfair, is what it was, even if he would trade every weird superpower he had for the ability to die. Gwen touched her own face, without thinking. Forty approached, and she’d started seeing lines around her eyes. Padma was more than a decade her junior … “Was I ever that young?” she said suddenly, interrupting Jack’s thought about talismans that could bind some alien race or another into animal form.
“That young … what?”
“As Padma. Sometimes I can’t believe I was ever that young.”
Jack smiled. “You’re all just children. Barely alive, at that. Hardly past your first baby steps, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Does that make you a dirty old man?”
“God, I hope so.”
Gwen smiled at his familiar leer. In this job, sexual harassment was a welcome reminder. Of life – of what passed for normalcy. Maybe, sometimes, of love.
Sometimes, Gwen was mostly sure she’d gone mad.
***
Gwen prodded Padma to come out for a drink after work. It had become a ritual to get the new secretary drunk after the pterodactyl ruined their first desk. (The last one – secretary, that is – had gotten trashed on four pints and announced to the entire bar that she was heading off to behead a prehistoric creature so that she could mount its head on her wall. The next morning, Jack sent her back to London with a heavy dose of retcon and a note that said “try again”.) Padma, however, sipped her wine carefully. Only after the third glass did she start to tell Gwen stories.
“My parents loved Wales,” she said, rather wistfully. “My father went to university in Cardiff, and fell in love with it. They used to rent a little house down here for our holidays, and they always swore that they’d retire down here when they could. The air is so much cleaner than in London, they said. They always felt healthier and happier when they were down here.”
“What happened to them?” Gwen asked. The past tense never boded well for a happy ending.
“Car crash. Just over a year ago. Feels like a lifetime, some days. Like today.” Padma looked over her glass, dark eyes shining.
“I’m sorry.” Gwen took a sip of her own drink, then shook her head. “This job, it does that, doesn’t it? Makes normal life seem like some sort of far-off dream?”
“It’s a blessing, really,” Padma said. “Normal life … hurts. It’s messy.”
“More so than pterodactyl droppings?”
“Much.”
The women laughed, and Gwen leaned her elbows on the table. “So, you asked for the transfer to Cardiff, then?”
“Actually, no.” Padma signaled the waitress to bring another round. “I was still working in London, just going through the motions, really, when Mr. Jones came to see me. He asked how I’d like making tea for a cave full of mad people. I told him it couldn’t be that much different than what I was doing there, except that I’d be sure to have a good cup of tea. I had no idea what it was about until the dossier on Torchwood Three landed on my desk the next day.” The corners of her mouth quirked upwards. “I’m grateful to him, really. My parents would be happy to see I’m living in Wales, you know, except for the whole part about the aliens.” She considered her statement; the tiny smile turned into a full blown grin. “No, no, not even that would deter my dad. If I’d told him there were bunches of aliens in Cardiff, he would’ve been down here with a camera and a butterfly net before I could finish my sentence. I miss him – them, but you know what the damnedest thing is, Gwen? It feels like it might be all right now. Even considering the pterodactyl shit.”
The next morning, Gwen dashed off a quick email to Ianto – “Thanks. For Padma.” The response came almost immediately. “Welcome. I’m almost sorry I sent her– whoever made the coffee this morning ought to be fired immediately.” When she told Jack why she was laughing, he made a face. “Serves him right for going corporate on us.” The bitterness, Gwen knew, was real, even if Jack would never admit it.
Padma was right. Aliens were easy. People – real, human people – hurt.
***
“The Americans want to know if we’ve ever seen an alien that looks like a bipedal cow,” Andrew called from across the room.
Gwen furrowed her brow. “Not in my experience, admittedly limited. Jack?”
“I’ve seen a bipedal equine race, but not a cow. Like, black and white spotted, goes ‘moo’, the whole shebang?”
“Apparently. They’re all stumped.”
Gwen gave it five minutes – an overestimation, because in three and a half minutes, her email notification popped up. “It is NOT a bipedal cow. Jeremiah is an idiot. The black spots were just dirt. I’m off to observe the autopsy – more later!”
“Tosh says it’s not a cow,” she told the room. “Or, at least, it doesn’t actually look like one. So ignore Jeremiah’s message.”
“As usual,” Jack muttered.
When Gwen came back from lunch, she had a longer email waiting.
Gwen –
So, this thing hasn’t got a heart! At least, not one that any of us can identify as such. Isn’t that interesting? I’ve never observed any mostly sentient, organic creature that didn’t have something that we could prove anchored some sort of circulatory system. Edward can’t wait to compare his notes with the Torchwood files. I bet we’re going to have to fight like hell to keep London from taking it from us, though. I wonder if Ianto will help us hide our computer searches?
Anyway. How’s life back in Cardiff? Anything new and exciting happening this week? Out here, if Edward and Callie and I can get the weekend off, we’re going to drive to the Grand Canyon. I can’t believe I’ve been working in Nevada for three years without ever seeing the Grand Canyon. Shows how often we get off the base here! I’ll send pictures if we make it there.
Give my regards to Jack. Miss you!
Love,
Tosh
Above her desk, Gwen had posted a photo of Tosh and her coworker Callie, posed on some mountain or another in the Rockies. More than three years since the American government had decided to call on Torchwood for help identifying some of their decades-old alien artifacts – Tosh had been one of the first volunteers to jump continents, shocking Jack and Gwen. Tosh had given Jack an entire spiel about scientific discovery and historical curiosity, but later, she’d confided in Gwen. “I feel like I’ve lost my soul, down here,” she said. “All that’s happened … maybe it’ll be different over there.”
Apparently, it was. Gwen envied her, every once in a while.
She didn’t give Jack Tosh’s regards.
***
Everyone sat at the table, recovering from a too-late dinner and chatting about everything except disappearing wild dogs, when Andrew suddenly sat up straight and contemplated his glass of whiskey. “It’s the 15th,” he announced.
“For another hour, yes,” Jack answered. “So what?”
Maria nodded at Andrew and held out her glass. “We almost missed it this month. That’s what we get for being down in the dungeon.”
“What’s so special about the 15th?” Padma wondered.
“Do you remember Nina Crichton?” Andrew asked her.
Padma nodded. “The girl who helped the two Beran prisoners escape.”
“I heard about that,” Jack said. “I always thought they were pretty stupid for trying to contain Berans in the first place. I figured someone up there in London had to know that Berans have the ability to influence human minds. Otherwise, I would have told someone.”
Maria shot him a look – bitterness, Gwen wondered? “That would have been helpful information. They started a firefight in the storage room, trying to find their information pods. Three of our team members were killed.”
Jack simply shrugged. Andrew ignored him and held up his glass in a toast. “It happened on the 15th. We remember them every month, same day … figured it was appropriate; the whole damned thing was started by a traitor, and the Ides of March and all. Anyway.” He closed his eyes. “To Michael Taylor.”
“To Regina Mason,” Maria added.
“And to Christopher Abdullah.” Andrew started to bring his glass down to drink, then held it back up and looked over at the end of the table, where the other three stared down at them. “Any of you lose anyone in the line of duty? Torchwood seems to do that to people.”
Padma shook her head. “I’ve been lucky that way. But I’ll toast your friends.” She held up her glass.
Gwen and Jack exchanged a look. “We’ve lost two, since I’ve been here,” she said softly.
“One,” Jack corrected, his face going hard. “We’ve lost one in the line of duty. Only one.” He fixed his gaze on Gwen. “Traitors don’t count.”
Gwen simply closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye, she could see the amber liquid of her scotch swirling around ice cubes as she held it up. Amber liquid, and red blood, and dark dirt smears on pale skin. She spoke quickly, to drown out the sound of death in her ears. Her voice was nearly a whisper, and didn’t help at all. “To Owen Harper.”
“To Owen,” Jack echoed. Gwen knew that his glass held water, but that he’d break out his own bottle of scotch when he went back to his office.
The table drank, and Gwen felt Jack’s hand on her leg, underneath the table. She opened her eyes and met his gaze. His face had softened. She shook her head at him.
“Can I ask,” Maria said, swallowing the last of her drink, “what happened to your Owen? I’m just curious.” Her voice was tentative. Looking for a connection. A bond. Gwen knew that she and Jack seemed insular to the newer members of their team. They knew things – had seen things – that no one from London’s clean and ordered office could possibly understand. Explanations were fruitless. No words could describe it.
Gwen didn’t realize she’d pushed back from the table until she heard Padma’s voice calling after her, softly. She didn’t stop, however, until she’d reached the sink, where she attempted to scrub the blood off of her hands, blood that had been under the surface of her skin for more than five years. From afar, she heard Jack. “Leave her. And no, Maria, you can’t ask.”
***
Gwen didn’t know when her relationship with Jack had changed.
Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew precisely when sex had entered the equation. Three years ago, just after Tosh left, the day she’d been out shopping and run into Rhys. Rhys, his wife Helen, and their beautiful toddler, Bronwen. Bronwen had her mother’s blonde hair and her father’s open-hearted smile, and Gwen had managed a smile for her and a hug for Rhys, congratulating him. She couldn’t quite bring herself to speak to Helen, with her overly large mouth and pretty green eyes. The woman Gwen would never be, not now.
She’d come into work late that evening, told their secretary – was it Clive at that point, or was it Teresa? – she needed to finish some reports, and had headed immediately for Jack’s office and his private alcohol stash. She no longer kept any at home - not after she’d smashed a window and ended up in the emergency room. It was better that way, when nightmares of Owen could show up at any point in time.
She sat in Jack’s chair and drank from his glass, and didn’t hear him come up behind her until his hands were on her shoulders, warm and comforting, like he’d done a hundred times before. She leaned into him, and suddenly the pressure was different. Heavier. She looked up at him, and a moment later, his lips were on hers. Hot. Seeking.
Alive.
They sought each other out, when life was needed. Gwen figured, in some ways, Jack needed her more than she needed him, but eventually their needs blended into each other, so that she was no longer sure where his scars ended and hers began. Not that she knew what half his scars were. The ones she already knew about were bad enough. He could keep the rest of them to himself. She wasn’t strong enough.
Gwen found Jack in his office that night, after everyone else had gone home – she’d sent Padma on her way after refusing an offer of a drink, nice girl, but she just couldn’t help this ache – and, when he leaned back in his chair, straddled his lap without a word. His mouth found the hollow of her throat immediately, and his teeth scraped skin hard enough to cause a gasp. Jack knew, by now, that her nightmares didn’t care for gentle. Pain washed away pain.
Her t-shirt came up over her head, tangling around her wrists long enough that Jack could lean over to her breasts before she had a chance to capture his mouth like she wanted to. The feeling of his mouth, warm and wet, on her nipple made her squirm, but she moaned softly from frustration. She needed to taste him. He tasted like no other man she’d ever kissed. He tasted like this place, this job … like she was drowning in it, suffocating. She craved it.
He refused her his mouth, however, until they were both naked and sweating, until she was poised to take him inside of her and ride until her mind was blank and numb. Only then, when they were on the verge of forgetting where they were, did he kiss her. To remind her, maybe. To anchor her. His tongue and his cock invaded her body at the same time, and she buried her hands in his hair to make sure he stayed there. She needed this. She needed as much of him as possible. She needed to drown.
They moved in rhythm for minutes – hours – days – fused at every juncture, eyes wide open and daring the other to blink, until finally Gwen’s body plummeted over the edge in a wave of shudders and tiny sighing noises. She buried her face in his shoulder and barely felt when he shuddered to a stop.
Once, a while before, as she’d dressed and prepared to go home, he asked, “Why do you stay here?”
T-shirt in hand, she turned to stare. “What?”
“Everyone else has gone. Why do you stay?”
She laughed, and tried not to make it sound as humorless as it felt. “Where else would I go, Jack? This is home.”
He stood up, naked and unashamed, and cupped her cheek with his palm. “Home’s not always a place, you know. Home is people, or at least, so I’m told.”
“I know.” She reached up to touch his face, then pulled back and pulled her shirt over her head.
This time, she stayed curled up in his lap until her leg fell asleep. She cursed when the thousands of tiny pinpricks caused her to stumble against his desk as she tried to stand up. Jack chuckled and reached out to steady her. “Feeling better?”
“I guess.”
“Thanks for the compliment, there.”
She made a face at him. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Before she moved out of reach, Jack grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “Go home and get some sleep,” he said. “We have an appointment to talk to Alice Drysdale in the morning.”
“Have we figured out where her wild dogs are coming from?”
“Maria thinks that someone’s dumped LSD in the water supply over there, judging by the content of the soil, but I’ve never heard of an acid trip that would make seven different people see the same imaginary dogs. I still wonder if the Minexians have something to do with it.”
“Well, won’t know until we get there, I guess.”
“Come on, don’t you even have a guess? A wager?”
“I wager that, whatever it is, it will eventually require us to teach Padma where we keep the real first aid kit.”
“Pessimist.”
Gwen finished dressing and smiled as she slung her purse over her shoulder. “Good night, Jack.”
Jack sat in his chair, naked, as vulnerable-looking as Gwen ever saw him. Still, his vulnerability came with a thin sheen of carelessness, a casual-looking quirk of his lips that made Gwen want to ask where his defenses came from. If he could teach her how to replicate them. He winked at her. “Sweet dreams.”
She appreciated the thought, but as usual, it would be better to wish her no dreams at all. After ten years, pure darkness was the sweetest sight of all.