gracie_musica | Slipping Through -- Back Burner (Part 1) (Reply)

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Title: Slipping Through
Chapter Seventeen A: Back Burner (Part 1)
Count the Ways prompt: Ten!Hair
Date Written: 8/30/08
Rating: PG/K+
Word Count: 1,901
Fandom: Torchwood/FAKE
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Ryo/Dee, Jack/OMC, OMC/OMF
Spoilers: Up to Torchwood 02
Warnings: Minor violence
Author's Notes: Half of the chapter, other half when I get settled from this whole mess.

Slipping Through master list found here.

"Gwen, make sure you get in touch with the latest witness, I get the feeling he's about to go to a reporter with his Weevil sighting. Owen, I need the medical reports on my desk by the end of day today. Ryo, Ianto mentioned needing some help in the archives with some heavy lifting -- both of you go easy on yourselves."

Meeting dismissed, the various members of Torchwood pushed away from the table and wandered off to their orders, precious first morning round of coffee clenched in their hands. When the doors of the boardroom slid shut, only Jack, Toshiko and Dee remained.

"You wanted to talk to me?"

Jack nodded and Toshiko moved to the screen behind the Captain, calling up some images on the CCTV. Dee recognized the images as being the kid from the Bristol Zoo, the one who'd nearly gotten his husband and Ianto killed. There were about eight in all, all with different time stamps and with the kid in different clothing, but definitely him.

"I got a call from Martha," Jack said, steepling his fingers. "A few little tips here and there. The advantage to having friends within UNIT. It's not espionage, it's story swapping."

"Are they getting close to him?" Dee asked, setting his jaw and trying not to grind his teeth.

"Fair bit," Toshiko said. She called up another page -- a mugshot, with the kid sporting a bruise on his eye. "Meet Joseph Ryan, age 17."

"What's on his rap sheet?" Dee asked, leaning in.

"Typical teenage shenanigans," the Japanese woman replied, ticking off the offenses on her fingers. "Shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, a few assault charges, even got one for breaking and entering. Mother's gone, father died a few years ago. Courts ruled it self defense, let Joseph off."

Dee shook his head. The kid had never stood a chance. "So, why are you telling me all of this?"

"He's been seen in Cardiff," Jack said. "In Newport, and just yesterday in town."

"What are we waiting for?" Dee asked, pushing back from the desk. "Torchwood jurisdiction, let's get cracking."

"He's a kid who got mixed up in alien tech," Jack told him. "He may not know what he was doing."

"I'm not gonna shoot him -- unless he aims first -- but I'm not letting him stay out there where he can hurt other people, Captain."

Jack grinned a little. "That's all I needed to know."

-----

Dee sighed and cracked the window of the rental car a fraction. "You mind?" he asked, pulling out a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.

Jack waved his hand dismissively, and Dee cracked the window a little more, tapping the pack idly as he scanned the streets.

"Thought you weren't supposed to smoke during a stake-out," Jack teased as Dee slipped a smoke out of the pack and put it between his lips.

"Or when you're the getaway driver," Dee replied around the filter in his mouth. He pulled out an old-fashioned butane lighter, thumbing the cap off in a well-practiced motion. "But you're okay if you use the ashtray instead of throwing the butts out the window." He flicked the wheel and brought the flame to his face, inhaling a few times as the paper and tobacco caught. He thumbed it closed and sat back. "A pile of fresh cigarette butts underneath a car window is a dead-giveaway that something's going down."

Jack laughed as Dee leaned over towards the window, letting a thin white stream of smoke escape out the crack. The acrid-sweet scent of burning smoke made Jack instinctively wrinkle his nose a little.

Dee noticed it. "Not a smoker?"

"Off and on," Jack replied. "Depends on the mood of the times. Smoked a helluva lot during the Wars -- both of 'em."

"Yeah, well, I can understand stress." Dee grinned and flicked the ash in the ashtray. "Had a two pack a day habit as a rookie. Got better as I moved up to detective, but I'm pretty much locked in for cancer in a few years." He took a drag.

"That's one of the nice things about being like me," Jack replied. "Sort of hard to be afraid of lung cancer."

Dee leaned back against his seat and laughed. "Care for a smoke? For old time's sake?"

-----

"Here Jack, have a fag."

Jack wrinkled his nose as the other lit up. "No thanks."

"Oi, Harkness, didn't anyone ever tell you you're supposed to smoke after really good sex?" Daffyd flashed a smile at him. "C'mon, what's it gonna do, kill ya?"

Jack grinned. "I guess one wouldn't hurt."

-----

Jack smirked. "I only smoke after sex," he leered.

"Good thing Ianto's not asthmatic then," Dee deadpanned, and they both shared a laugh.

Dee took a double-take, then snubbed out his cigarette. "Think I see him," he said, pointing across the street to a nervous-looking kid. He had a baseball cap on and a hood up over that, but when he turned his head both men got a good glimpse of the profile of Joe Ryan.

"Yup!" Jack said, opening the door and climbing out. Dee did the same, looking both ways as he started crossing the street.

Joe caught on immediately and bolted, knocking into a group of teenaged girls who yelled after him. "Fuck -- stay on him!" Jack called out, turning down an adjacent alley and running full-tilt. He jumped up an emergency fire ladder, climbing quickly. "Dee, try to make him do a full turn," he panted, climbing as quickly as he could up. "Run him down a dead-end alley on the other side of the building."

"What?! Where the hell are you?" Dee demanded.

"Air support," Jack replied, grinning as he hit topside.

"You and fuckin' roofs, I swear -- Hey kid, stop!"

Jack jumped onto the roof and ran for the other edge, going on a hunch where he'd gone. He peered over the roof and was happy to see Dee chasing the kid, just as he'd wanted him to. He took a deep breath, climbed down onto another ladder and braced his feet on the edges, sliding down the ladder like it was a fireman's pole. The stop was abrupt but the quick trip gave him a few extra seconds to get his legs back.

Joe rounded the corner and skidded to a halt when Jack started running at him. He turned around but got clocked by Dee when the dark-haired man came running after him and dispatched an arm across the neck and shoulders. Joe fell to the ground, gasping and writhing in pain and Dee was on him immediately. "Try to kill my husband, will ya?!" he growled, flipping the kid over and cuffing him quickly.

-----

"Try to kill my husband, will ya?!" the lilting Irish accent was thicker from exhaustion and fury as she smacked the alien around the head with a pipe again.

"Kathy, cut it out!" Jack said, grabbing the pipe and pulling it out of her hands.

She blew back a lock of red hair, hands on her hips as she focused her full ire on Jack, green eyes flashing in anger. "This is a personal matter, Harkness. Consider it a domestic!"

-----

Later, much later that night, Jack sat up in his office, Ianto still asleep down in the bedroom in the floor. He and Ryo had been mad when Dee and Jack had come in with Joe Ryan, but it was more a why weren't we in on this upset. Alien tech sorted and squared away, Joe Ryan turned over to the police once they'd discovered that it wasn't an alien plot and Martha contacted to let them know Cardiff PD had Ryan, Jack had sent everyone home early and pulled Ianto into his bed, still pampering and treating the young Welshman like glass.

Now, with Ianto fast asleep and breathing and alive, he had ghosts from the past prodding at him in the form of Dee Laytner-MacLean.

He looked down again at the photo in his hands, from just at the turn of the century. Two people, a man and a woman, gave him the serious, stern look of people in old photographs, both dressed in their wedding-day finest.

Katherine and Daffyd Griffin. Not the first two Torchwood operatives to get married, and certainly wouldn't be the last, but he was responsible for this couple. He and Daffyd had been lovers for a while -- lots of fun, that. Daff had been one of the first people to make him actually enjoy being stuck in Wales, showed him a hint of the beauty hiding in the Welsh countryside while he'd been waiting for the Doctor.

Then Kathrine had come to Cardiff, transfered out of Torchwood London because she was Irish and to the higher-ups in England, that was almost as bad as being Welsh. He'd known Daffyd had been gone the moment he saw the Welshman shake her hand.

So Jack had encouraged him. Love in the 51st century was complicated, most people forming polygamous family units as well as the quote-unquote traditional two-person family like he'd come from, but it was still love and he wasn't going to stand in the way of their happiness. Hell, he'd even been Daffyd's best man at their wedding. They'd been good friends, great agents.

Then there'd been the Rift experiments, some of the first forays into figuring out how it worked, and the Griffins had disappeared for five minutes before coming back. Thankfully unscathed -- Jack liked to think that the Rift had been kinder back then -- but still so sad, so heartbroken and torn up inside, they'd never really recovered, and all from just, subjectively, a five-minute trip...

It clicked. Just like that.

"IANTO! I need you!"

"Come back t'bed then," Ianto called back sleepily.

-----

Ianto had coffee waiting when Ryo and Dee hurried into the Hub. They were both yawning profusely, but they were awake and there not fifteen minutes after being woken up.

"What's wrong?" Ryo asked, grabbing his mug. "Thanks, Ianto."

"I think Jack's finally gone mad," Ianto replied, handing the other mug over to Dee. "He's in his office."

"You mean he just wants a friendly chat at four in the morning?" Ryo asked, giving Ianto an incredulous look.

"It's an important friendly chat," Ianto reassured them.

The Laytner-MacLeans let out twin sighs of frustration and trudged to Jack's office. The Captain, meanwhile, was flicking through some papers. He ran a distracted hand through his hair and they both couldn't bite back the laugh that resulted when it stuck up in odd directions.

Jack looked up, grinning. "What?"

"You've got Ten!hair," Dee told him.

"Ten what?"

"Ten!hair," Ryo relied. "The Doctor's currently on his tenth regeneration, and you know how his hair gets all crazy? Fandom calls it Ten!hair."

"I have got to make a book of all that fandom stuff one day," Jack said distractedly. "But later."

"Yeah, first you're going to tell us why you woke us up at four in the morning." Dee yawned and scratched the back of his head. "I thought they'd gotten rid of it a long time ago."

Ryo chuckled into his coffee as Jack leaned over his desk to hand them a picture. "Ryo, Dee, I would like you to meet Daffyd and Katherine Griffin."