Author Note: for the prompt Torchwood/RPF, John meets the man he's been playing all these years on comment_fic at livejournal. Because it looked like fun ;)
(Always) At A Quarry In Wales
It's dark when John makes his way out of the quarry at the end of filming and he heads towards the lights of the trailers. It's not really been that long of a day, it just gets dark early at this time of year, which is a bitch for outdoor shoots.
A motorbike tears past him on the road at the top of the quarry closely followed by an SUV and he wonders if there's such a thing as speed limits out here in the middle of nowhere.
"It wasn't me," he says out loud, imagining the faces of the costume department if he were to get hit and ruin the Captain Harkness outfit. "It wasn't myfault all your hard work has gone to waste. I got run over by crazy people!"
"Speaking of crazy," says a voice from the road and John near jumps out of his skin.
"Shit!"
"Sorry," says the voice, but it sounds more amused than apologetic.
John peers into the road until he can make out the shape of a man on a mountain bike, one foot on the floor so the bike doesn't topple over now that it's stopped moving. He seems to be wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of jeans even though it's getting cold out and on closer inspection there's a ragged hole in the t-shirt over the man's heart with dark staining around the edges.
"Shit," says John again and he moves into the road to get a better look. "Do you want me to call an ambulance? Do you need an ambulance?"
"What?" The man looks down at himself and then back up at John with a smile. "Oh, no, I'm fine."
To be fair now that John's close enough he can't see any injury, just that the t-shirt is a mess, and then he feels like an idiot because they're near the set of Torchwoodfor Christ's sake and the guy's probably an extra or something.
"Speaking of crazy though," he says, "could I borrow your coat?"
"Um, it's not mine." John backs away a bit. "I mean, I haven't stolen it or anything, it is mine, but it's not really minemine. I can't just give it away. Sorry."
"Right. It's just cold, y'know?" The man tilts his head to one side and produces a blinding grin that John could swear practically gleams in the night (and makes him pretty jealous actually). "And it is a fantastic coat."
John moves closer again, studying that grin and wondering if he could replicate it, when a small lorry rumbles past on the other side of the road and its headlights spill across the man's face, illuminating it for a brief moment in which he looks as shocked as John feels, an eerie mirror image.
"Shit," says John for a third time, because it bears saying, and then he's fumbling at the coat, pulling it off and handing it over.
"Thanks," says the man on the bike, sounding far more cheerful than John thinks anyone has any right to be in this bizarre situation, as he fits himself into John's coat as if it were made for him.
John's Captain coat.
"So," he says, leaning over the handlebars, "I have to catch up with a blowfish dressed as a nun and a bunch of kids who reckon they know how to handle it, but if you stick around I'll be coming back this way and we can catch up on whether you're a past self, future self, or just a whole new form of fun."
"Ah," says John panicking a little, because he's not used to this kind of thing, he just plays with it on the tele. "No. Um, spoilers?"
"Shame."
Then man fires a wink at him, then pushes off and starts peddling down the road, admittedly faster than John could manage it, but still pretty damn slow if he means to catch up with a motorbike and an SUV travelling at there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-speed-limit miles per hour.
John shakes his head and carries on towards the trailers, hoping that the man on the bike is too busy to ever watch television and that the costume department are in a forgiving mood.