A/N: Over 100 reviews! In just nine chapters! You guys ROCK!
Just for that, I'm making this chapter extra long and everyone gets double the cookies and hugs. Quadruple the hugs and cookies. With milk (or soy milk, if you so desire). And chocolate. Or Candy. Or both.
Sorry this one took so long to update. That was for a couple of reasons: The first, it was my birthday this past Friday (whee!), and the second, I joined a gym and have been spending a chunk of time there instead of in front of my computer (also 'whee!' because it means my flabs will become abs again). And the third reason is that one of the upcoming scenes was incredibly difficult to write because I didn't want to end up at the wrong end of a mob. You'll know which one it was when you get to it. Hopefully. Or, rather, not hopefully. If you can't tell it was hard to write, then that means I've done a decent job :)
Disclaimer: I should mention, for those of you who've never read any Terry Pratchett, that the 'mostly apples' thing was originally his and I thew it in because I absolutely adore his stuff and I was paying homage to it. Not because I was trying to make myself look clever by cribbing someone else's stuff. Anymore than by simply writing fanfiction, anyway.
Rating: Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Spoilers: Not especially.
Chapter Ten: SNAFU
Rhys was surprised when Gwen got home before nine pm. It wasn't much before, because of all the time they'd spent on that bloody boat, but it was before nine pm.
She greeted him perfunctorily with a kiss on the cheek and then dropped her purse in the hall.
"How's your head?" Rhys asked.
Gwen prodded where the half-brick in a sock had clunked her.
"Fine, actually. And today was so busy that I didn't even think of it."
"Ah. I've made you some supper," he added hopefully.
"Wonderful. I haven't eaten yet." Which was a bit of a lie, because she had grabbed a snack on the way home. "Just let me grab a shower and I'll heat it up."
"Where'd you get that sweater?" Rhys asked as they went further into the flat.
"Jack loaned it to me," she answered. "Said it was a Christmas present from an old boyfriend."
"Ah, well." Rhys said, rejoicing within at this further confirmation of his assumptions about Jack. "Jack and his boyfriends."
Gwen said nothing. She was too busy getting ready for her shower. She had started to undress, but had scented something that made her pause. Jack.
She looked around, certain that he was there in the room with her, but then she realized that her nose had tricked her. Jack wasn't there, but his sweater was.
She wondered if he'd ever worn it. He must keep it with his other clothes, for it to smell like it did. It was clear that it was hardly worn at all, and he'd said that mauve wasn't his colour...though she had a hard time picturing him looking bad while wearing anything.
Or nothing.
And she knew what he looked like when he was wearing nothing...
That thought for later, she reminded herself. When there wasn't a danger of Rhys coming into the room and seeing her face.
"So how was your day?" Rhys asked from the door-frame. Gwen looked around, carefully schooling her features.
"Long," she said. "Spent most of it out on the bay, chasing a ship that wasn't there."
"Ghost ships now?" Rhys asked, trying to joke around. "I thought you just caught aliens."
"It's the rift," Gwen said, unaccountably annoyed. "We get all sorts."
Her shower was long and hot and luxurious. Until, that is, she paired those three words with a mental picture of of Jack. Then her shower became...well, it stayed long and hot and luxurious, she just turned the tap off and dried off because if she stayed in there with those thoughts, she'd run out of hot water before she ran out of thoughts.
Rhys was watching TV when she got out of the bathroom, so she just put on her pajamas and crawled into bed. It was early, and she didn't care. And she'd forgotten about the food that Rhys had made her, but she wouldn't have cared if she had remembered, because she was just so tired. But even though she was bone tired, she didn't sleep. Not yet. She couldn't get Jack out of her head.
His face when she'd kissed him. It had been priceless. She wondered if the CCTV footage of the Plass had a good shot of it. She smiled, sighed and turned over.
The bed felt strangely empty without Jack in it.
But, she contented herself, according to Ianto's schedule, tomorrow night was hers.
She was still smiling when she finally fell asleep.
When Tosh arrived at the Hub the next day, there was a hat on her desk.
She stared at it.
It was brown – mostly. Whether the colour was from aged leather or the dirt that seemed to encrust it, she wasn't sure. It was a tricorn, too. And it stank, of unwashed hair, and sea salt, and kelp, and mud, and sweat, and old sushi, and...rum?
"I thought Owen was supposed to log the hat?" she asked in general.
Jack, moseying past with a mug of tea, looked at the hat.
"Owen said he needed you to run a trace for additional rift energy spectra," he said jovially. "Give it a scan, would you?"
Tosh eyed the hat wearily. It had been the only fruit of several hours of puttering about the bay in a tiny boat, the only proof that a giant pirate ship had been sailing around the bay and firing its cannons at everything. There was no telling what it could do. What if it granted special telepathic powers? Or the memories of the last man to wear it? What if it housed the soul of its original owner, who would be freed by the simple act of putting it on whereupon he would begin a campaign of destruction and slaughter against the people of Cardiff?
She wasn't over reacting, she told herself. She worked for Torchwood. These sorts of things had to be expected.
Coming to a quick decision, she put her laptop down and snatched the hat up from her desk.
"I'm not..." she said, but the protest died in her throat.
Jack turned around, eyebrows raised, looking at her over his mug.
"Yes?"
"Never mind."
She went down to Archives, scanned it, made notes, and then...brought it back upstairs. She didn't really want to. She wanted to leave it down there, where it should be. Where the compass should be, if it came to that. For all she knew, it would let her read thoughts again. She really didn't want to do that. And not just because it was a smelly old hat and she really didn't want to put it on.
When she got upstairs, Gwen and Owen had arrived, and Ianto was making the morning tea run. Tosh left the hat on her desk, and cautiously approached Jack's office.
"Sir..." she began hesitantly, standing in the door frame. He motioned her in.
"What is it, Tosh?"
"The hat appears to be...just a hat." She reported. "No indication of additional energy spectra."
"Did you try it on?"
"No," she admitted.
"Why not?"
"Because it's dirty and it smells bad, and it's just a hat. Sir."
He was smiling at her again.
"But it was found at the site of a vanishing pirate ship and looks to be from the same era as a rather powerful little compass," he said. "We should explore every means of finding out if it has powers."
"But..."
"Yes?"
"What if it makes me hear..." Tosh couldn't bear to finish that sentence. Hearing what everyone thought, either consciously or unconsciously, was bad the first time around. She'd already seen what – who – everyone secretly desired, which had uncomfortably reminded her of that horrid little necklace. Somethings weren't meant to be seen.
Although, to be fair, that incident had worked out in her favour (she and Owen were actually getting along now, not to mention working their way up to a full blown date). It was just that, now, Gwen and Ianto were dancing around each other and Jack in a complicated dance that had no apparent pattern to it save that Jack was in the middle of it all. It was maddening.
Whatever Jack would have said next, either to comfort her or coerce her, it was interrupted by a yell.
"Arrrgh!"
Tosh and Jack ran out of his office – and stopped dead at the threshold.
Owen was wearing the hat. And grinning like a pirate. Tosh sighed in relief. It had sounded, for an instant, that someone had actually gotten hurt.
And then Owen spotted her. He bounded up the stairs, skidding to a halt before her in an uncharacteristic display of enthusiasm and giddiness.
"Thar be the fair damsel!" he said, bowing over her hand. "And here be a rose!" He pulled one out of his back pocket and handed it to her.
"Owen, what are you doing?" Tosh asked him. "Are you feeling alright?" She reached out to touch his forehead. "Have you gone mad?"
Quick as a snake, Owen grabbed her hand, twirled her like a dancer and dipped her, so low her hair could almost brush the floor.
"I be mad, but only with the beauty of you," Owen declared
"I'm sorry sir," Ianto was babbling. "I hadn't realized that I'd left the bottle out. He must have picked it up."
"Ianto?" Jack asked, sidling over to the Teaboy. "The bottle of what? What are you talking about?"
"It's my Gran's family recipe," Ianto continued, oblivious to Jack's entreaties. "She makes a new batch every year. And she always tells us to make sure we don't leave the lid off and light a candle because, while fireballs may be pretty, you'll look like a fool without your eyebrows."
"Eyebrows?" asked Jack, who was trying to keep up. "Ianto? Ianto!"
Ianto looked up from where he'd been watching, horrified, as Owen spun Tosh in circles and babbled in a pirate-ish accent about moonbeams and ships and traveling. Tosh looked ill, but that was probably because of all the spinning.
"I didn't know he'd take it!"
"Take what?"
"Grog!" Owen yelled, stopping his wild spin and pulling an unlabeled bottle out of his jacket pocket. He took a deep swig of it and then commenced to cough loudly. "Woo!" he said in his own accent. "That sure has a kick to it."
Ianto put his head in his hands and mumbled something.
"What?" Jack asked.
"He took my Gran's medicinal...um..." he trailed into silence, and gestured to the bottle.
"Oh." A pause, and then, "What's it made out of?"
"Mostly apples."
"Ah. What else is it made out of?"
"Um..."
Owen spent a long cooling off period in the cell next to Janet's. Jack provided him with a bucket for when the moonshine abandoned ship and a blanket for any chills that might present. It all seemed a little cruel to Tosh (whose head was still ringing with his professions of affection), but she supposed it was the only way to make sure he didn't hurt himself or anyone else by trying to climb the pterodactyl's eyrie to "see the view aloft."
By the time they'd shut the door and walked away from Owen's promises of retribution, and Tosh and Jack had made it back upstairs, Gwen had arrived bearing a box of doughnuts and muffins. And a small, wrapped present.
Ianto was looking morose about the loss of his Gran's Homemade Medicinal Distillates (and from the chastising that Jack had given him for leaving the bottle where Owen could get at it...and not sharing before now); he brightened considerably when Gwen handed him the present.
Was it his birthday? Tosh wondered. She couldn't read the tag from where she was standing, but when Ianto did he smiled and wrapped Gwen in a bear hug. Tosh hadn't seen that much emotion from Ianto in...a long time, if ever. He was normally so impeccable in both dress and behaviour, even when muttering some sarcastic remark, that to see him acting a little unprofessional was...somewhat unsettling.
"Don't I get a present?" Jack asked, looking a little left out.
"Yours is coming later," Gwen said. It took her a good thirty seconds to hear what she'd actually said, and she added, "why don't you go ahead and open it, Ianto?" a little too quickly.
Jack grinned fiercely, and managed to pack a lot of suggestion into the expression. Ianto ripped the shiny paper off the box and pulled off the lid. Whatever he saw in the box caused his grin to double in size.
Tosh was burning with curiosity, wondering what could make Ianto grin so widely. What would cause Gwen to give Ianto a present was another question that Tosh particularly wanted answered. It seemed almost...out of character.
Both questions went unanswered, though, because Ianto gave Gwen another hug and vanished off to his corner of the Hub, taking the present and a couple doughnuts with him. Tosh watched him go and wondered just what that had been about.
"Heya, Rhys! It's Daf."
"Oh, hey Daf. What's up?"
"Same old, same old. Listen, me and the lads were thinkin' of meeting for a pint later. Interested?"
"Sounds good. The missus will likely be late tonight."
"Ah." There was a hint of patronizing expectation in Daf's voice, detectable even on this end of the phone. It annoyed Rhys to no end.
"We're not going to Sharky's again, are we?" Rhys asked, desperate to change the subject.
"Nah, thought we'd try a new place," Daf replied. "It's near the Millennium Center. Aled's latest girlfriend said it was pretty decent, despite its name."
"Oh really? What's it called?"
"Cachu Iar."
Gwen's day thus far had been far better than she had been expecting. She'd had leftovers for breakfast, which always seemed better than actual breakfast for whatever strange reason. Rhys fried them all up for her. She woke early, refreshed and ready to face the day, straight from dreams about Jack that she wasn't going to be telling anyone about. Plus, Ianto had liked his gift, given in appreciation of his actions yesterday morning. Her ribs still hurt from his bone crushing bear hug. But it had been worth it to see the smile on his face. And on Jack's face, when it came to that.
She had been a little nervous about brining Ianto a present and not one for everyone else, but thankfully Owen was cooling his heels (and head) down in the vaults, and Tosh was still too frazzled about what Owen had done to earn a trip to the vaults to really worry about it. Jack had made his snarky comment, but she would worry about that later.
On top of all this, the boat that they'd spent the entire day before chasing had finally stopped appearing every half an hour or so. Everyone was wondering whether or not they'd see it again, a question that could only be answered by keeping an eye on the bay for the next long while. The upside to this was that they didn't have to go back out on the bay again, which pleased Gwen to no end because she didn't think she could stand being on a boat for at least another week.
So, all things considered, the first half of her day was just fine. Until, at least, the police called; then everything went to pot.
The call came in at nearly lunch time. Jack sent Gwen and Ianto out to investigate while he and Tosh stayed back at the Hub to monitor everything, and Owen made retching noises down in the vaults.
The call came in from the South Wales Police station on Cowbridge Road. They had apprehended a man in Bute park who had been threatening some picnickers with a sword. That had fit the description of something Torchwood would probably deal with, and so the officers had decided to fob the paperwork off on someone else and had put in the call.
When Gwen and Ianto arrived, the booking officer looked relieved.
"Has he been any trouble?" Gwen asked after they identified themselves as being from Torchwood.
"Mostly he just sat in his cell," the officer replied. She was a slight woman with graying brown hair and dull brown eyes. "Couldn't understand a word he said; it was all garbled. And then we went to bring him some lunch and he tried to escape. Nearly made it too."
"What stopped him?"
"Dumb luck. He tripped over a mop bucket and we were able to re-apprehend him. So we sedated him and put him back in the cell. We would have thought him just another crazy drunk were it not for his get up, and all the stuff that happened down on the bay yesterday."
"What do you mean?" Ianto asked.
"You'll see," the officer replied.
When they reached the cell, the officer pulled back the metal plate on the view window and Gwen peeked through.
"He's dressed like a pirate," she said dryly. And indeed, the man inside (currently sedated) was dressed like a pirate. A dirty pirate, for that matter. Gwen could smell the rum on him from the other side of the heavy steel door.
Ianto had a look.
"Think he might be from that ship?" he asked Gwen.
"It's possible," Gwen answered. "Jack said he thought he saw something go over the side yesterday before it vanished for the third time."
The man was...dirty. But the dirt was almost like a part of his costume. It added a little something to the forked beard and the dreadlocks with the beads woven in, and the red bandanna, and the grubby, not-quite-white-anymore shirt with the puffy sleeves beneath a even grubbier brown vest.
"We'll take him with us," Gwen said to the booking officer. She wasn't entirely convinced that the pirate in the cells wasn't just a crazy drunk with a particular fetish for pirate gear, but with a pirate ship that could appear and disappear in the bay at random intervals, she wasn't going to take any chances. "Ianto, can you get him out to the SUV?"
"Yes ma'am," Ianto said sharply. He grimaced slightly; he really didn't want to touch the man inside. The man probably had fleas.
"Did the prisoner have anything else on him when you apprehended him?" Gwen asked as Ianto made a face and entered the cell.
The officer beckoned, and Gwen followed her back down the corridor to the desk.
"Just these," she said, crouching down. When she stood, she was holding a rusty cutlass and sword belt, a musket, and a tattered great coat that had probably once been very fine but was now simply very dirty. "I held off from putting them in evidence, since we called you lot."
"Thank you," Gwen said warmly, even though she was somewhat hesitant at draping the coat over her arm.
"I'll find you some evidence bags," the officer said, and moved off. Gwen took the time to report back to Jack about the imminent arrival of a new prisoner.
"Maybe we can give him a bath," Ianto said as Gwen helped him pile the dirty man in the back of the SUV, where they usually stored the captive Weevils.
"I don't think that would have much effect," Gwen replied. "Cor, he doesn't half stink."
"Well, if he's come through the rift, perhaps he comes from a time and place where soap is hard to come by," Ianto suggested.
"Perhaps," Gwen replied grimly. "Let's get Jack to carry him down though."
"Definitely."
Once their prisoner was secured in the back of the SUV, Ianto hopped in the driver's seat and they took off back to the Hub.
"So what was up with Owen this morning?" Gwen asked as they drove away.
Ianto turned a little pink and didn't answer.
"Ianto?"
"He stayed last night, working on some side project. And logging that hat," Ianto said. "Not sure what else, because Jack...needed me to help with...stuff."
"Ianto," Gwen said warningly.
"Right," Ianto said. He cleared his throat. "So Jack and I were down in the cellars, um...doing..."
"...each other," Gwen supplied, and Ianto went a little more red.
"Owen must have found the bottle around then," he continued without missing a beat, though his face looked about as red as the root vegetable whose name was a homonym.
"He probably thought to put a bit in his coffee," Gwen supplied sympathetically. She found herself marveling again at the fact that she wasn't jealous. She wondered if, maybe, she was sick and should see a doctor. A head doctor, obviously, since seeing the other sort would mean explaining to Owen why she thought something was wrong, and that would mean that Owen would start gossiping with Tosh, who would likely let it slip to Jack, and then there'd be a problem because Jack would never let her live it down. So no; better to keep Owen and Tosh out of this and hope they were preoccupied with each other.
It was a good thing Ianto was driving; Gwen's own non-linear thoughts would have likely caused her to crash the car by now.
"Well, whatever his plans were, he ended up drinking most of it," Ianto said, bringing Gwen back to the here-and-now. "My Gran was always very specific about not drinking a whole bottle at once. She said it could make your brain melt and drip out your ears if you weren't careful."
"Was he that bad?" Gwen asked, because she hadn't seen most of what had happened.
"I'll call up the CCTV footage when we get back, if Tosh hasn't deleted it," Ianto said, enough grim promise in his voice to make Gwen wonder just what Owen had done to earn a place in the vaults.
"How much of it did he drink?"
"Two thirds of the bottle. I have more; my Gran always makes a big batch. It's just that that bottle was the last of the very first lot she ever gave me. Brewed the day I was born. I'd had it for ten years."
Gwen did a rough calculation in her head. "You've had that stuff since you were sixteen?"
"More or less," Ianto said evasively.
"Huh."
"It gets stronger with age too, provided it doesn't dissolve the container its in," Ianto added.
"Really."
By now, Ianto had pulled the SUV into the garage and he and Gwen piled out. Gwen peeked through the back window at their prisoner; he was still safely sedated.
"Want me to get Jack?" Ianto asked.
Gwen nodded. "I'll keep an eye on Long John Silver here," she said. She climbed into the back of the SUV so she could watch him through the bars. Ianto headed off into the Hub.
The weather channels were reporting that there was a strange bank of clouds or mist gathering on the horizon, what looked to be a sudden storm. Everyone expected rain because – well, lets face it – they lived in Wales. But according to the meteorologists, the storm was likely to be a bad one.
Certainly dramatic, at any rate. Jack had to wonder if there would be some major dramatic event for the storm to punctuate. It was practically what storms like that were for, all slanting rain and lightning so bright it looks sunny out for a split second, and thunder that would boom and roll in off the bay. With a storm like that, there just had to be some big thing made all the more atmospheric by the raging weather.
If nothing else, it would likely blow down trees and knock out power-lines and probably flood a few basements.
In all seriousness, Jack was actually a little worried. Big storms like this also heralded big moments of rift activity. Nasty things happened when the rift acted up this much. It played merry hob with the space/time continuum, at any rate. You could meet yourself coming and going, and that never ended well.
Well...Jack could think of a few situations in which that could end well, but they'd also likely end with the destruction of the universe too. But it would be a hell of a lot of fun just before everything imploded.
"Jack," Ianto said as he came through the door. He jerked his thumb behind him to indicate that Jack needed to come with.
"That didn't take long," Jack said by way of interruption.
"He's in the SUV, heavily sedated."
"Coming, coming. Tosh, keep an eye on Owen. You can do that while you're preparing the interrogation chamber for our visitor."
He and Ianto vanished back through the big round door, and it rolled back behind them.
Tosh rolled her eyes. "Yes, sir," she muttered to herself.
She called up the CCTV footage of Owen's cell. He was still retching into the bucket. She turned the sound off, and made a mental note to nip down later with some water and dry toast.
It took Jack and Ianto hardly any time at all to make it back up to the SUV. They found Gwen perched on the edge of the seat, waiting. The prisoner was still asleep.
"Good lord!" Jack exclaimed upon viewing the man in the back of the SUV for the first time. "Where did you say they found him?"
"Bute Park," Gwen supplied. "Waving a cutlass about."
"If he's from that ship, he made it a good distance up river without being noticed," Jack mused. "Which explains why he smells like the river. But not the rum."
"I'll look into it," Ianto promised. There was probably a robbery or two that needed explaining.
"Good. Bring him down to the interrogation chamber, if you please, Ianto. His sedatives should be wearing off soon."
Gwen shot Ianto a sympathetic look. So much for their plan to make Jack carry the dirty man.
"Bring his affects with you, Gwen," Jack added as he sauntered off back to the Hub's entrance. Gwen grabbed the evidence bags with the coat, sword belt and musket with her. "Scan them when you get in, and see if they have the same energy signature as the ship. Should let us know if he's just a crazy drunk or an actual pirate."
"Or a crazy drunk pirate," Gwen muttered.
"That too," Jack nodded. "By the way, you feel like staying over tonight?"
"What?" To say that she was taken aback would definitely be an understatement.
"We can have a real pajama party, with a pillow fight and talk about boys and everything."
"Jack," she said warningly. She paused and held the door open for a struggling Ianto, who was carrying the unconscious man over his shoulders in the traditional fireman's carry.
"I can bake cookies," Jack continued. "And we'll watch chick flicks."
Gwen studied her boss, and tried to work out if he was serious or not. Aside from the fact that having a girly night with her incredibly manly boss would be...a little too weird, it was probably all a ploy to disarm her and make her comfortable so she didn't fly off the handle. As if her lack of explosive reaction when she'd woken up in his bed yesterday didn't prove anything. Sometimes, she had to wonder.
"Anyone feel like pressing the button for the lift?" Ianto asked from behind them. "Only, this one's getting heavy."
"Oh, sorry Ianto," Gwen said, and she pressed the button. They heard the motor start up as the lift began its slow ascent.
"Or we can hit the pubs and get completely drunk and wake up in bed together – again. We can bring Ianto too, if he's game. There's always room for one more." He winked at her.
Gwen found she couldn't reply. She tried to speak, but the words just wouldn't come out.
Jack was babbling nervously, she realized. He never babbled nervously. The man had practically invented 'suave'.
Ianto stood behind them as they waited for the lift, rolling his eyes at them. He would have thought, that with all his experience, Jack would have figured out how to ask someone out on a date.
"Or we could do the whole dinner and a movie thing, and then hit the pubs."
"Jack..." The lift chimed its arrival. The doors slid open, and they all climbed in. It started up again as soon as the doors were closed, heading down into the Hub proper.
"Or we could stay in and raid Ianto's stash of Homemade Medicinal Distillates. Or -" Jack stopped, because he found Gwen's hand covering his mouth.
"Alright," she said, exasperated. "We can go out for a bit after work. And Ianto can come too, if he wants. But I won't promise to stay over. I...I just won't." She left the reason for that unsaid. Jack knew what she meant, at any rate.
Jack grinned at her. She tried to ignore the fact that her engagement ring suddenly felt like it weighed ten pounds more than it had a moment ago. The cog door rolled back and Jack, Gwen and Ianto, plus one, stepped into the Hub.
A/N: So yeah...that took me for bloody ever to write...sorry 'bout that. I figure I should start wrapping everything up soon...five more chapters at the max, I suspect...probably less. I've already written the ending, but I think it's going to get revamped...
Funny how the writing process goes, sometimes...that whole bit with the hat had originally been written for chapter two, but I'd scrapped it at the time...good thing I kept it though, because all it needed was a new coat of paint and it was usable :)
Let's see...what else...
I should probably point out that I've never been to Cardiff. This is likely one of those things that's glaringly obvious, but I figure I should mention it anyway. This is so that any of you who actually live there won't blow a potential gasket if I get something about it wrong :) So yeah...never been, though I've been dying to go for ages because that's where my mum was born...though, she moved away when she was seven, and the last time she was back was before I was born. But yeah...I feel like I should be thanking Mr. Davies for setting Torchwood there, because now I can think of Cardiff as more than just a dot on a map somewhere. It has dimension now, something it never had in my head before. And it's gorgeous.
So yeah...Google Earth is a godsend. The pictures of Cardiff that the satellites took are at such a high resolution that I can zoom right in and almost see people. It's come in quite handy for trying to figure out where things are in relation to each other.