Title: No coincidence

Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,095 words

Content notes: contains mpreg

Author notes: Written for Challenge 292 - Coincidence

Summary: No one can quite explain the strange behaviour of the SUV.


'Oh come on!' Jack yelled out, pushing his foot harder on the accelerator. 'Move!'

'Where's the fire, again?' Gwen asked, griping the back of the headrest as she poked her head between the two front seats. 'It's a forty zone, Jack. We're not in a hurry anywhere,' she reminded him.

'We're barely doing thirty, Gwen.' He pumped the pedal again. 'And not for a lack of trying.'

Ianto gave a sigh. 'Not to mention you're approaching a school zone in which case you shouldn't be doing more than twenty five.'

Jack groaned in response. 'Like I could go any slower,' he complained. 'And stop getting so clucky around anything to do with kids, huh?'

'It's not clucky to ask you to do the speed limit. A child isn't going to stand a chance against this beast of a car if you come screaming down the road.'

'See? Clucky,' Jack repeated, as if that underlined the matter. 'Pregnant and horny I can appreciate, but this whole going gooey around anything child related is kinda weird.'

'Don't listen to him Ianto,' Gwen said. 'He's not the one swelled up with his hormones all over the shop.'

'Not sure if that was meant to be a compliment,' he replied. 'And my hormones are just fine, by the way.' He hadn't changed, it was just that now everyone seemed to focus of anything they could attach to his being pregnant, which apparently included wanting to travel at a safe speed.

'You just wait to those little ones are born, Jack,' Gwen continued on, turning her lecturing tone towards him. 'You'll be the worst overprotective parent.'

'I am all for the joys of raising a family,' he argued. 'Have I not been happy and excited so far, Ianto?'

'To be fair, he has been.' He couldn't really have asked for a more supportive partner through all of this, and Jack, bless him, had fainted right there on the floor at the news of not just one baby on the way, but three. Ianto was never going to let him live that down, not for as long as they both lived, which was forever. All the vomiting and morning sickness was worth it just to be able to hang it on Jack for being the delicate one.

'Back to the issue, though,' Gwen said, 'there's no need to be racing around town where we're not actually needed anywhere.'

Jack quirked an amused eyebrow at her in the rear vision mirror. 'Doesn't the coffee machine needing us count?'

Ianto folded his arms and moped, staring out through the passenger side window. 'Says he who at least still allowed coffee. I swear you're doing it to torture me.'

'Hey, I didn't make the rules. One cup a day. Doctors orders. Too much caffeine isn't good for you anyway.'

'And twenty cups a day collectively between the rest of the team is fine. I'm going to have to stick a peg on my nose so I can't smell it. I'd put you on the same restriction but I can't stand you grumpy and it's not fair on the rest of the team to subject them to you in that state.'

Jack didn't let Ianto's comments dampen his mood. 'You've only got yourself to blame for that. I've grown accustomed to being spoiled.'

'Don't we all know it?'

They approached an intersection just as the light was turning yellow. Ianto waited for the inevitable lurch of the car as Jack floored the accelerator to sweep through before it turned red. Instead it glided to a perfectly sedate stop and Ianto could have conceivably believed that some alien force had taken over Jack's brain. 'So refreshing to have you abide regular road laws when the world isn't ending,' he joked, trying to get a rise out of Jack.

'See? There's definitely something wrong with this car,' Jack declared.

'What do you mean?' Gwen asked. 'Didn't we only just get it serviced?'

'Again,' Ianto replied, sounding annoyed. 'If someone didn't keep thrashing it about town...'

Jack let out a vexed sound under his breath. 'Well, it's still not right.'

'How'd you mean?'

'The brakes for a start. Sometimes they're super twitchy and I barely touch the pedal but the SUV practically slows down all on its own. Just like now. Other times I go to hit the brakes hard and nothing happens. It just kind of gently glides to a stop. It's weird. I'd say the brake pads were worn but that doesn't account for the times when I hardly touch the brakes and it stops.'

'Probably not a bad thing,' Gwen said. 'We could all do with less of your jerky last minute braking.'

'Trying to land on a dime to pick up fish and chips,' Ianto said.

Jack ignored the comment about fish and chips. That had been a once off and it had been a boring day. He'd needed something to get his heart pumping lest it forget how to do it altogether. 'Oh, but that's not all. The indicators and hazard lights have started turning themselves on.'

'Whilst you're driving?'

'Well, only when I'm about turn stop or turn a corner, but the point is, I'm not doing it.'

'Jack hardly ever indicates these days,' Ianto explained. 'I'm forever telling him off. But if you start on about the radio being changed from Barry Beat to Radio Wales, that was me. Not some ghosties in the radio mysteriously switching channels on you.'

Gwen smirked at Ianto's joke. 'Next you'll be telling us the windscreen wipers start up at the slightest drop of rain.'

'They'd be on permanently if that was the case,' Jack grumbled, tapping impatiently as he waited for the lights to go green.

'I can't say that I've noticed any problems,' Ianto replied.

'Well, I mean sure, but you haven't been thrashing the suv around the city on urgent business.'

Ianto narrowed his eyes at Jack. 'I never thrash the SUV. Not even in an emergency. It's perfectly capable of being driven sensibly at high speed without needing to treat it like the Dakar rally.'

Jack harrumphed. 'You seriously haven't noticed it? Not even the other day when we picked up groceries?'

'Seemed perfectly pedestrian to me.'

'Exactly! I'm telling you there's something not quite right with the old gal.'

'Perhaps that's your answer? It is getting on in years.' Ianto couldn't imagine a day where the SUV would be decommissioned and replaced with something else. It had been such a stalwart part of the team, kitted out with every kind of technological gadget. To build another car like this one would take months.

'Never missed a beat before,' Jack argued. 'Unlike everyone else the SUV doesn't have off days. She's the most reliable member of the team. At least she normally is.'

Ianto sighed. He knew there was no sense arguing with Jack when he started referring to the SUV like it was a person. 'Fine. I'll schedule in another appointment at the shop, but I'm telling you there going to look at me like I'm mad and- Oof!' Ianto leaned forward and pressed a hand to his belly. Jack stopped the car immediately and Ianto felt the seat belt around his hips cinch snugly at the sudden braking, but not overly so. There'd been times when Jack slammed on the brakes so hard he thought the seat belt might cut him in two as it locked up, trying to protect its passenger from being flung through the windscreen.

Jack reached a hand and put to his knee, looking immediately worried. 'Are you okay? It's not a contraction is it? It's too early for contractions. The hospital is only a few blocks away. We could- '

'Oh, stop fussing!' Gwen chided. 'He's not made of glass, for God's sake.'

Jack turned a decidedly angry gaze in her direction. 'Hey, I can be overbearing if I want!'

Ianto smiled in appreciation of Gwen coming to his defense. 'It's fine. Just a bit of kicking going on,' he replied, placing a hand over his belly and trying to soothe whoever was in there kicking up a fuss. He was getting used to the acrobatics going on inside him, but every now and then someone decided they were going to be the next Gareth Bale, practising using the inside of his stomach. Pregnancy was just full of surprises, as he was learning. Thank God Gwen had at least been through it all before. Her tips and advice had been priceless as he navigated the unknown.

'You're sure you're okay?' Jack persisted. 'It's not a contraction or anything is it?'

'No, Jack. It's a long way to go yet before we start worry about that. I'm fine. Really. Caught me off guard, that's all.' Kicking and moving had become a new experience, one part shocking and two parts delight. It they wanted to let him know they were there and okay then he was happy to live with it.

Jack looked unconvinced, still gripping the steering wheel a little too hard with his spare hand. 'Speaking of,' he added, 'did you notice how the SUV stopped like that again? I swear I didn't even touch the brakes this time. No sooner did you complain then it went weird again. And look, the hazard lights have flicked themselves back on.'

'I was a little bit preoccupied, to be honest,' Ianto replied, rubbing slow circles across his middle. 'And you probably should have the hazard lights on since we're stopped in the middle of the road.' The last thing they needed was for someone not paying attention to go crashing into the back of them.

Jack turned around in his seat. 'You noticed it, didn't you, Gwen?'

She returned his quizzical expression with one of her own. 'The way you've been lately Jack, it wouldn't surprise me if you did it subconsciously. You freak out at the tiniest little things when it comes to Ianto.'

Jack scowled. 'It's not freaking out.' Even as he said it, Ianto felt the hand on his left squeeze just that little bit tighter.

Gwen rolled her eyes back at him. 'Thousands of babies are born every day without complication. Admittedly, this is a little bit on the unusual side...'

'Thanks, Gwen.'

'But, so far so good,' she added, trying to backtrack. 'You can't get worked up over every little back twinge and kick, Jack.'

'And there's three of them, so that's three times the number of times Jack gets worked up,' Ianto added.

'They're mine too, you know,' Jack said, sounding miffed. 'If I want to wrap them up in cotton wool, I will.'

Ianto rested his spare hand on top of Jack's. 'And until then, you're going to wrap me up instead.'

Jack pulled away despite the reassuring touch. 'Getting back to the point I was trying to make, I'm just saying that the SUV is being unpredictable. We should get it looked at again.'

Ianto shook his head. 'Extra braking and extra indicator lights. I can see why you'd be concerned,' he quipped.

'Maybe subconsciously you are trying to drive more carefully,' Gwen offered. 'That would make sense given how you've been so, um...'

'Tightly strung?' Ianto offered.

'I think I know how I drive,' Jack said, growing annoyed again. 'I'm not just going to start flipping on hazard lights without knowing about it. It's just coincidence. You're trying to come up with a rational explanation for something that already has a rational explanation. Clearly they missed something the last time the SUV went in for servicing.'

'If you insist,' Gwen said, unconvinced.

'I do.'

'But,' Ianto interjected, 'if it will make you happy I'll take it back for another tune up.'

Jack let out a grateful sigh. 'Thank you.'

'I just wonder how I'm going to keep explaining to them why my stomach keeps getting bigger every time I drop the car off.'

The SUV purred into life as Jack pulled it back out onto the road, merging into the general flow of traffic. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her, and she knew that for a fact. Jack wasn't the only one who was entitled to be a little overprotective now that Ianto was expecting. Whatever she could do to make the trip a little gentler and little bit more predictable for the cars that shared the road with them, not to mention a little less hasty, she would, even if it annoyed Jack. At the end of the day, they both wanted the same thing.