Torchwood (if you know what I mean)
Title: Torchwood (if you know what I mean)
Word Count: ~2450
Rating: T for Torchwood! and yeah, most of what that entails
Notes: Um. Working title was alternately The One Where They're Hookers and The Madwoman With a Frying Pan, so. Also, I claim no knowledge of Britishisms, but I've spent too much time on this one as it is, and can't be bothered to correct my grammar.
For cliche_bingo, Hooker AU.
Gwen stepped out of the cab, paid and thanked the driver, and tried to find her keys as he drove off. The hen party had been a bit of a flop. Her girlfriends had wanted a stripper, and she'd kept saying no, no, no, and then what did she find in the back room of the pub but a man in a little sailor suit who called himself Captain "but tonight, you can be Captain" Jack.
After the apparently required lap dance, she had snuck to the back of the room and gotten quietly drunk as she watched her friends enjoy passing around Captain Jack's sailor cap and holler as he slipped off his shirt. She'd glanced away when he went for the trousers, and finally left when he went for his pants.
Rhys had been more enthusiastic about his stag party, though he wouldn't tell her what his best man had arranged. Unlocking the door and walking upstairs, she hoped that he was enjoying himself more than she had, when she heard a quiet popping sound and froze in place.
She didn't know that much about guns from experience, but her training had drummed into her head the sound of a shot being fired, and that sounded like a gun with a silencer attached. A choked cry coming from the master bedroom seemed to confirm Gwen's worries, and she slowly made her way across the apartment. Looking for a weapon to use against the assailant, Gwen only came up with a greasy frying pan left out on the stove. For once thankful for Rhys's forgetfulness, she hefted the pan in one hand and made her way to the bedroom.
The door was, thankfully, half-open, and she knew from experience getting in late that it didn't squeak if you didn't open it more than half-way. She pushed it open slowly and stepped in.
Rhys was sitting on the bed, his arms tied behind his back, his mouth gagged, and his feet tied together. Gwen stared at him until she spotted his best man unconscious on the floor, tied up the same way. A woman, probably a stripper based on her general lack of clothing, was leaning against the wall next to him, her hands clutching at her stomach. She was the one who'd been shot, then. None of them were looking in Gwen's direction, which was fortunate, because that meant the shooter wasn't either.
Another stripper was the one holding the gun. She had it aimed at the wounded stripper. "I love this job," she said, her voice breaking. "So much." Her hands were shaking, though her grip on the gun was strong. Gwen spotted a shiny streak on her cheek, and realized that the woman was crying.
"I'm sorry, Tosh," the stripper-with-a-gun said, nearly sobbing. "But if you'd just stayed where I told you, instead of looking in, I wouldn't have to kill you. Any of you. Except for you, of course," she amended, turning to point the gun at Rhys.
"You bitch." The four of them turned to see Gwen standing in the doorway. The stripper turned her gun in Gwen's direction, but Gwen swung her frying pan at her, knocking the gun out of her hand. Another swing hit the stripper's head with a satisfying thunk, and she was out like a light.
"Suzie!" the stripper who'd been shot--Tosh, the shooter had called her--shouted. She tried to sit up, then hissed in pain and leaned back. Gwen, who'd been trying to untie the ropes holding her fiance captive, stopped and reached for her cellphone.
"Here, let me call--"
"--no, don't," Tosh protested, "I can't go to a hospital." A muffled, confused noise made it past Rhys's gag, and Gwen happened to agree with it.
"The hell you can't, you've been shot!"
Tosh winced. "I'm quite aware of that," she said. "I know a doctor, call him. And Jack."
Gwen paused in getting the gag off Rhys. "Jack?"
"My boss."
On a hunch, she reached a hand into her back pocket and pulled out a business card. "Not Jack Harkness?"
"That's him," Tosh confirmed. "But my doctor first. My cell's in my bag, out on your couch--the black leather one. Speed dial one." When Gwen looked reluctant, she added, "Please."
"Fine, fine." Having freed Rhys of his gag, Gwen walked back out into the apartment. She found the bag easily enough, and the phone as well. She dialed, and took the bag back into the bedroom as it started ringing.
"--gonna be alright?" Rhys was asking when she walked in.
"He--" Tosh winced, putting pressure on her stomach using Rhys's gag, "--should be fine. Suzie just hit him over the head. Maybe a concussion, but those aren't so bad."
"You've had a few, then?" Rhys wondered skeptically.
"Some guys like to throw you around a bit," Tosh said calmly. Rhys fell silent at that, just as someone picked up on the other end. This doctor of Tosh's sounded male, Welsh, annoyed, and tired. Brilliant combination for TV, maybe, but hell to deal with in real life.
"Tosh, d'you have any idea what time it is? I know these are your working hours, but I'm a bit preoccupied with things like sleep this time of night."
"Sorry, I'm not Tosh," Gwen said loudly. "Just borrowing her phone, on account of her being shot."
After a long silence: "Sorry, what? I could've sworn you just said--"
"Tosh. Has been shot." Gwen enunciated carefully. "You know, like, with a gun? In the stomach. She said to call you."
"Shit, you're serious."
"Yeah, you think? Here, get over to this address as soon as possible, alright? She's bleeding out quite a bit, and she refuses to go to a hospital." Gwen told him the address and, cursing, he hung up. She took the phone away from her ear. "Pleasant bloke," she said to Tosh. She laughed, cringing slightly at the pain it caused.
"He's fond of his sleep. My boss is speed dial--no, damn, he's on a job tonight. I don't know where he is. Call Ianto, he'll--"
"That's alright," Gwen said, dialing the pub. "I know where he is. My bridesmaid and the best man must have used the same people," she explained as she waited.
"Oh." Tosh looked between Rhys untangling himself on the bed and Gwen, still holding her frying pan. "Congratulations."
"Thanks. 'Lo, Tim," she said to the bartender who picked up. "It's Gwen Cooper. Is my hen party still there?" After a pause, she added, "No, I'm not calling you from my own party, I left. Anyway, go see if the stripper's still there. Goes by Captain Jack. Wha--why? Because I need to talk to him, that's why." Gwen tapped her foot somewhat impatiently. Rhys got his arms free and tossed the rope aside. "No, save that," Gwen told him, "we'll need it for Suzie." Rhys, reaching down to untie his feet, stared at her. "What? You want to let her wake up and get away?"
"Hello?" A much more serious sounding man than the Captain Jack she remembered answered the phone.
"Hi, Captain Jack? I'm Gwen Cooper," she started to say.
"The girl of the night?" He laughed. "You were in quite the hurry to get away from me, weren't you? Was I really that bad? Be honest."
"One of your girls shot the other."
His laughing died off. "What?"
"Suzie and Tosh are your employees, right? My fiance's best man hired them for his stag party, but somewhere along the line, Suzie shot Tosh. I've knocked Suzie out and called Tosh's doctor, but she said to call you as well."
"Give me your address, I'll be right there."
Gwen repeated the address, adding, "Good. Then maybe somebody can finally get around to explaining how a stripper got a gun into my apartment, and why she wanted to shoot my--" She cut herself off and frowned. "He hung up on me. Here, Rhys, give me those." He handed her the rope he'd already escaped from and turned back to his feet. Gwen pulled the comatose Suzie to a seated position and pulled both of her arms behind her back. Twisting the rope around Suzie's elbows, Gwen muttered bitterly to herself about fiance-shooting strippers, and no-questions-answered strippers and, strippers at stag parties, and hen parties, and parties in general. She finished it off with a restraining knot, tucking it into the middle of the rope bundle.
"Gwen?" Rhys handed her the other rope and rubbed the circulation back into his ankles. "D'you hear someone at the door?"
"Shit, that's probably the doctor." Gwen ran across the apartment and down the stairs, opening the door to a narrow-faced man holding a black bag with a white cross on it.
"Right," he said, pushing her aside, "where's Tosh?"
"Upstairs, the bedroom. In the back," Gwen said as he ran past her. "Very pleasant," she added to herself, shutting the door. Up the stairs, back into the bedroom, where Tosh's doctor was ordering Rhys around. Gwen took the opportunity to take the ropes off the best man and put him in a more comfortable position. Using those two ropes and the one she had only half-tied before, she neatly tied Suzie's knees together, then her hands, then her feet. Satisfied that she had done all she could, Gwen picked up the gun and looked it over.
The odd thing of it was, she'd been made to memorize the shapes and sizes of a number of guns back in training. "A number" meant it was possible that she'd just never come across a gun like this, but she was pretty sure a gun like this couldn't exist. It was tiny, with a short barrel and a thick handle that she could only barely wrap her hand around.
The silencer she recognized, a standard-size for a .22 caliber. She twisted the silencer off, and looked at it closely. It hadn't been adjusted at all for this smaller gun, though now that she looked at it she realized the barrel's diameter was about the right size. Hoping there were other similarities, Gwen twisted the barrel open. Sure enough, there were bullets inside, though they weren't quite as standard as the silencer. She shook one out of the gun and held it up.
It was translucent, blue, and almost...glowing. "What freaky kind of bullet is this?" she said aloud.
Rhys looked up at it and started. "It's blue." The doctor, smacking Rhys's arm to get his attention, paused mid-slap and swore.
"The numbing one, Tosh?" She nodded weakly, and he swore again. "Your nervous system's going to shut down if I can't get that out soon. You, whatever your name is," he ignored Rhys saying his name, "grab the laser pointer out of my bag. And the plastic forceps. And the little spray bottle labeled SLEEP."
As Rhys dug through the pile of sharp-slash-possibly dangerous things in the doctor's bag, he made Tosh move her hands away from her stomach. The bleeding had slowed, leaving most of her stomach covered in dark red clotted blood. The doctor frowned, pulling a pair of blue plastic gloves out of his back pocket. "This kind of thing would never have happened to you if you'd stayed away from this job," he said quietly as he pulled them on.
"If I'd stayed away from this job," Tosh whispered as he wiped her stomach clean with an alcohol pad, "I would never have met you, Owen."
"Yeah..." Wiping gently at the entrance wound, pausing every time Tosh winced, Owen carefully didn't look her in the eye. When Rhys offered it, he took the spray bottle. He cradled Tosh's head with one hand, tipping her face up to his. He said, "I've never been worth your life, Tosh." When she opened her mouth to protest, Owen sprayed the bottle once. She blinked, slowly, then closed her eyes and went limp. He stared for a long moment, then turned away, smiling bitterly.
Gwen, who had suddenly felt she was intruding, was relieved to hear the door again. She ducked out of the bedroom as Rhys handed Owen the laser pointer, saying, "So. Dating a stripper. Must be interesting..."
"I really wouldn't know."
She paused at that, but the door buzzed again, insistently. "Coming, coming," she muttered to herself. She opened the door to reveal the man she recognized as Captain Jack the stripper, thankfully wearing more clothes than she'd last seen him in. "What's under that greatcoat?" she asked anyway. You could never be too sure.
He leered. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Watch it," she said shortly, waving him into the apartment.
He whistled when he spotted Suzie. "I like a girl who knows how to use a rope."
"Four's more like it," Rhys said from the floor, digging through Owen's bag again. "Gwen can get a bit intense."
"So I've gathered," Jack said, trailing off as he saw Owen and Tosh. "Owen."
"Jack."
"What happened?"
"Best I can tell," Owen grunted as he worked, "Suzie went nutters and took the party hostage, just in time for the madwoman over there to give her a good one with that pan." Slowly, he lifted a hand away from Tosh's stomach, holding another of the blue bullets with a pair of forceps. It was less glowy than the bullet Gwen had. She inspected the one in her hand, only to see that it had gotten less glowy in the time she'd been holding it. In trying to look at it closer, she learned that her fingertips were almost numb, and fumbled it while trying to rub away the numbness. The tinkling sound of the bullet landing on the floor caught Owen and Jack's attention.
"You stupid--those bullets numb the entry wound, and you go ahead and hold one in your hand? Jack, get that away from her, and the gun too. No telling what she might try to do."
"Oi-" Gwen's indignant reply to Owen's continued insults to her intelligence was a bit cut off by a choked gasp as she watched Owen seal up Tosh's stomach with his laser pointer. Jack gently took the gun from her hand and reloaded both bullets into the magazine with a practised, almost professional ease, before slipping it into a holster on a belt with multiple strangely shaped holsters attached. Gwen gaped.
"Who are you people?" she asked at last.
Jack, grinning, and Owen, rolling his eyes, said, "Torchwood."
"If you know what kind of 'wood' I mean," Jack added cheekily.
Owen sighed.