Title: A Different Word
Summary: Tosh and Gwen chat about sexuality.
Rating: T for sexual content and language
Word Count: 1990
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/Mary (discussed); Gwen/Rhys (mentioned); Gwen/Owen (mentioned); Jack/Ianto (mentioned)
Contains: sexuality crises
Warnings: mentions of minor character death

Tosh and Gwen didn't often get left alone at the base together. They had different and not exactly complimentary skill sets, and it wasn't often that one team member had to guard the base or another team member while the others left. Still, Tosh needed to keep her eyes on the nuclear spikes in the centre of the city and hit the right buttons to neutralize them, which was easy enough for Tosh, but meant that she absolutely could not take her eyes of the screen for the next two hours. Meanwhile, Gwen had to watch the doors with her gun in her hand and be ready to snipe any scavengers or ambushers that tried to get in here, because Jack was relatively certain that this was a trap. The men were off on an ambush of their own.

Gwen and Tosh took drinks of their coffees in almost perfect time, and Gwen smirked because it was late at night and she was bored and almost anything seemed funny. Ianto had put a straw in Tosh's coffee, to make it easier for her to drink without looking away from the screen. She hit a few buttons, entirely one-handed, with the straw still in her lips.

Gwen yawned as Tosh put her coffee back down on her desk.

"You can talk to me, you know," Tosh said. "This isn't exactly high concentration stuff."

"Oh," Gwen said. "I just thought that... I don't know... I don't want you to get distracted and accidentally blow up the city."

"I won't," Tosh said, shaking her head. "It might even be helpful to talk, actually. It'll keep us both awake."

"Alright..." Gwen said. "Anything on your mind?"

"Well... Yeah. Mary. She's been on my mind a lot lately, actually..."

"Oh, Tosh!" Gwen said, "I'm so sorry! It's been weeks. I didn't realize—"

"It's not like that!" Tosh shook her head. "I just... I only knew her three days and she was just using me to get to her ship. It shouldn't..."

"But that doesn't mean it doesn't," Gwen said. She wanted very badly to hug Tosh, suddenly, but this wasn't the time. Hugging Tosh now would definitely involve Gwen taking her own eyes off the door for more than a second, and it would probably break Tosh's concentration as well. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Tosh said quickly. "That's not what I meant. It's just..." She chewed her lip a moment and hit more keys. "Have you ever shagged a woman before, Gwen?"

"Who hasn't?" Gwen said without thinking about it.

Tosh scoffed. "Most women haven't, Gwen." She was smiling when Gwen glanced over at her, though. Good. Gwen hadn't offended her. "Welsh tradition I haven't heard of?"

Gwen shook her head, even though Tosh wasn't looking at her. "Interesting group of friends in university, I guess. A lot of them were Scottish, actually..."

"Well, in any case," Tosh said, "You've probably never shagged an alien, have you?"

"Can't say I have," Gwen said. "Does it matter?"

"I don't know," Tosh said. "I tried to ask Jack about it, but I've never seen anyone not want to talk about something quite as emphatically as Jack doesn't want to talk about sexuality." She smiled and hit an unusually long string of keys, using both hands. "The way he rushed out of the room when I brought it up, you'd think I was his teenage daughter asking him for The Talk or something."

Gwen laughed and took another sip of her coffee. Coffee in her left hand, gun in her right, eyes on the door. It really wasn't difficult to do this while talking, though Gwen wasn't sure that Tosh was right about it making it easier. "I think he finds the whole idea of sexuality a bit silly," Gwen said. "You said it yourself when I first joined, didn't you? He'll shag anything, long as it's gorgeous enough."

"Yeah..." Tosh said, sighing.

"Is there something going on with him and Ianto, do you think?"

"Does it matter?"

"No," Gwen said quickly. "No. Of course not."

Tosh took another drink of her coffee. Gwen rested her own cup on her knee and kept staring at the door. The cup was warm, but not painfully hot, especially through her trousers. The base was quiet. Even Myfanwy must have been sleeping or something, because there was no fluttering of wings or horrific squeaking in the distance as she hunted rats.

"Would you shag a woman now, though?" Tosh asked. "I mean, if it weren't for Rhys..."

Gwen chuckled. "It's hardly the time to be trying to get me into bed, Tosh."

"Oh, stop it!" Tosh might have, for just a split second, taken her eyes off the screen to glance at Gwen. That sobered them both immediately. The city didn't blow up, though. Not just then. Five seconds went by and they both breathed a sigh of relief and wondered if the security cameras had caught that, or if Jack would bother to check the security cameras later. It seemed unlikely that he'd bother if the city didn't blow up, and if the city did blow up, Tosh and Gwen would be dead and the base would be destroyed, so it wasn't really worth worrying themselves over.

"It's just that it's not silly to me," Tosh said. "Sexuality and all that... I've always just sort of assumed..."

"That you were straight and that everyone liked staring at a nice set of breasts when the opportunity presented itself?" Gwen offered.

"Yeah."

"That was me as a teenager," Gwen said. "It dawned on me a couple of times, I think, but I just... didn't want it to be true so I sort of put it out of my head. Then when I was seventeen I had this gorgeous lit teacher, and one day I was just staring at her and feeling sort of shy because I thought she could tell, then suddenly I thought 'Hold on. This isn't normal.' And it isn't, is it?"

"Who knows?" Tosh asked, shaking her head but keeping her eyes on the screen. "I'm too old to be having a teenager's sexuality crisis. It's ridiculous."

"No," Gwen said. "It's normal. You hear about it all the time, right? People who get married and have kids and then suddenly they're gay. At least you don't have a family riding on what you figure out."

"What do you..." Tosh said, then she stopped and blushed a bit, as if it occurred to her that the question might be rude or unwanted.

"What am I?" Gwen asked.

Tosh nodded.

"I'm bisexual," Gwen said. "Have been since university."

"So when you snogged Carys..."

"I blame that entirely on the pheromones," Gwen said, glaring at Tosh playfully even though Tosh didn't see. "But it was hardly a shock. She's a cute girl, and then looking up all that information about her later, I... may have gotten a bit attached." Gwen took another drink of her coffee and sighed. "I saw her in a shop about a week ago. Said hi and then realized how bloody stupid it was. I don't think she even remembered me." Then, realizing what it sounded like, she quickly added: "I mean, not that I wanted to take her home with me or anything, just... It was weird that I knew so much about her and she didn't even recognize me."

"Part of the job," Tosh said. "Usually with people you aren't quite so attached to. You get used to it."

Tosh typed away on her keyboard for a moment, and Gwen shifted her position, crossing her legs and settling back against the wall. "So you saw me snog Carys, then?"

"Everyone watched," Tosh said. "Well, except Ianto. Ever the professional..."

"If I'm wrong about him and Jack..." Gwen muttered. She felt a bit guilty about it, too, because she and Owen also had their not-so-secret secret. There really was no hiding things from each other in this place. A bit louder, she said, "I think in London they might have actually had some kind of sexual harassment policy."

Tosh laughed.

"So. Mary," Gwen said. "If you don't mind me asking, she didn't look so human all the time...?"

"No," Tosh said. "She had a... natural form or something."

"You saw it?"

Tosh nodded. "Yeah."

"And did you... I mean... Was it..." Gwen worried her lip between her teeth for a second. There really wasn't an inoffensive way to word this question. "I mean, there's shagging an alien and then there's shagging an alien..."

"She looked human when we shagged," Tosh said. "Does it even matter? It's not like there's a different word for it if it's men, women, and aliens, right?"

"Don't know," Gwen said.

"Neither do I," Tosh said. "If anyone would know, it'd be Jack, but..." She shrugged. "Like I said, he won't talk about it. At all."

"Sorry I brought it up," Gwen said, because it was obviously a sore spot for her.

Tosh shook her head. "To be completely honest, after she showed me her real form, I started thinking that maybe, if she wanted to..."

Gwen smirked. "You would have!"

"I don't know!" Tosh said, and her voice struck an odd note as she said it. She sounded a little bit afraid. "It never came up, so I don't know what I actually would have been able to do or not do." She blinked hard and shook her head. "A lot was happening at once." She took a deep breath. "At the time, I was thinking that I probably could. But I was barely getting my head around the idea of shagging a woman. It was all sort of a big experiment." She hit more keys, back to just one hand. "I thought that it might actually be a little bit reassuring that she was an alien." She sighed. "For my parents at least, if not for me."

"Not very modern people, your parents?"

"They'll get over it," Tosh said, "But I can't pretend I'm looking forward to their reactions if I ever tell them. They're active Conservatives."

"If you tell them?"

"I'm not sure yet," Tosh said. "Maybe I'll get a girlfriend some day and tell them then. There's no point in upsetting them if I'm just going to turn around and get married to a man without ever even dating a woman."

Gwen grunted non-committally. She didn't think she could say 'I thought that way for a while too,' without it sounding condescending, and 'I understand,' didn't quite feel fair, because she didn't.

"What?" Tosh said, because apparently non-committal grunting wasn't the ideal response either.

"Nothing," Gwen said. "It's your choice. I don't know your parents."

"What about yours?"

"Dad said he just wanted me to be happy and I believe him," Gwen said with a shrug. "I think mum thought it was phase, but she indulged me. She probably still thinks it was a phase and that I'm over it now that I'm with Rhys. I can't pretend that it doesn't hurt a little to not be taken seriously, but..."

"I'm sorry," Tosh said.

"No, no, it's—"

"She doesn't have to disown you for you to be allowed to feel sorry for yourself. I'm sorry."

"Thanks," Gwen said. She sighed and felt like an ass. "And, really, Tosh, tell your parents whenever you want to. If you ever want to. It's none of my business. And I hope they surprise you, if you do."

"Thanks." Tosh looked thoughtful for a moment, then snapped out of it and prevented the city from blowing up with a few more key strokes.

"A bit of advice," Gwen said, "Do what you want. Love who you want. It tends to sort itself out in the end." She smiled. "I wasted too many years of my life trying on labels and experimenting on girls rather than loving them."

"Thanks," Tosh said, smiling slightly. "Really."