'You're always out on missions, you're shagging Jack, and I'm stuck here making the coffee.'
Quite a vicious remark, designed to wound me. Designed to rile me. I wouldn't give Owen that satisfaction. Lord only knows what was going through his head – he's always been a bit of a mystery to me. Just why is it he feels he has to make himself so unpleasant? Is it a test, to check how much he is valued? – but to react would be to let him win. See, here I am comparing my relationship to him to a competition as well! Perhaps he's right, perhaps subconsciously I am trying to beat him. Of course I was jealous of him to a certain extent. After all, it's not long since I was nothing but the tea-boy, the cleaner, the one who tidies up after their careless and unsubtle actions. Maker of the coffee (bloody Owen fucking with my coffee-maker).
I feel sorry for him though and so I say nothing in retaliation, I keep my cool. I have no idea what it feels like to be dead (a zombie? It's difficult to classify him accurately) but it must be pretty shite, far worse than how he can make me feel by saying those things. Still, he has the power to make me feel awful. Just that disbelieving 'Yeah, yeah,' after I had told him mine and Jack's relationship wasn't like that, wasn't just sex, was enough to make me feel sick with fear. What if he knows something I don't? No, I'm being ridiculous.
I know I am more than the tea-boy now, at least. He has that part right. I feel like a part of the team, albeit a somewhat peripheral one. I don't know if it was Jack's absence that started it, or, as Owen so bluntly put it, shagging him. After all, he is the boss. It gives me a measure of protection. Obviously, I prefer to think of it as my merits being recognised and rewarded, but nothing is ever that simple.
I couldn't let it go, though, could I? I had to say something. But 'It's not like that… Jack and me,' was so incredibly impotent. I did wonder, after I had said it, whether he would ask what exactly it is like between myself and their dashing hero. They're all curious; they ask me, when it is only Gwen and I, or Tosh and I, what it is that's going on (when what they mean is, are you fucking, or are you in love?). Owen simply makes snide comments and hopes for information, oh yes he does. He might make out that he's a red-blooded heterosexual, but I for one know he's more than a little intrigued by various perversities, shall we say. After all, nothing is simple.
What would I rather have said? Oh, I don't know. It's always best to be evasive. Jack doesn't much like me telling anyone anything about this thing that has sprung up between us (he doesn't say, not in so many words, but the odd remark gives it away. Why not, I wonder?) and so I always fob the others off. Dabbling, indeed; it certainly is a useful euphemism! Sounds rather kinky, but at the same time, it means precisely nothing. Martha seemed interested; I was worried my little stare into the distance as I remembered the things I have done with Jack might be over-egging the pudding but it seems not. She was thrilled. Probably likes thinking about Jack and I – well, Jack at least. Why does everyone want to fuck him? It's not something it is easy to get used to, and he doesn't help, kissing pretty much every humanoid being that we meet. I liked Martha, but if I'm honest, I'm glad she's gone. Not that it helps, much. I know she and I are far from the only people he finds attractive, even within Torchwood. Why did I let myself become embroiled in something like this? It constantly gnaws away at me, jealousy and uncertainty.
If Owen had asked the question I almost felt him bite his tongue on, what then? If he had said 'What is it like, then, you and Jack?', I know that I would have said something casual and untrue, as I always do. But if I were being honest, for once in my life? What would I have said? What is it like between me and Jack?
It was much easier to define at the start. I hated him for shooting Lisa and for not shooting me. Just for those few minutes, I wanted to die, and I wanted him to die. I know that when he kissed me, I had to pretend to be unconscious to stop myself attacking him, making him hurt the way I was hurting.
Things became more complicated. I found myself attracted to him, and he knew it. He always knows, at least about sex. I still hated him, hated his cockiness, his arrogance, his flippancy, his callousness, his cruelty. At the same time, though, I wanted to taste him and touch him. I wanted to possess him, just to see what it was like. I wanted some power over him, a fraction of the power he held (holds) over me. I hurt him and I enjoyed it at first, but I soon came to despise that part of me, and I made up my mind. I had a choice; either I broke this liaison off and remained free to hate Jack Harkness, or I continued it for the positive feelings I had towards him and let the hatred go. I told him this, I explained my choice, and his reaction surprised me.
He asked – no, he begged – me to carry on seeing him.
He told me he felt very strongly towards me, that he found me attractive, and that he enjoyed the time we spent together. (I paraphrase). He apologised for shooting Lisa (I know now that he had to, but at the time I was blinded by the feelings I had for her. I still blame myself for the way things ended, but I don't feel that white hot grief like I used to, I don't wake every morning feeling sick with loss. I feel guilty for that, too, but I know that the living, mourn though they will, eventually have to leave the dead behind. I will never forget Lisa and how I loved her, but I know it's gone from me and that no amount of tears and pain will bring her back).
And so I made my decision. I wrote down everything I hated about Jack, sealed it in an envelope and put it in my drawer, a sort of cathartic cleansing gesture that actually worked surprisingly well. I've read about that sort of thing but never expected it to work. Admittedly, those feelings haven't gone altogether, but they are small and manageable now.
Still, I do wonder why I kept on our affair when I felt so many negative things, and I never wondered that more than when he disappeared.
I won't pretend it was like losing Lisa again, nothing like that, but it was painful, and it reminded me of how very lonely I had been for so long before our relationship had changed. I threw myself into work, went on missions (not my favourite part of work, but sometimes quite enjoyable) and generally became a more central member of the team.
Then, of course, he came back, expecting to pick up where he left off, and curse me if I wasn't so pleased to have him back that I barely listened to his apologies before falling back into bed with him. God I'd missed sex with him. The one honest thing I've said about our relationship to any outsiders is describing the physical side of our relationship. Innovative, bordering on the avant garde. That much is true.
Other than sex, though, it gets a lot more complicated. I've forgiven Jack for killing Lisa, I've forgiven him for leaving. I've even forgiven him for keeping so many secrets from me. But that doesn't mean that those things have been erased from my memory. It's difficult not to feel bitter towards someone who has fucked you about so extravagantly.
Love? I'm not even sure I like him sometimes, but when I see him unexpectedly, when our eyes meet during a briefing or our hands touch as I give him his coffee, I feel like I've been skewered on a blade of exquisite pain and pleasure. I struggle to catch my breath, he means so much to me.
It doesn't feel like it did with Lisa. Our relationship was, despite our jobs, normal and everyday and wonderful and uncomplicated (insofar as these things ever are). We pissed each other off, we argued, we had make-up sex, we brought each other cups of tea and cooked each other dinner. She washed my clothes, I ironed hers.
With Jack, though, things are a lot darker and more tangled. I don't know how far I trust him, and yet I can't seem to stop myself from staking every bit of happiness I've painstakingly accumulated on him. I feel like I'm falling, and the only one who can save me is Jack, but that he's the reason I am falling in the first place. He has made, and continues to make, me feel euphoric and infinitely desirable and alive, but at the same time he tortures me with jealousy and fear that he will leave me.
And so here we are. He makes me suffer, but I am as attached to the pain he gives me as to the pleasure. I don't know who that makes more fucked up, him for inflicting this or me for craving it. All I know is that I can't do without him.
Although I would love to tell this to someone rather than just writing it down., it's much for the best that Owen didn't ask.