AN: This has been rattling round in my brain since the episode aired, so I wrote it when the sound began to bug me. It was filed safely away, until a friend found it and blew the cobwebs away to read it. Please read and review - even if its a smiley face (or a sad one). The title is, of course, from the wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue'.
Disclaimer: Not mine
...
Jack entered the bridal suite to find Gwen staring absentmindedly at her reflection.
"Hello Jack. Not quite the blushing bride, am I?" Gwen said, attempting a cheery smile into the mirror.
Jack crossed the short distance to her quickly, his face trying to hold his mask of detachment firmly in place. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he stared into the reflection of her eyes.
Smiling sadly Gwen continued, "I'd given up on things going to plan a long time ago" Because Rhys isn't you she added mentally before chiding herself.
Jack leaned into her automatically offering comfort with his presence, his simple thereness.
"If life always turned out the way we expected, what would be the point in living?" he questioned, subtly inhaling the perfume of her hair, along with a calming breath.
At his words, Gwen clutched his hand desperately in her own. "I didn't expect to meet someone like you Jack" she said, carefully watching their images in the mirror, hers was now reflecting desperation, his morphing swiftly from detachment to hunger. Unconsciously, she began to caress his hand with her thumb.
"If I hadn't met you I'd be married by now," Gwen said faintly. She briefly pictured married life with Rhys being back in her old job, struggling to make ends meet. She found it nearly impossible to imagine life without Torchwood in it.
Jack leaned closer to her and whispered almost reverently into her ear, "You're not the only one who met someone that knocked their world out of kilter."
Not-so-subtly this time, Jack breathed in the intoxicating smell that was uniquely Gwen Cooper, pressing a feather light kiss to her temple.
Quickly Gwen spun to face him, their faces mere inched apart.
"Rhys has always been there for me. Through all this madness even when I haven't deserved it" Gwen whisper-spoke attempting to convince herself that she didn't want the mysterious man who was standing so close to her.
Jack shushed her and before she could muster another excuse, pressed his thumb over lips, leaving them tingling and her breathing shaky from the fire that was running through her blood and consuming her protests and doubts alike.
"He's not afraid to tell me he loves me," Gwen stated, knowing that Jack was utterly terrified of saying the three little words that would make all this real. Deciding that actions sometimes speak louder than words, Jack shifted his hand from her shoulder, up her neck to grasp her jaw. Locking his blue eyes to her hazel ones, he leaned in and touched his lips to hers.
With that contact, all reservations vanished, all protests were forgotten and everything but the feel of his lips on hers ceased to matter. Gwen had a sinking suspicion that the entire wedding party could storm in, metaphorical (and in her colleagues cases, literal) guns blazing and they wouldn't have noticed enough to stop.
Still cupping her face in his hands, Jack stumbled blindly backwards to the bed, pulling Gwen on to it. When she was settled, he broke of the kiss, allowing her to regain her breath as he pulled out the singularity scalpel. Gwen felt a small amount of fear at seeing the device, but understood that Jack would want to get rid of the Nostrovite baby before its mother could tear it out of her. Putting her trust in her leader Gwen permitted Jack to aim the technology at her stomach. For a few tense moments, there was a disturbing whirring sound emitted from the scalpel followed by a faint pop and the sensation of suddenly being empty and thin again. Laughing joyously at the success off the removal, Jack pinned Gwen to the bed and kissed her senseless. Giving in to the sensations that Jack was causing to erupt across her skin, Gwen held him as close to her as possible, knowing that she would never be able to repeat this experience.
….…...
Later, standing at the alter with Rhys, both of them covered in bits of Nostrovite from when Owen remembered the huge gun stored in the SUV and blew the alien to hell with it, Gwen could feel Jack's eyes lingering on her skin. She knew he was picturing her sprawled out on the bed beside him, flushed and panting, but she also knew that he would never let her cheat on Rhys again. And when the minister pronounced them man and wife, Gwen knew she would never want to again and even if she did, she had the memory of Jack and his quiet declaration as she left him alone among rapidly cooling sheets to keep her from slipping.