Title: Wedding Night
Summary: Martha stays in Cardiff and joins Torchwood, which causes her fiancé to break up with her. Gwen gets married, Martha has a lot of feelings, and she and Tosh work those feelings out.
Rating: AO
Word Count: 1982
Other Chapters: No.
Disclaimer: The British Broadcasting Corporation owns Torchwood and all related characters, settings, and trademarks. I do not profit in any way from this material.
Pairings: Tosh/Martha (explicit); Gwen/Rhys (mentioned); Martha/Tom (mentioned)
Contains: Fingering
Warnings: No major warnings.

Martha was never going back to London. Jack was probably going to be feeling smug about that for the rest of the year. He'd done all in his power to make Wales appealing to her: After she'd agreed to extend her stay with Torchwood from a few nights to a few weeks, he'd become so determined to keep her nights off in Cardiff interesting that she'd actually complained to Gwen about hardly having nights off. Gwen had warned Jack about that, and then he'd given her a bit more downtime but made a point of working the words "You know what I love about Wales?" into every other conversation. When Martha complained of missing her family, Jack spent two hours on the phone with her sister, and somehow bribed, persuaded, or blackmailed Tish Jones into spending a weekend in Cardiff with her father. He'd gone out of his way to ensure that Martha became friends with his entire team, and he'd pointed out every available and eligible flat within ten minutes of the base to her and tried to make it sound casual. It was probably as much in spite of Jack's efforts as it was because of them that Martha decided to stay, but she and the rest of the Torchwood team were allowing Jack his self-satisfaction.

Martha had hit it off immediately with everyone on the team, except Tosh. It hadn't been anything personal, but Tosh was used to seeing UNIT official in two contexts: disrupting work and being consistently rude to the Torchwood team at crash sites, and guarding her cell. Tosh didn'ttrust UNIT officials. Jack was determined, though, and he'd tried to force a friendship by pairing them up on missions as often as possible and starting frequent conversations about everything in the universe that he suspected they might have in common. It worked. Once the ice was broken over a near-death experience with a giant flying leach and a shamefully twee conversation about owning rabbits as children, Tosh was able to stop seeing Dr. Martha Jones the UNIT Official and start seeing... Martha.

And then Martha had asked why Tosh had been distant, at first. Tosh hadn't wanted to tell her. She really hadn't meant to. The more Tosh had started to like Martha, the stronger Tosh's determination to not even think about her time in the UNIT facility had grown. She didn't want to associate that with Martha, and the easiest way to avoid making that association was to not think of those days at all.

Tosh had never really spoken of it, in truth. Jack was the only person who had any idea what conditions Tosh had been locked away in, and he never brought it up, which Tosh was grateful for. Tosh's parents knew she'd been taken into government custody for a few days, but Tosh had never told them what exactly had happened. They'd asked her about it a few times, likely suspecting that she was tortured, but every time Tosh had assured them that she was fine now and shut down the conversation. Tosh didn't like talking about.

Something about the tone of Martha's voice or the look in Martha's eyes had opened those floodgates, though. Everything came out. Tosh felt safe with Martha, and in an empty base on a wet and chilly night, she'd told Martha things she wouldn't tell her own father, and confronted memories that she never thought she'd confront.

Martha was... so much better than UNIT. So much better than everything Tosh had grown to associate UNIT with and expect UNIT to be. Martha was practical and efficient and kind and Martha cared about human life. Martha was shocked by Tosh's experiences and she hadn't let Tosh defend UNIT. Tosh did defend UNIT, for all that she disliked it, because Tosh had hardly been an innocent victim they'd picked up off the street, but Martha hadn't allowed it. She'd said that defending UNIT was a coping mechanism for Tosh, and that it gave Tosh an illusion of power over the situation. Maybe she was right. She'd said that the conditions Tosh had been kept in were a gross violation of human rights. She was right. They'd sat at the base for hours and just talked about their feelings and Tosh's experiences, until Jack and Ianto had come back from their date with their clothes already half-removed. Jack had invited them both to stay, but neither of them had. They'd excused themselves and gone home alone.

Tosh never knew that, though Martha sat on it for a week before acting on it, it was that night that she decided she wasn't going to back to UNIT.

Tosh was glad that Martha was staying. Everyone was, except Martha's fiancé. He'd called off their engagement over it, because apparently her changing her career twice in six months indicated a certain flightiness that made him uncomfortable. Tosh and Gwen had taken her out for drinks and terrible karaoke, and that had helped, and time went on and even though Gwen's wedding was always and inevitably going to be painful, Martha had handled the ceremony with poise and maintained a smile through most of the day.

After Gwen and Rhys had driven off to start their honeymoon, Tosh followed Martha back to their shared hotel room and they kicked off their uncomfortable shoes and peeled off their tight dresses, then collapsed onto their separate beds and sighed nearly in unison and laughed at each other. It was late, as far as nights off from Torchwood went, and their friend had gotten married. She'd also gotten pregnant with an alien baby, but they were probably never going to speak of that again.

"You know," Martha said, staring up at the ceiling, "I'm sober."

Tosh wasn't really sure how to respond to that. "Oh?"

"Yeah," Martha said. "Like, I had a glass of champaign, but that was all. I feel fine."

Tosh nodded, not really sure where this was going. "I didn't have much either, before Ianto started slipping the drugs in."

"I'd meant to be," Martha said, laughing slightly. "It's why I didn't even consider driving back to my flat after the reception." She sighed. "The closer Gwen's wedding got, the more I started wondering 'Okay, how drunk and I'm going to have to be to get through this?'"

"Oh," Tosh said, meaning it more now.

"And I love Gwen and I wanted to be here for her—" Martha said quickly.

"—It's been less than a month since you had to cancel your own wedding plans," Tosh said, sitting up and looking at her. "I get it. Gwen got it. Trust me, no one would have blamed you for drinking or needing a moment to yourself or anything."

Martha looked over at Tosh, and Tosh searched for the answer on Martha's face before she asked, but couldn't find a good one: "How are you doing now?"

"I'm fine," Martha said. Then she laughed. "I actually feel fine. Isn't that odd?"

Tosh went over to Martha and sat on Martha's bed and hugged Martha, just for good measure. "I think..." she said. "I don't think there's really a normal or a right way to feel right now. I think you can feel how you want."

"I keep thinking that maybe it was kind of a good thing," Martha said. She shrugged. "I rushed into my engagement with Tom. My mother told me so herself. And then he ran off to Africa and we were apart so much and I just... Have you ever met someone in one context and thought you knew them really well, but then in a different context they were... different?"

"Yeah," Tosh said. "It happens a lot with Torchwood, actually."

"Tom and I met..." Martha shook her head. "It's wild, and a really long story, and I really should have expected things to be completely different when I looked him back up, but I guess I just never really was able to separate who he was when we met from who he... actually was. It's ridiculous." She sighed and rested her head on Tosh's shoulder. "And I sort of turned up out of the blue and expected him to know me in ways he couldn't possibly have and I..." She sighed. "I think he broke up with me over more than Cardiff, and maybe he was right to."

"I don't know what to say," Tosh said. "I'm so sorry."

Martha sat up instantly. "Look at me," she said. "Sitting here whining to you when we should be happy! We're at a wedding!" She forced a smile. "I'm sorry. You're wonderful and my trouble with men is probably the last thing you want to hear about."

"No!" Tosh said immediately, "Martha, any time you need to talk, I'm here."

"Thank you," Martha said. "But really, talking probably won't help." Martha took her hair down, tossed the tie onto a nearby night-stand, and ran her hand through it. "Maybe I should just quit men. I don't know if I have terrible taste in men or if I'm cursed, but something here isn't working. Celibacy can't be too bad, can it?"

"Forget celibacy. Just start shagging women," Tosh said, smirking slightly.

Martha's fake smile fell and her eyebrows raised. "Are you offering?"

"Would you accept?" The fact that Martha was an attractive young doctor had not escaped Tosh's notice, particularly after Tosh had realized how safe she felt with Martha. Tosh hadn't exactly named their pet rabbits yet, but Martha was Tosh's type on legs, and Tosh knew it.

Martha considered it for a moment, then she carefully leaned forward and kissed Tosh.

Tosh hadn't quite known how serious she was until that moment, but in that moment she decided. She pulled Martha in closer and snogged her passionately, the way Martha deserved to be kissed, and Martha melted into Tosh's arms and responded to Tosh's attentions. Tosh's hand was stroking down Martha's side when Martha climbed into Tosh's lap, and when Martha allowed Tosh to quite blatantly and slowly fondle her breasts, Tosh got brave and moved her hand down the smooth silk of Martha's slip until she reached the bottom. Tosh caressed up Martha's thighs and let her finger linger over dark curls for a second. She stopped the kiss and looked into Martha's eyes.

"Can I touch you?" she asked.

"I really ought to make you buy me a drink first," she said.

"Name the date, time, and drink," Tosh said. "We can do it a bit out of order, if it's alright with you."

"I said I should Martha said," slipping her hands under Tosh's slip and into Tosh's underwear. "Not that I'm going to." She touched Tosh a second before Tosh touched her. As they both started to rub, Martha went back in and brought their lips back together, and they stayed right there on Martha's bed, a mess of trembling limbs and two sweaty bodies that weren't quite naked, penetrating each other with their tongues and finding refuse in the comfort and safety of each other's arms. They came together, by some design on Tosh's part, and they pulled their wet fingers away from each other and grinned at each other, then Martha collapsed back on her bed.

"Next Friday, 7:00, and I'll have whatever your favourite drink is," Martha said.

It took Tosh a second to realize what she meant. "Really?" Tosh asked.

"Yeah," Martha said. "You offered me a rain-check on that drink. I suppose I ought to take you up on it, no matter how badly I needed a good lay."

Tosh smiled a little and stood up, and started to move back to her own bed.

Martha caught her wrist. "But then we're going on a proper date. Dinner. Walk in the moonlight if you'd like. I like walks in the moonlight."