FIC: In The Mood (Torchwood)
Title: In The Mood
Author: chicafrom3
Gift for: tweets
Rating: PG: allusions to sex, death, het, slash
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Jack/Toshiko, allusions to Jack/Doctor/Rose, Jack/Estelle, Toshiko/Mary, Toshiko/Owen
Word count: 2,056
Summary: The Captain Jack Harkness AU that every Jack/Tosh shipper had to write. Jack and Tosh are stranded in the '40s.
Spoilers: Through Captain Jack Harkness, Doctor Who through Parting of the Ways with vague allusions to S3
Author's Notes (if any): Because I am an overachiever, I tried to get all of your requests in here. Hope I succeeded, and hope that you enjoy!
With deepest gratitude to hugglewolf for the quick beta and encouraging comments.
Disclaimer: Torchwood is not mine. Doctor Who is not mine. "In The Mood" is not mine. I don't even really own the room I wrote this in. Basically the only thing that is mine is this particular arrangement of words in a line.
Things change.
It's a month before Tosh stops trying desperately to find a way to send the Rift coordinates through time to Gwen and Owen and Ianto.
Meanwhile, Jack is getting them settled. It's wartime, and they are strangers; to survive, they need to fit in. He shifts back to the name Jack Harkness once it feels safe to do so, and no one will connect him to the dead RAF pilot. He contacts the Torchwood of the time to fill them in, obtain proper papers, and borrow some money. He buys the two of them a house, and a chance. He folds up the RAF greatcoat he's worn for so long and puts it away. Right now, he needs to not be a soldier; he needs to keep Tosh safe. He gets a job, helping the war effort without fighting in it. He goes on, and waits.
And then comes the morning when Tosh gets up, and her eyes are reddened and sad, and she doesn't say anything about a new plan for communicating with 21st century Torchwood.
He makes coffee and pours her a cup. "Sorry," he says. "It's not as good as Ianto's."
"It's fine, thanks," she answers, and manages a weak smile.
He pours a cup for himself, too, and sits down with her at the table. "So," he says without preamble, "I think we're going to be stuck here for a while."
She looks shaken but nods- "Yes. You're probably right."
"I think we should get married."
*~*
After they clean up the spilled coffee and the shattered mug, Jack tries to explain his reasoning.
Fact: They stand out, the two of them - Tosh because she's Asian, Jack because he's American. They need to fit into the community, and give themselves a reason for being there.
Fact: It is 1941, and even with the war ongoing, a man and a woman living together who aren't related or married is sure to raise eyebrows. They've been lucky; so far everyone has simply assumed that they are. He just wants to make it official.
Fact: He promised to keep her safe, and he will keep that promise, Toshiko Sato, so stop arguing.
So she quiets, and thinks about it. And when he comes home that night, she smiles at him a little and says that she at least wants a ring.
*~*
They get married quietly, by a preacher who is too used to performing wartime weddings. Jack gets them rings, and no one asks questions.
"You know," Tosh says aimlessly, "I never imagined having a clandestine wedding to an American con man-slash-soldier who also happens to be my boss-and not even any flowers!"
Jack laughs, but feels a little sad, and wonders if she is thinking about Mary. He doesn't ask; tells her that she's beautiful, and she has excellent taste in grooms, and is pleased when she laughs, too.
*~*
They live.
Tosh's laptop is hidden under Jack's greatcoat, under the bed that they both sleep in (but do not sleep in).
During the day, they work at it. They fit in. They help the war effort, because that is how you fit in to 1941 Wales. Tosh gets a job with a local outfit, translating the enemy's codes, putting her math to work. Jack works on military planes, and jokes with the pilots. They make friends.
At night, they come home to each other.
At first, all they can seem to talk about is the future-Torchwood. Owen. Gwen. Ianto. Tosh rambles about her family, and how frightened they must be. It still bothers her that she missed her grandfather's birthday. Jack worries about the contents of his safe.
Eventually, they run out of shared worries, and things to reminisce about, and a night passes in sad silence.
The next evening, Jack brings home Glenn Miller albums, and they remember how to laugh together.
*~*
Tosh can dance, but this style is, if not new to her, at least unfamiliar.
Jack talks her through the steps and teaches her how to move with the music. Jack loves Glenn Miller, and it's obvious: obvious in how he hums and sings along, how his entire way of moving changes, how the music fills him completely.
Tosh's eyes shine when she looks at him, and she seems happier than she has since they fell through time. Tonight they laugh, and when they do it's not humor or nerves or pretense; it's just joy.
At eleven she is moving as if she's danced this dance all her life, and he isn't thinking of anything but her and the music and the movement.
At midnight she kisses him, and he kisses her back, and neither of them are as surprised as they would have expected.
At one Moonlight Serenade is playing, but they are dancing to the music of each other's bodies.
*~*
Things change.
They go out with friends, from his work and hers, from the neighborhood that they are making themselves a part of, and now it feels less like a lie. They go out on weekends, together, and have fun; sometimes they go to a dance or a movie or a meal, but more and more often they simply walk through the city together, enjoying being with each other.
The future they came from comes up less and less often. Jack stops recounting anecdotes about former lovers and teammates. Tosh stops wishing aloud for her state-of-the-art computer system.
The names Owen, Gwen, Ianto, Suzie, are totally unspoken, by silent mutual agreement.
And then one night, as they lie in bed curled around each other, content and at peace and forgetting to be homesick, he tells her the truth.
*~*
He starts at the beginning, in the fifty-first century, with a naïve teenager and his best friend, who signed up to fight in a war they didn't understand. He tells her about Aidan, who was bold and clever and fun, who had been his best friend since they were very small.
He talks about the Time Agency, about the Daleks and the Time War and temporal paradoxes, and before he can reach his own involvement in the whole thing, she is sitting up, bright-eyed and beautiful, and asks him to wait a moment while she finds a notepad and a pen.
They get dressed and he makes tea while she finds paper, and ten minutes later he is telling his story again, and she is writing it down as quickly as she can.
He tells her about watching Aidan die, tortured right in front of him. He talks about the years of service he put in with the Time Agency afterwards, becoming more and more cynical with the things he saw.
When he reaches the day that he realized he was two years older than he should have been, he has to stop for a moment, years-old anger coming up fresh and new. Toshiko puts her pen down and gives him a fierce hug and a soft kiss, and at that moment he loves her more than ever.
He reminisces about quitting, and becoming a con man, and taking Jack Harkness's name. He does not allow himself to become angry or hurt when he tells her about the Gamestation and being killed by Daleks, about finding out that he can't die, no matter how hard he tries. He tells her about being recruited by Torchwood, and his voice is flat and emotionless.
But his voice softens when he tells her about the people. About a seventeen-year-old girl named Estelle Cole, who could find magic everywhere, who saw the best in everyone, even him. About an alien in a leather jacket, who called himself the Doctor, who forced Jack into self-realization, who taught him to be a hero. And about Rose Tyler, a vibrantly cheerful nineteen-year-old shopgirl, who saw him as a knight in shining armor even when he faltered and failed, who learned that love didn't need to be labeled.
And Toshiko Sato, he thinks but does not say: Toshiko Sato, a brilliant computer expert who is so much stronger than she knows, who deserves so much more love than she has gotten.
It is morning when he finishes his story. Tosh puts her pen away; she has filled her pad with notes and comments, questions and explanations. She doesn't ask anything, though, or press him for explanations on the more obscure points; she just closes the notepad, stands up, and hugs him again.
They put the notepad with her laptop and his greatcoat.
They don't talk about it again.
*~*
A week later, they go for a walk through the city streets, and Tosh tells Jack about Mary-and about Owen.
Not the facts. The facts, he already knows. He was there, after all.
Instead, she tells him about how much she had craved Owen's approval and attention, for reasons she couldn't even fully articulate. She'd never been very outgoing in social relationships, and Owen Harper was vibrantly, viciously aggressive about social affairs.
She tells him that she thinks she might have loved Mary. Mary was strong and lovely and so very alive-and she had made Tosh feel loved, up until the murder attempt, anyway.
"She made me realize so many things about myself," Tosh says. "She helped me learn how to become whole. And even after everything, all that happened, I owe her so much."
"Then," Jack says, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close, "I owe her a lot, too, don't I?"
Tosh kisses him then, and everything else-alien lovers, secret pasts, time travel, bombs, war-ceases to matter.
*~*
The War Is Over, the newspaper says, and Jack can't even rejoice, because he's known for ages exactly when this moment would come.
Tosh shrugs and says, pragmatic as always, "At least now we can stop worrying about dying in the next bombing raid." Then she pauses before smiling and says, "Well, I can stop worrying about dying in the next bombing raid."
"Toshi, you know I'd love to be worried about dying."
"Yes, I know, Jack."
In the end, they go out to celebrate anyway. Everyone in all of Britain is celebrating, after all, and it would seem strange if they sat it out.
Glenn Miller's Little Brown Jug is playing, and Jack and Tosh are swinging, and for a moment they forget that this isn't where they belong.
*~*
Tosh meets a girl.
She is beautiful, and clever, and charming, and smart, and she is asking questions about Toshiko's work that should not be asked, and she does not belong here.
Her name is Martha, and she wears a red leather jacket; Tosh invites her to dinner, tells her to bring the Doctor along, and pretends not to notice the girl's shock and dismay.
That evening, Tosh sits with Martha in the living room, surrounded by papers, enthusiastically discussing her latest work, while Jack and the Doctor fight and make up and compromise in the TARDIS.
In the end, Tosh digs out her laptop and Jack puts his greatcoat back on, and in the morning their house lies abandoned.
*~*
Some sixty years later, Jack tells Tosh to keep an eye on the Doctor and Martha and not let them leave, and he goes to buy a newspaper.
They are a week off.
Tosh says, "Never mind, it doesn't matter, it's good enough, it's perfect," and smiles bravely so that she won't cry with relief, with fear, with shock.
Martha hugs her goodbye while the Doctor kisses Jack: "You were much better off as a coward," he says, and Jack smiles sadly.
So Jack hugs Martha goodbye and the Doctor kisses Tosh, a soft, affectionate, platonic kiss on the cheek. "We've met before, you know," he says. "The Slitheen invasion of London."
"I remember," she says, and does; he'd had a different face and a different voice and a completely other personality, but she remembers.
She thinks about taking off her wedding ring, but Jack makes no move to get rid of his and, truth be told, she feels better with it on.
Ianto drops his coffee cup, Owen jumps up with a look of relieved shock, and Gwen almost cries, when they walk into the Hub hand in hand.
Things change.
Author: chicafrom3
Gift for: tweets
Rating: PG: allusions to sex, death, het, slash
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Jack/Toshiko, allusions to Jack/Doctor/Rose, Jack/Estelle, Toshiko/Mary, Toshiko/Owen
Word count: 2,056
Summary: The Captain Jack Harkness AU that every Jack/Tosh shipper had to write. Jack and Tosh are stranded in the '40s.
Spoilers: Through Captain Jack Harkness, Doctor Who through Parting of the Ways with vague allusions to S3
Author's Notes (if any): Because I am an overachiever, I tried to get all of your requests in here. Hope I succeeded, and hope that you enjoy!
With deepest gratitude to hugglewolf for the quick beta and encouraging comments.
Disclaimer: Torchwood is not mine. Doctor Who is not mine. "In The Mood" is not mine. I don't even really own the room I wrote this in. Basically the only thing that is mine is this particular arrangement of words in a line.
Things change.
It's a month before Tosh stops trying desperately to find a way to send the Rift coordinates through time to Gwen and Owen and Ianto.
Meanwhile, Jack is getting them settled. It's wartime, and they are strangers; to survive, they need to fit in. He shifts back to the name Jack Harkness once it feels safe to do so, and no one will connect him to the dead RAF pilot. He contacts the Torchwood of the time to fill them in, obtain proper papers, and borrow some money. He buys the two of them a house, and a chance. He folds up the RAF greatcoat he's worn for so long and puts it away. Right now, he needs to not be a soldier; he needs to keep Tosh safe. He gets a job, helping the war effort without fighting in it. He goes on, and waits.
And then comes the morning when Tosh gets up, and her eyes are reddened and sad, and she doesn't say anything about a new plan for communicating with 21st century Torchwood.
He makes coffee and pours her a cup. "Sorry," he says. "It's not as good as Ianto's."
"It's fine, thanks," she answers, and manages a weak smile.
He pours a cup for himself, too, and sits down with her at the table. "So," he says without preamble, "I think we're going to be stuck here for a while."
She looks shaken but nods- "Yes. You're probably right."
"I think we should get married."
*~*
After they clean up the spilled coffee and the shattered mug, Jack tries to explain his reasoning.
Fact: They stand out, the two of them - Tosh because she's Asian, Jack because he's American. They need to fit into the community, and give themselves a reason for being there.
Fact: It is 1941, and even with the war ongoing, a man and a woman living together who aren't related or married is sure to raise eyebrows. They've been lucky; so far everyone has simply assumed that they are. He just wants to make it official.
Fact: He promised to keep her safe, and he will keep that promise, Toshiko Sato, so stop arguing.
So she quiets, and thinks about it. And when he comes home that night, she smiles at him a little and says that she at least wants a ring.
*~*
They get married quietly, by a preacher who is too used to performing wartime weddings. Jack gets them rings, and no one asks questions.
"You know," Tosh says aimlessly, "I never imagined having a clandestine wedding to an American con man-slash-soldier who also happens to be my boss-and not even any flowers!"
Jack laughs, but feels a little sad, and wonders if she is thinking about Mary. He doesn't ask; tells her that she's beautiful, and she has excellent taste in grooms, and is pleased when she laughs, too.
*~*
They live.
Tosh's laptop is hidden under Jack's greatcoat, under the bed that they both sleep in (but do not sleep in).
During the day, they work at it. They fit in. They help the war effort, because that is how you fit in to 1941 Wales. Tosh gets a job with a local outfit, translating the enemy's codes, putting her math to work. Jack works on military planes, and jokes with the pilots. They make friends.
At night, they come home to each other.
At first, all they can seem to talk about is the future-Torchwood. Owen. Gwen. Ianto. Tosh rambles about her family, and how frightened they must be. It still bothers her that she missed her grandfather's birthday. Jack worries about the contents of his safe.
Eventually, they run out of shared worries, and things to reminisce about, and a night passes in sad silence.
The next evening, Jack brings home Glenn Miller albums, and they remember how to laugh together.
*~*
Tosh can dance, but this style is, if not new to her, at least unfamiliar.
Jack talks her through the steps and teaches her how to move with the music. Jack loves Glenn Miller, and it's obvious: obvious in how he hums and sings along, how his entire way of moving changes, how the music fills him completely.
Tosh's eyes shine when she looks at him, and she seems happier than she has since they fell through time. Tonight they laugh, and when they do it's not humor or nerves or pretense; it's just joy.
At eleven she is moving as if she's danced this dance all her life, and he isn't thinking of anything but her and the music and the movement.
At midnight she kisses him, and he kisses her back, and neither of them are as surprised as they would have expected.
At one Moonlight Serenade is playing, but they are dancing to the music of each other's bodies.
*~*
Things change.
They go out with friends, from his work and hers, from the neighborhood that they are making themselves a part of, and now it feels less like a lie. They go out on weekends, together, and have fun; sometimes they go to a dance or a movie or a meal, but more and more often they simply walk through the city together, enjoying being with each other.
The future they came from comes up less and less often. Jack stops recounting anecdotes about former lovers and teammates. Tosh stops wishing aloud for her state-of-the-art computer system.
The names Owen, Gwen, Ianto, Suzie, are totally unspoken, by silent mutual agreement.
And then one night, as they lie in bed curled around each other, content and at peace and forgetting to be homesick, he tells her the truth.
*~*
He starts at the beginning, in the fifty-first century, with a naïve teenager and his best friend, who signed up to fight in a war they didn't understand. He tells her about Aidan, who was bold and clever and fun, who had been his best friend since they were very small.
He talks about the Time Agency, about the Daleks and the Time War and temporal paradoxes, and before he can reach his own involvement in the whole thing, she is sitting up, bright-eyed and beautiful, and asks him to wait a moment while she finds a notepad and a pen.
They get dressed and he makes tea while she finds paper, and ten minutes later he is telling his story again, and she is writing it down as quickly as she can.
He tells her about watching Aidan die, tortured right in front of him. He talks about the years of service he put in with the Time Agency afterwards, becoming more and more cynical with the things he saw.
When he reaches the day that he realized he was two years older than he should have been, he has to stop for a moment, years-old anger coming up fresh and new. Toshiko puts her pen down and gives him a fierce hug and a soft kiss, and at that moment he loves her more than ever.
He reminisces about quitting, and becoming a con man, and taking Jack Harkness's name. He does not allow himself to become angry or hurt when he tells her about the Gamestation and being killed by Daleks, about finding out that he can't die, no matter how hard he tries. He tells her about being recruited by Torchwood, and his voice is flat and emotionless.
But his voice softens when he tells her about the people. About a seventeen-year-old girl named Estelle Cole, who could find magic everywhere, who saw the best in everyone, even him. About an alien in a leather jacket, who called himself the Doctor, who forced Jack into self-realization, who taught him to be a hero. And about Rose Tyler, a vibrantly cheerful nineteen-year-old shopgirl, who saw him as a knight in shining armor even when he faltered and failed, who learned that love didn't need to be labeled.
And Toshiko Sato, he thinks but does not say: Toshiko Sato, a brilliant computer expert who is so much stronger than she knows, who deserves so much more love than she has gotten.
It is morning when he finishes his story. Tosh puts her pen away; she has filled her pad with notes and comments, questions and explanations. She doesn't ask anything, though, or press him for explanations on the more obscure points; she just closes the notepad, stands up, and hugs him again.
They put the notepad with her laptop and his greatcoat.
They don't talk about it again.
*~*
A week later, they go for a walk through the city streets, and Tosh tells Jack about Mary-and about Owen.
Not the facts. The facts, he already knows. He was there, after all.
Instead, she tells him about how much she had craved Owen's approval and attention, for reasons she couldn't even fully articulate. She'd never been very outgoing in social relationships, and Owen Harper was vibrantly, viciously aggressive about social affairs.
She tells him that she thinks she might have loved Mary. Mary was strong and lovely and so very alive-and she had made Tosh feel loved, up until the murder attempt, anyway.
"She made me realize so many things about myself," Tosh says. "She helped me learn how to become whole. And even after everything, all that happened, I owe her so much."
"Then," Jack says, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close, "I owe her a lot, too, don't I?"
Tosh kisses him then, and everything else-alien lovers, secret pasts, time travel, bombs, war-ceases to matter.
*~*
The War Is Over, the newspaper says, and Jack can't even rejoice, because he's known for ages exactly when this moment would come.
Tosh shrugs and says, pragmatic as always, "At least now we can stop worrying about dying in the next bombing raid." Then she pauses before smiling and says, "Well, I can stop worrying about dying in the next bombing raid."
"Toshi, you know I'd love to be worried about dying."
"Yes, I know, Jack."
In the end, they go out to celebrate anyway. Everyone in all of Britain is celebrating, after all, and it would seem strange if they sat it out.
Glenn Miller's Little Brown Jug is playing, and Jack and Tosh are swinging, and for a moment they forget that this isn't where they belong.
*~*
Tosh meets a girl.
She is beautiful, and clever, and charming, and smart, and she is asking questions about Toshiko's work that should not be asked, and she does not belong here.
Her name is Martha, and she wears a red leather jacket; Tosh invites her to dinner, tells her to bring the Doctor along, and pretends not to notice the girl's shock and dismay.
That evening, Tosh sits with Martha in the living room, surrounded by papers, enthusiastically discussing her latest work, while Jack and the Doctor fight and make up and compromise in the TARDIS.
In the end, Tosh digs out her laptop and Jack puts his greatcoat back on, and in the morning their house lies abandoned.
*~*
Some sixty years later, Jack tells Tosh to keep an eye on the Doctor and Martha and not let them leave, and he goes to buy a newspaper.
They are a week off.
Tosh says, "Never mind, it doesn't matter, it's good enough, it's perfect," and smiles bravely so that she won't cry with relief, with fear, with shock.
Martha hugs her goodbye while the Doctor kisses Jack: "You were much better off as a coward," he says, and Jack smiles sadly.
So Jack hugs Martha goodbye and the Doctor kisses Tosh, a soft, affectionate, platonic kiss on the cheek. "We've met before, you know," he says. "The Slitheen invasion of London."
"I remember," she says, and does; he'd had a different face and a different voice and a completely other personality, but she remembers.
She thinks about taking off her wedding ring, but Jack makes no move to get rid of his and, truth be told, she feels better with it on.
Ianto drops his coffee cup, Owen jumps up with a look of relieved shock, and Gwen almost cries, when they walk into the Hub hand in hand.
Things change.