Bi Any Other Name
Title: Bi Any Other Name
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: Gwen, Jack, Ianto, Owen, Tosh, discussion of Gwen/Rhys, Tosh/Mary and other ships, background Janto
Warnings (including spoilers): Discussion of sexual orientation. No spoilers.
Wordcount: 3,326 words
Summary: Written for the queer_fest 2011 prompt ‘Given how open and accepting Torchwood is, Gwen thought she'd have an easier time convincing her teammates she's bisexual.’ The title is a reference to the Shakespeare "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
[*]
“I- I have something I want to say.”
It’s not the way Ianto takes the napkin out of his collar and folds it carefully that tells Gwen this is going to be important; he does that any time he wants to be formal (read: most times). It’s not even the stutter or the awkward tone. It’s the way he seems to be holding his breath, his posture, and the way he looks to Jack nervously, as though for reassurance.
Jack smiles at him in a way that usually never fails to set anyone at ease. Ianto nods in return, but his body doesn’t lose any of that tension. Gwen angles herself toward his seat at the other end of the conference table and opens up her arms and expression- looks like those boring police seminars on body language may come in handy after all. Tosh is waiting politely and Owen has tossed his plastic fork onto his meal, giving Ianto a blatant ‘don’t keep me waiting’ look.
Ianto takes a deep breath. “I- um. I just thought you ought to, to know: I’m bisexual.”
There are a few seconds of silence while the three who didn’t know this was coming stare at him. Ianto fidgets, eyes jumping between them, fingers twisting in his lap.
Finally, Owen speaks. “Was that the news?”
“Uh, yes, that was it,” Ianto answers, looking surprised.
The medic snorts. “It’s not like we didn’t already know about you and Jack, you’re not exactly subtle.” He picks up his fork again and brings another bite of moo shu pork, speaking through it. “And it was kind of hard to miss the girlfriend,” he commented, with no small amount of dark humor.
Ianto looks like he can’t decide whether to get embarrassed or angry, so it’s really a good thing that Tosh steps in. “I think it’s great that Ianto decided to tell us how he feels,” she says to the table, but mostly to Owen. “Not only is it good to be open with your colleagues, your friends,” she points out earnestly, “but it’s not always that black and white, Owen. I mean,” she blushes, “I wouldn’t consider myself bisexual.”
“I know it’s not black and white, Tosh, I’m not an idiot.” The doctor sneers slightly. “Plus, I’m not bi either.”
“Wait a moment, I don’t understand,” Gwen finally speaks up. “Tosh, I thought you… had something with Mary,” she stutters slightly, unsure as to the categorization. “And Owen, why are you saying you’re not bi, we all know you’re straight,” she points out, looking at her colleagues around the table for agreement.
Jack laughs, drawing their attention. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a historical documentary,” he says with great interest. “‘How Cultures of the Past Attempted to Confine Sexuality’.” He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head, indeed taking on every appearance of a movie-goer.
“Gwen, I said I’m not bisexual,” Tosh explains. “I was bicurious, and Mary was very forward. But after experiencing that relationship, I know now that I am straight.” She inspects Gwen’s face for comprehension.
Gwen’s still giving her the ‘I’m trying to understand but not having much luck’ face when Owen butts in.
“And I was clarifyin’ because I’ve had sex with men before.” He keeps his cool even at her shocked look. “I am straight, just cause I’ve slept with men doesn’t change that.” With the last statement, his gaze hardens slightly, as though daring her to challenge the fact.
Gwen shakes her head at the table, resisting the urge to bang her head against it. She looks at Jack as though he could explain the last five minutes of conversation.
He misinterprets the expression. “What, me?” he asks, gesturing at himself. “I don’t tie myself down to any of these stereotypes you people have. I am who I am. If I want to sleep with someone, it doesn’t matter how they identify or what sex they are, and if I have feelings for someone, then I’m hardly going to let a little thing like orientation make me change my mind.” He looks significantly across the table as he says it, and it’s only after Gwen turns her head and catches the blush on Ianto’s face that she wishes she’d been more subtle in looking. “You people are so hung up on labels, everything judged by who you love, how you love, who you’ll sleep with and who you won’t, what parts you have. When will you figure out that categories don’t matter.”
Jack’s gotten himself into lecture mode, hands gesturing in the air, annoyed facial expressions and all. Gwen’s is already too confused by sorting out the labels she’s had shoved in her face tonight to consider an idea as big as throwing them all away.
“Well, at least it’s simple for me,” she says firmly, finding comfort in this more than any vague concepts Jack might have offered. She shrugs, deciding to put the matter out of mind and takes another bite of her supper.
“Yeah, ’cause you’ve never been anything but conventional in your life, Cooper.” Gwen’s surprised to find Owen glaring at her. “You with the perfect boyfriend, I’m sure none of this shit ever even crossed your mind, did it?”
She looks back at him, confused. “What do you mean? Of course I’ve thought about it, just, I guess not as… in-depth as the rest of you have,” she says tactfully.
“We’ve had to,” Tosh answers. The other woman doesn’t look angry with her, but she does seem slightly perturbed. “In this day and age, labels are important, whatever might happen in the future,” she concedes to Jack.
“I know they are,” Gwen says in a placating manner, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when she got lost in this conversation. “But I never saw the need to declare myself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she hurries to tell Ianto, whom she appears to have annoyed as well.
“You’d never need to declare yourself though, would you?” he points out quietly. “It’s different, for the rest of us.”
Gwen shook her head. “I just didn’t think it was important to say.” She looks around at her team, who are all staring at her. Owen is obnoxiously tapping his fingers on the table with his impatience. Even Jack, who has always claimed to not care about the various titles the primitive 21st-century people choose to give themselves, is watching her with an interested expression.
“Alright, fine.” She drops her fork, feeling oddly uncomfortable: not with the declaration, but with the way they’re all watching her, expecting an answer. “I’m… I’m bisexual, too.”
She can’t help the stutter, or the blush. This is the first time she’s ever said the words aloud. That one time she told her friend in college didn’t really count, since it was over IM.
Still, the way Seanny casually typed ‘sure, okay’ and then forgot about it seems like a fountain of acceptance compared to this.
Ianto’s normally staid expression is almost disgusted as he rises to clear away the Chinese cartons, and the others are sporting different levels of displeasure. Even Jack’s eyebrows are twisting above the bridge of his nose, though his lips are quirked in amusement.
“What?” she asks of them loudly. Owen snorts and Tosh looks away. “What is the matter with all of you?” she demands in her usual ‘straight to the heart of it’ way.
“You’re not bi,” Owen tells her, wielding the ‘you’re’ like an insult. “You couldn’t even look any of us in the face after you kissed Carys.”
The memory is enough to make her blush, but her anger quickly retakes control. “I was overcome by alien pheromones, pardon me for bein’ embarrassed. She wasn’t even herself, she wasn’t even human!”
Now even Jack is glaring at her. She raises her voice at them all, hoping they can’t hear the extra edge to her distress. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“Gwen, you don’t seem to understand the first thing about any of this,” Owen says bluntly. “You don’t get that sleeping with a woman once like Tosh did doesn’t make you bi. Do you even know what bicurious means?”
“Well, no, but I-”
“And do you know what omnisexual means? That’s what Jack is,” the doctor motions toward their captain.
Gwen shakes her head, looking at Jack sharply. She never knew what to think of his odd flirtations and stories of different species where the sex of his partner or partners wasn’t always even mentioned. “I never knew,” she says honestly.
Owen scoffs and his lips are curled in an unhappy smirk, like he proved his point but it didn’t satisfy him. Ianto, standing behind the medic’s chair, has the most anger she’s ever seen on his face when someone’s life wasn’t on the line. Tosh refuses to look at her, instead watching the others with a tight expression.
Gwen looks around the table in an odd sort of silence, feeling disconnected. It’s unsettling, because ever since she got to Torchwood she always felt like there was a place for her, with these people. Right now it feels like she’s been told to keep out of their special club, and surprisingly- it hurts. She suddenly feels an urge she recognizes from the field, the need to get her back against a wall for safety. Rhys’ concerned face appears in her mind, and she wishes she were home.
As though he can read her mind, Ianto speaks up, breaking the tense silence that had fallen. “And you have Rhys, haven’t you? Your husband outside of Torchwood, the one who keeps this world from getting too cold for you?”
The scathing tone, her own words thrown back at her, feel as though they’ve ripped a hole through her chest. She looks at the others’ faces, and the glares of her teammates are salt on the wound.
Gwen has never sworn to herself that she won’t turn tail from a fight. She didn’t have to, it hadn’t ever occurred to her. Gwen is far more of a fighter than a runner. But for the first time in her life, pain filling places she hasn’t even known existed, she stands up shakily and runs from the conference room.
[*]
He’d thought it would feel good, to finally smack the woman down. Owen had planned to save the memory of the look on Gwen’s face for the moments when she annoyed him the most. But he can’t, because she doesn’t look the way she does whenever Jack turns some stupid guilt-trip around on her or when Tosh’s technology proves that her oh-so-idealistic declarations are misbegotten. She doesn’t have that embarrassed look of realizing she’s been stupid and then proven wrong.
After she runs from the room, no one moves. Owen spares a thought on whether the others were feeling the same shock as he was, but most of his mind is taken up by that memory of Gwen’s face, that he’d meant to hide inside himself and laugh at occasionally.
Because it was an expression he recognized. He should: he remembers it from being a scrawny twelve-year-old, running into the bathroom to escape his mum’s shouts. He’d splash his face with cold water and then wait for some color to come back to his cheeks, and the whole time he would be wearing that same empty stare.
He doesn’t know what to make of it.
“Was she…” Tosh tries. “Do you think she was telling the truth?”
“Maybe she thought she was, but…” Owen trails off.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” Ianto says angrily, sitting heavily back down in his seat. “She couldn’t even understand the difference between the words we used.”
“When will you people realize: there is no difference!”
They all look at Jack in surprise as he stands up and leans over the conference table forcefully, just like he does whenever Gwen challenges him.
“The labels mean nothing,” Jack snarls. “You chose bisexual,” he points at Ianto, “you chose straight,” he jabs his finger at Owen, “and you chose bicurious before settling on straight as well!” The hand he throws in Tosh’s direction seems to encompass her entire half of the room.
“These words cannot define how you feel, who you are. They only divide us more!” Jack slams his hand on the table and they all flinch, unable to look away from his rage. “You refused to accept your teammate’s ‘label’ based on your perception of her understanding. Did you ever stop to consider that maybe she knows herself better than any of your ever-so-specific labels can define her?”
With a last harrowing glare for all of them, Jack storms out of the room.
[*]
She makes it to her car before the tear in her chest turns into great, gasping sobs, cries that she can only hope are not audible outside the automobile. She is curled over her lap in the driver’s seat, head barely avoiding the horn.
She doesn’t know what is worse, the betrayal or the confusion.
Gwen’s always coasted along in her happy life: childhood, college, Uni, the police. She’s had friends- she’s a friendly person. She fit in. She liked to shop, was a good student, could talk rugby with the lads and was well-known as a shoulder for her girlfriends to cry on. The only people who knew about her sexuality were her sister, a few school friends, and Rhys- not because she thought people would be angry at her, but because there was never any reason to tell. No girls in her college had expressed a similar preference and there were always enough handsome and available men that she didn’t feel she was missing out. In Uni, she met Rhys, and he’d figured it out through gently questioning her with that subtle intelligence she’s come to appreciate. She hadn’t wanted anyone since then, not until the mystique and foreignness of Torchwood, where she met Owen and Jack.
But she’s always assumed that if she did tell anyone besides the few people who already knew, it’d be fine. The same way people have naturally liked her for her whole life, they still would if they knew she fancies girls as well. Why wouldn’t they? She’s been this way the whole time. It’s as much a part of her as her innate caring, it just isn’t mentioned.
There’s no way Gwen could have prepared herself for this. Of course, she’s seen homophobia and prejudice in Uni, on the streets, even in her own department. But somehow it never seemed like they what they were saying included her. It was always because that person was acting like a slag, or that officer was just being a prick. She made it clear she didn’t support it, but she never felt afraid, or victimized.
This is different. These people are her friends. She trusts them with her life in the field. They know her, and they still rejected her. Owen had practically called her stupid to her face, said she couldn’t even understand what being bisexual meant. Sure, maybe she didn’t know all the fancy words, but she’d accepted them, even when she hadn’t understood how Owen and Tosh could possibly be straight, after what they’d done. She hadn’t known the word for what Jack was, but she’d accepted him from the start, even when his stories of shagging aliens had put such looks of shock on her face that he laughed out loud.
So why didn’t they believe her in return? She rages, anger making the tears burn hotter.
Gwen had never felt the slightest bit persecuted before she’d come to Torchwood. Life had been good, had run smoothly. People liked her.
This is the hardest thing to bear: it feels like the universe has finally dropped her from its grace.
[*]
Jack swears under his breath as he crosses the parking lot, making out the dark shape of Gwen in her car. Though he’s unmistakably glad she hasn’t left yet, he can’t help but wonder what it means.
He approaches the last few meters slowly, then taps on the window when she doesn’t look up. It’s a few moments before the door opens.
“I know what I am, Jack.”
“I know,” he tells her. “I believe you.”
She glares up at him from beneath wet eyelashes. “I am like this, even if none of you want to accept it. I’m sorry I don’t fit in with the rest of you,” she says, standing from the car. “I’m sorry that I’m married to a man and I can’t prove myself by sleeping around with women!”
Jack nods, keeping his gaze level. Sometimes Gwen needs to yell herself out, and he thinks she deserves it this time. Stupid primitive 21st century philosophy.
“I have been this way my whole life, I didn’t need to experiment or be curious to decide this! Just because I haven’t agonized, over this, or-” her voice drops abruptly, she looks around to check that the parking lot is empty, “-or slept with a woman… that does not mean I don’t know my own mind, just as well as any of them!”
“I know you do, Gwen.”
Suddenly, she slumps against her car. “Are they right?” she asks plaintively. “I… Carys, she was… she was the first girl I touched. I’ve never even shared looks with a woman, you know, never flirted or implied. Am I wrong?”
Jack steps forward, jaw clenched in anger at what his team has inadvertently done to this strong, proud woman. He keeps his voice and his hands on her shoulders gentle. “You don’t need to prove anything to me, and you don’t need to prove anything to them. If you say you’re bisexual, I believe you, and you don’t have to be with a woman to decide that.”
“But what if I’m like Tosh?” she begs, reddened eyes wide. “What if I’m only curious, and they-”
“Listen to me!” Jack shakes her, perhaps a bit harshly, but he needs to pull her away from these thoughts, and he needs to do so now. He struggles to stop himself from going on a tangent about how sexuality can be a fluid thing. Jack has known people who were positive they only liked one sex and then later in life decided they like both, and vice versa, along with people who decided they didn’t like either sex. He wants to tell her that all these things are normal when he comes from, but he can tell it’s not the right moment.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re attracted to one woman, or all of them, or just men, or both. Whoever you love, Gwen Cooper,” he says firmly, looking straight into her eyes. “That will never change how I see you.”
She can’t say anything for several seconds. He can see her jaw working, chewing over what he’s said. He can only hope it’ll be enough.
Finally, her eyes become less wide, less panicky. She nods, setting her chin with that stubborn look he knows so well, and Jack can tell that, whatever happened tonight, they will all get past this even if Gwen has to bully every last one of her teammates into accepting it.
He’s sure she won’t have to: they’re probably getting themselves straightened out right now, down in the Hub. While they may have been hasty in this case, Jack’s team is not stupid- they’ll apologize and maybe even try to have a real conversation about this.
And maybe it’s not a huge change: Jack doubts any of them will decide to take up the no-labels lifestyle that is the only one he believes in. But this thing that happened tonight is one fight that they are going to win.
The twenty-first century is when it all changes, Jack remembers. And Torchwood will be ready.
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: Gwen, Jack, Ianto, Owen, Tosh, discussion of Gwen/Rhys, Tosh/Mary and other ships, background Janto
Warnings (including spoilers): Discussion of sexual orientation. No spoilers.
Wordcount: 3,326 words
Summary: Written for the queer_fest 2011 prompt ‘Given how open and accepting Torchwood is, Gwen thought she'd have an easier time convincing her teammates she's bisexual.’ The title is a reference to the Shakespeare "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
[*]
“I- I have something I want to say.”
It’s not the way Ianto takes the napkin out of his collar and folds it carefully that tells Gwen this is going to be important; he does that any time he wants to be formal (read: most times). It’s not even the stutter or the awkward tone. It’s the way he seems to be holding his breath, his posture, and the way he looks to Jack nervously, as though for reassurance.
Jack smiles at him in a way that usually never fails to set anyone at ease. Ianto nods in return, but his body doesn’t lose any of that tension. Gwen angles herself toward his seat at the other end of the conference table and opens up her arms and expression- looks like those boring police seminars on body language may come in handy after all. Tosh is waiting politely and Owen has tossed his plastic fork onto his meal, giving Ianto a blatant ‘don’t keep me waiting’ look.
Ianto takes a deep breath. “I- um. I just thought you ought to, to know: I’m bisexual.”
There are a few seconds of silence while the three who didn’t know this was coming stare at him. Ianto fidgets, eyes jumping between them, fingers twisting in his lap.
Finally, Owen speaks. “Was that the news?”
“Uh, yes, that was it,” Ianto answers, looking surprised.
The medic snorts. “It’s not like we didn’t already know about you and Jack, you’re not exactly subtle.” He picks up his fork again and brings another bite of moo shu pork, speaking through it. “And it was kind of hard to miss the girlfriend,” he commented, with no small amount of dark humor.
Ianto looks like he can’t decide whether to get embarrassed or angry, so it’s really a good thing that Tosh steps in. “I think it’s great that Ianto decided to tell us how he feels,” she says to the table, but mostly to Owen. “Not only is it good to be open with your colleagues, your friends,” she points out earnestly, “but it’s not always that black and white, Owen. I mean,” she blushes, “I wouldn’t consider myself bisexual.”
“I know it’s not black and white, Tosh, I’m not an idiot.” The doctor sneers slightly. “Plus, I’m not bi either.”
“Wait a moment, I don’t understand,” Gwen finally speaks up. “Tosh, I thought you… had something with Mary,” she stutters slightly, unsure as to the categorization. “And Owen, why are you saying you’re not bi, we all know you’re straight,” she points out, looking at her colleagues around the table for agreement.
Jack laughs, drawing their attention. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a historical documentary,” he says with great interest. “‘How Cultures of the Past Attempted to Confine Sexuality’.” He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head, indeed taking on every appearance of a movie-goer.
“Gwen, I said I’m not bisexual,” Tosh explains. “I was bicurious, and Mary was very forward. But after experiencing that relationship, I know now that I am straight.” She inspects Gwen’s face for comprehension.
Gwen’s still giving her the ‘I’m trying to understand but not having much luck’ face when Owen butts in.
“And I was clarifyin’ because I’ve had sex with men before.” He keeps his cool even at her shocked look. “I am straight, just cause I’ve slept with men doesn’t change that.” With the last statement, his gaze hardens slightly, as though daring her to challenge the fact.
Gwen shakes her head at the table, resisting the urge to bang her head against it. She looks at Jack as though he could explain the last five minutes of conversation.
He misinterprets the expression. “What, me?” he asks, gesturing at himself. “I don’t tie myself down to any of these stereotypes you people have. I am who I am. If I want to sleep with someone, it doesn’t matter how they identify or what sex they are, and if I have feelings for someone, then I’m hardly going to let a little thing like orientation make me change my mind.” He looks significantly across the table as he says it, and it’s only after Gwen turns her head and catches the blush on Ianto’s face that she wishes she’d been more subtle in looking. “You people are so hung up on labels, everything judged by who you love, how you love, who you’ll sleep with and who you won’t, what parts you have. When will you figure out that categories don’t matter.”
Jack’s gotten himself into lecture mode, hands gesturing in the air, annoyed facial expressions and all. Gwen’s is already too confused by sorting out the labels she’s had shoved in her face tonight to consider an idea as big as throwing them all away.
“Well, at least it’s simple for me,” she says firmly, finding comfort in this more than any vague concepts Jack might have offered. She shrugs, deciding to put the matter out of mind and takes another bite of her supper.
“Yeah, ’cause you’ve never been anything but conventional in your life, Cooper.” Gwen’s surprised to find Owen glaring at her. “You with the perfect boyfriend, I’m sure none of this shit ever even crossed your mind, did it?”
She looks back at him, confused. “What do you mean? Of course I’ve thought about it, just, I guess not as… in-depth as the rest of you have,” she says tactfully.
“We’ve had to,” Tosh answers. The other woman doesn’t look angry with her, but she does seem slightly perturbed. “In this day and age, labels are important, whatever might happen in the future,” she concedes to Jack.
“I know they are,” Gwen says in a placating manner, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when she got lost in this conversation. “But I never saw the need to declare myself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she hurries to tell Ianto, whom she appears to have annoyed as well.
“You’d never need to declare yourself though, would you?” he points out quietly. “It’s different, for the rest of us.”
Gwen shook her head. “I just didn’t think it was important to say.” She looks around at her team, who are all staring at her. Owen is obnoxiously tapping his fingers on the table with his impatience. Even Jack, who has always claimed to not care about the various titles the primitive 21st-century people choose to give themselves, is watching her with an interested expression.
“Alright, fine.” She drops her fork, feeling oddly uncomfortable: not with the declaration, but with the way they’re all watching her, expecting an answer. “I’m… I’m bisexual, too.”
She can’t help the stutter, or the blush. This is the first time she’s ever said the words aloud. That one time she told her friend in college didn’t really count, since it was over IM.
Still, the way Seanny casually typed ‘sure, okay’ and then forgot about it seems like a fountain of acceptance compared to this.
Ianto’s normally staid expression is almost disgusted as he rises to clear away the Chinese cartons, and the others are sporting different levels of displeasure. Even Jack’s eyebrows are twisting above the bridge of his nose, though his lips are quirked in amusement.
“What?” she asks of them loudly. Owen snorts and Tosh looks away. “What is the matter with all of you?” she demands in her usual ‘straight to the heart of it’ way.
“You’re not bi,” Owen tells her, wielding the ‘you’re’ like an insult. “You couldn’t even look any of us in the face after you kissed Carys.”
The memory is enough to make her blush, but her anger quickly retakes control. “I was overcome by alien pheromones, pardon me for bein’ embarrassed. She wasn’t even herself, she wasn’t even human!”
Now even Jack is glaring at her. She raises her voice at them all, hoping they can’t hear the extra edge to her distress. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“Gwen, you don’t seem to understand the first thing about any of this,” Owen says bluntly. “You don’t get that sleeping with a woman once like Tosh did doesn’t make you bi. Do you even know what bicurious means?”
“Well, no, but I-”
“And do you know what omnisexual means? That’s what Jack is,” the doctor motions toward their captain.
Gwen shakes her head, looking at Jack sharply. She never knew what to think of his odd flirtations and stories of different species where the sex of his partner or partners wasn’t always even mentioned. “I never knew,” she says honestly.
Owen scoffs and his lips are curled in an unhappy smirk, like he proved his point but it didn’t satisfy him. Ianto, standing behind the medic’s chair, has the most anger she’s ever seen on his face when someone’s life wasn’t on the line. Tosh refuses to look at her, instead watching the others with a tight expression.
Gwen looks around the table in an odd sort of silence, feeling disconnected. It’s unsettling, because ever since she got to Torchwood she always felt like there was a place for her, with these people. Right now it feels like she’s been told to keep out of their special club, and surprisingly- it hurts. She suddenly feels an urge she recognizes from the field, the need to get her back against a wall for safety. Rhys’ concerned face appears in her mind, and she wishes she were home.
As though he can read her mind, Ianto speaks up, breaking the tense silence that had fallen. “And you have Rhys, haven’t you? Your husband outside of Torchwood, the one who keeps this world from getting too cold for you?”
The scathing tone, her own words thrown back at her, feel as though they’ve ripped a hole through her chest. She looks at the others’ faces, and the glares of her teammates are salt on the wound.
Gwen has never sworn to herself that she won’t turn tail from a fight. She didn’t have to, it hadn’t ever occurred to her. Gwen is far more of a fighter than a runner. But for the first time in her life, pain filling places she hasn’t even known existed, she stands up shakily and runs from the conference room.
[*]
He’d thought it would feel good, to finally smack the woman down. Owen had planned to save the memory of the look on Gwen’s face for the moments when she annoyed him the most. But he can’t, because she doesn’t look the way she does whenever Jack turns some stupid guilt-trip around on her or when Tosh’s technology proves that her oh-so-idealistic declarations are misbegotten. She doesn’t have that embarrassed look of realizing she’s been stupid and then proven wrong.
After she runs from the room, no one moves. Owen spares a thought on whether the others were feeling the same shock as he was, but most of his mind is taken up by that memory of Gwen’s face, that he’d meant to hide inside himself and laugh at occasionally.
Because it was an expression he recognized. He should: he remembers it from being a scrawny twelve-year-old, running into the bathroom to escape his mum’s shouts. He’d splash his face with cold water and then wait for some color to come back to his cheeks, and the whole time he would be wearing that same empty stare.
He doesn’t know what to make of it.
“Was she…” Tosh tries. “Do you think she was telling the truth?”
“Maybe she thought she was, but…” Owen trails off.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” Ianto says angrily, sitting heavily back down in his seat. “She couldn’t even understand the difference between the words we used.”
“When will you people realize: there is no difference!”
They all look at Jack in surprise as he stands up and leans over the conference table forcefully, just like he does whenever Gwen challenges him.
“The labels mean nothing,” Jack snarls. “You chose bisexual,” he points at Ianto, “you chose straight,” he jabs his finger at Owen, “and you chose bicurious before settling on straight as well!” The hand he throws in Tosh’s direction seems to encompass her entire half of the room.
“These words cannot define how you feel, who you are. They only divide us more!” Jack slams his hand on the table and they all flinch, unable to look away from his rage. “You refused to accept your teammate’s ‘label’ based on your perception of her understanding. Did you ever stop to consider that maybe she knows herself better than any of your ever-so-specific labels can define her?”
With a last harrowing glare for all of them, Jack storms out of the room.
[*]
She makes it to her car before the tear in her chest turns into great, gasping sobs, cries that she can only hope are not audible outside the automobile. She is curled over her lap in the driver’s seat, head barely avoiding the horn.
She doesn’t know what is worse, the betrayal or the confusion.
Gwen’s always coasted along in her happy life: childhood, college, Uni, the police. She’s had friends- she’s a friendly person. She fit in. She liked to shop, was a good student, could talk rugby with the lads and was well-known as a shoulder for her girlfriends to cry on. The only people who knew about her sexuality were her sister, a few school friends, and Rhys- not because she thought people would be angry at her, but because there was never any reason to tell. No girls in her college had expressed a similar preference and there were always enough handsome and available men that she didn’t feel she was missing out. In Uni, she met Rhys, and he’d figured it out through gently questioning her with that subtle intelligence she’s come to appreciate. She hadn’t wanted anyone since then, not until the mystique and foreignness of Torchwood, where she met Owen and Jack.
But she’s always assumed that if she did tell anyone besides the few people who already knew, it’d be fine. The same way people have naturally liked her for her whole life, they still would if they knew she fancies girls as well. Why wouldn’t they? She’s been this way the whole time. It’s as much a part of her as her innate caring, it just isn’t mentioned.
There’s no way Gwen could have prepared herself for this. Of course, she’s seen homophobia and prejudice in Uni, on the streets, even in her own department. But somehow it never seemed like they what they were saying included her. It was always because that person was acting like a slag, or that officer was just being a prick. She made it clear she didn’t support it, but she never felt afraid, or victimized.
This is different. These people are her friends. She trusts them with her life in the field. They know her, and they still rejected her. Owen had practically called her stupid to her face, said she couldn’t even understand what being bisexual meant. Sure, maybe she didn’t know all the fancy words, but she’d accepted them, even when she hadn’t understood how Owen and Tosh could possibly be straight, after what they’d done. She hadn’t known the word for what Jack was, but she’d accepted him from the start, even when his stories of shagging aliens had put such looks of shock on her face that he laughed out loud.
So why didn’t they believe her in return? She rages, anger making the tears burn hotter.
Gwen had never felt the slightest bit persecuted before she’d come to Torchwood. Life had been good, had run smoothly. People liked her.
This is the hardest thing to bear: it feels like the universe has finally dropped her from its grace.
[*]
Jack swears under his breath as he crosses the parking lot, making out the dark shape of Gwen in her car. Though he’s unmistakably glad she hasn’t left yet, he can’t help but wonder what it means.
He approaches the last few meters slowly, then taps on the window when she doesn’t look up. It’s a few moments before the door opens.
“I know what I am, Jack.”
“I know,” he tells her. “I believe you.”
She glares up at him from beneath wet eyelashes. “I am like this, even if none of you want to accept it. I’m sorry I don’t fit in with the rest of you,” she says, standing from the car. “I’m sorry that I’m married to a man and I can’t prove myself by sleeping around with women!”
Jack nods, keeping his gaze level. Sometimes Gwen needs to yell herself out, and he thinks she deserves it this time. Stupid primitive 21st century philosophy.
“I have been this way my whole life, I didn’t need to experiment or be curious to decide this! Just because I haven’t agonized, over this, or-” her voice drops abruptly, she looks around to check that the parking lot is empty, “-or slept with a woman… that does not mean I don’t know my own mind, just as well as any of them!”
“I know you do, Gwen.”
Suddenly, she slumps against her car. “Are they right?” she asks plaintively. “I… Carys, she was… she was the first girl I touched. I’ve never even shared looks with a woman, you know, never flirted or implied. Am I wrong?”
Jack steps forward, jaw clenched in anger at what his team has inadvertently done to this strong, proud woman. He keeps his voice and his hands on her shoulders gentle. “You don’t need to prove anything to me, and you don’t need to prove anything to them. If you say you’re bisexual, I believe you, and you don’t have to be with a woman to decide that.”
“But what if I’m like Tosh?” she begs, reddened eyes wide. “What if I’m only curious, and they-”
“Listen to me!” Jack shakes her, perhaps a bit harshly, but he needs to pull her away from these thoughts, and he needs to do so now. He struggles to stop himself from going on a tangent about how sexuality can be a fluid thing. Jack has known people who were positive they only liked one sex and then later in life decided they like both, and vice versa, along with people who decided they didn’t like either sex. He wants to tell her that all these things are normal when he comes from, but he can tell it’s not the right moment.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re attracted to one woman, or all of them, or just men, or both. Whoever you love, Gwen Cooper,” he says firmly, looking straight into her eyes. “That will never change how I see you.”
She can’t say anything for several seconds. He can see her jaw working, chewing over what he’s said. He can only hope it’ll be enough.
Finally, her eyes become less wide, less panicky. She nods, setting her chin with that stubborn look he knows so well, and Jack can tell that, whatever happened tonight, they will all get past this even if Gwen has to bully every last one of her teammates into accepting it.
He’s sure she won’t have to: they’re probably getting themselves straightened out right now, down in the Hub. While they may have been hasty in this case, Jack’s team is not stupid- they’ll apologize and maybe even try to have a real conversation about this.
And maybe it’s not a huge change: Jack doubts any of them will decide to take up the no-labels lifestyle that is the only one he believes in. But this thing that happened tonight is one fight that they are going to win.
The twenty-first century is when it all changes, Jack remembers. And Torchwood will be ready.