I've Got Love To Keep Me Warm
Title: I've Got Love To Keep Me Warm
Author: catalinacat
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen-ish, Gwen/Rhys
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: from redismycolour. Lyrics from the song "Winter Weather" by Benny Goodman & Peggy Lee
Summary: How could she be so blind as to not see what was right in front of her? She was a bloody fool.
Warnings: AU from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.
A/N: This is for Day Five of redismycolour. It's part of the same AU verse "Life's A Circus" that was started with the first prompt :)
Gwen never considered herself to be a particularly wild sort of person.
Yeah, she went to her fair share of parties back during Uni, but who didn’t?
And sure, she’d had a few flings and one night stands, but that all stopped after she met Rhys.
Hell, even joining the police had been a bloody accident.
She had been looking for an art show that her friend was in when she got horribly lost and somehow ended up at an open house at the Police Headquarters, and next thing she knew she was being addressed as PC Cooper and handing out parking tickets.
Then he came along and turned her perfectly normal life upside down and inside out.
And that just wasn’t bloody fair! No one should have to know that there are aliens out there - for real, not just some fourteen year old geek’s idea of a good internet hoax - and that they manage to almost destroy Earth on a pretty much daily basis.
It was just bizarre. And so, so not what she needed.
Not when she was just realizing that maybe marriage wouldn’t be so bad and ‘baby’ wasn’t sounding like such a foreign word.
So how on earth did she go from that perfectly normal life with a nice apartment and a fabulous boyfriend-who-might-just-become-fiancé-in-the-near-future to not batting an eye if someone were to tell her that there was a giant space whale in an abandoned warehouse nearby and that she should probably go and save it now.
Jack bloody Harkness, that’s how.
One look into his eyes - and Christ, the way he smelled like something out of this world - and she was back to grade school, the wide-eyed girl fawning after the hottest guy at school.
She never could pinpoint exactly where she lost sight of right and wrong and starting thinking more and more about what one night with Jack would be like.
It was only after she realized that when she came it wasn’t Rhys’ name that almost spilled from her lips that she felt a little guilty.
It wasn’t fair - not to Rhys, not to herself.
Nothing could ever come of it, ever.
That’s what she told herself, a little motto or mantra that she chanted whenever Jack walked into the room, but it was getting harder and harder to listen and she found herself wondering why exactly it couldn’t happen.
Somewhere along the way, she stopped caring about the consequences and starting thinking more and more of how exactly she would lure Jack in.
In hindsight, Gwen realized that Ianto never even crossed her mind. Not once.
She supposes she should feel guilty about that, too, but she can’t really find it in her.
Gwen’s all used up on the guilt-trip, thankyouverymuch. Better luck next time.
But then, of course, Jack went and abandoned them.
Gone for months without a word, then swept back in without so much as a by-your-leave and expecting to be welcomed back with open arms.
She wants to, God she wants nothing more than to take him in her arms and kiss him until he can’t breathe, until he’s screaming her name under him.
But she can’t; it’s not right, it’s not fair.
So she pushes him, hard, and relishes in that moment of contact, fleeting as it was.
And the way he looks at her, so attentive, so focused she thinks that maybe he thought of her while he was gone and was finally going to do something about it.
But then he goes and asks Ianto out on a date in the next breath and suddenly she’s a wild animal in her rage.
Owen and Tosh, they can see it and wisely slip away.
They always noticed her looks of longing for Jack, they knew the things she felt. Never could hide a thing from them.
When Ianto turns Jack down she tries not to gloat and tries to suppress the way her heart feels like it just swelled to twice the size of her chest, but it’s a half-hearted attempt and fails miserably.
And then, later, when Jack asks to speak to her in his office, alone, she tries not to fantasize. Really, she does.
But it’s impossible when the man standing before positively exudes sex and eroticism, and so she gives up and instead imagines all the things she’d like to do to him on that desk he’s standing behind.
The next thing she knows, he’s speaking to her as if he would speak to a lover, running his hand down her arm.
And it’s amazing, because it’s what she’s been dreaming about since she first saw him, the first thought in the morning and the last one at night.
But somehow, it’s wrong.
She can’t pinpoint what it is exactly that’s wrong about it until she hears the unmistakable sound of a coffee mug shattering outside the door and she sees the look of pure heartbreak on Ianto Jones’ face.
That’s when it clicks, when all the pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place.
She is Gwen Cooper, member of Torchwood Three, fiancée of Rhys Williams, and those are just the facts of her life.
She gets it now - understands that she never really loved Jack, it was just a kind of escapism from work, some effort to try to keep Rhys from feeling the bulk of the frustration that Torchwood managed to unload on its employees.
How could she be so blind as to not see what was right in front of her?
She was a bloody fool.
Gwen met Jack’s equally horrified eyes and whispered, “I’m so sorry, I have to go” before she ran from the room and practically flew out the door in an effort to get home to Rhys.
She had been so distant for so long, and now that she could see the truth, Gwen badly wanted to make it up to Rhys.
I’m so sorry, my love. So sorry.
And as she drove through the streets in her little car, she noticed that though the air was at frigid temperatures, she felt no cold.
But she wasn’t surprised - she had love to keep her warm, and it had never been so strong as it was now.
Author: catalinacat
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen-ish, Gwen/Rhys
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: from redismycolour. Lyrics from the song "Winter Weather" by Benny Goodman & Peggy Lee
Summary: How could she be so blind as to not see what was right in front of her? She was a bloody fool.
Warnings: AU from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.
A/N: This is for Day Five of redismycolour. It's part of the same AU verse "Life's A Circus" that was started with the first prompt :)
Gwen never considered herself to be a particularly wild sort of person.
Yeah, she went to her fair share of parties back during Uni, but who didn’t?
And sure, she’d had a few flings and one night stands, but that all stopped after she met Rhys.
Hell, even joining the police had been a bloody accident.
She had been looking for an art show that her friend was in when she got horribly lost and somehow ended up at an open house at the Police Headquarters, and next thing she knew she was being addressed as PC Cooper and handing out parking tickets.
Then he came along and turned her perfectly normal life upside down and inside out.
And that just wasn’t bloody fair! No one should have to know that there are aliens out there - for real, not just some fourteen year old geek’s idea of a good internet hoax - and that they manage to almost destroy Earth on a pretty much daily basis.
It was just bizarre. And so, so not what she needed.
Not when she was just realizing that maybe marriage wouldn’t be so bad and ‘baby’ wasn’t sounding like such a foreign word.
So how on earth did she go from that perfectly normal life with a nice apartment and a fabulous boyfriend-who-might-just-become-fiancé-in-the-near-future to not batting an eye if someone were to tell her that there was a giant space whale in an abandoned warehouse nearby and that she should probably go and save it now.
Jack bloody Harkness, that’s how.
One look into his eyes - and Christ, the way he smelled like something out of this world - and she was back to grade school, the wide-eyed girl fawning after the hottest guy at school.
She never could pinpoint exactly where she lost sight of right and wrong and starting thinking more and more about what one night with Jack would be like.
It was only after she realized that when she came it wasn’t Rhys’ name that almost spilled from her lips that she felt a little guilty.
It wasn’t fair - not to Rhys, not to herself.
Nothing could ever come of it, ever.
That’s what she told herself, a little motto or mantra that she chanted whenever Jack walked into the room, but it was getting harder and harder to listen and she found herself wondering why exactly it couldn’t happen.
Somewhere along the way, she stopped caring about the consequences and starting thinking more and more of how exactly she would lure Jack in.
In hindsight, Gwen realized that Ianto never even crossed her mind. Not once.
She supposes she should feel guilty about that, too, but she can’t really find it in her.
Gwen’s all used up on the guilt-trip, thankyouverymuch. Better luck next time.
But then, of course, Jack went and abandoned them.
Gone for months without a word, then swept back in without so much as a by-your-leave and expecting to be welcomed back with open arms.
She wants to, God she wants nothing more than to take him in her arms and kiss him until he can’t breathe, until he’s screaming her name under him.
But she can’t; it’s not right, it’s not fair.
So she pushes him, hard, and relishes in that moment of contact, fleeting as it was.
And the way he looks at her, so attentive, so focused she thinks that maybe he thought of her while he was gone and was finally going to do something about it.
But then he goes and asks Ianto out on a date in the next breath and suddenly she’s a wild animal in her rage.
Owen and Tosh, they can see it and wisely slip away.
They always noticed her looks of longing for Jack, they knew the things she felt. Never could hide a thing from them.
When Ianto turns Jack down she tries not to gloat and tries to suppress the way her heart feels like it just swelled to twice the size of her chest, but it’s a half-hearted attempt and fails miserably.
And then, later, when Jack asks to speak to her in his office, alone, she tries not to fantasize. Really, she does.
But it’s impossible when the man standing before positively exudes sex and eroticism, and so she gives up and instead imagines all the things she’d like to do to him on that desk he’s standing behind.
The next thing she knows, he’s speaking to her as if he would speak to a lover, running his hand down her arm.
And it’s amazing, because it’s what she’s been dreaming about since she first saw him, the first thought in the morning and the last one at night.
But somehow, it’s wrong.
She can’t pinpoint what it is exactly that’s wrong about it until she hears the unmistakable sound of a coffee mug shattering outside the door and she sees the look of pure heartbreak on Ianto Jones’ face.
That’s when it clicks, when all the pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place.
She is Gwen Cooper, member of Torchwood Three, fiancée of Rhys Williams, and those are just the facts of her life.
She gets it now - understands that she never really loved Jack, it was just a kind of escapism from work, some effort to try to keep Rhys from feeling the bulk of the frustration that Torchwood managed to unload on its employees.
How could she be so blind as to not see what was right in front of her?
She was a bloody fool.
Gwen met Jack’s equally horrified eyes and whispered, “I’m so sorry, I have to go” before she ran from the room and practically flew out the door in an effort to get home to Rhys.
She had been so distant for so long, and now that she could see the truth, Gwen badly wanted to make it up to Rhys.
I’m so sorry, my love. So sorry.
And as she drove through the streets in her little car, she noticed that though the air was at frigid temperatures, she felt no cold.
But she wasn’t surprised - she had love to keep her warm, and it had never been so strong as it was now.