Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,855 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 351 - Amnesty, using Challenges 256 - Restraint, 56 - Entertaining, and 43 - Not What It Looks Like. Scene borrowed from Guy Adams' "The men who sold the world"

Summary: Jack has his own unique way of restraining the natives.


Rowdy didn't even begin to describe the scene outside the doors of the Kool Fried Chicken shop on a Saturday night. Jack had told Gwen to go help Ianto keep the crowd under control whilst they kept the shop closed to deal with the alien who had transmatted in on faulty tech and landed in an active deep-fryer. Nothing was more brutal than a Saturday night drunken Cardiff crowd, looking for a heavy helping of canola and carbs to soak up some of that alcohol. Well, at least nothing until you considered death by deep frying. Even Jack couldn't cross that one off his ways to die bingo card, and he certainly never wanted to. The alien it seemed was the very least of the problems to deal with. It was dead. The Saturday night revellers weren't, and they were a hungry, baying mob.

He hadn't been wrong. Ianto really had needed Gwen's help to hold them back whilst he was dealing with things in the kitchen. Jack's assessment that Ianto was likely to get bottled by a fat drunk or have his clothes bitten off by a hen's party wasn't too far wrong. Though the latter he would mind being a spectator to. Ianto was always good for a naughty strip tease.

Just as the two of them were manhandling a large woman in her plastic princess tiara back out the doors Jack grinned. This city was utterly mad and he loved it. Nowhere else in the universe did people riot to get into a chip shop.

Ianto was complaining of bruises in the line of duty in places he'd never had them before. Jack found it sweet, unable to resist pecking him on the cheek as recompense, and making the comment that it totally depended on what Ianto considered his duty. He threw a double entendre at the three hundred pound woman, warning her against eating anything that came served in a bucket, pleased that Ianto took his lead and joined in, translating Jack's subtlety into more definitive terms. He of course meant the battered chicken that was the shop's main trade.

Of course Gwen did have to ruin the moment when their tag team double entendre laced advice was reaching a crescendo. She just felt left out, Jack was sure. He was enjoying himself now and, loathe as he was to admit it, he just wanted her out of the way so that he could carry on. After everything the alien had shown him using its song to create a mental imagery and recollection of its life and the history of its species, Jack needed something to lighten his mind. He didn't sympathise with the alien's gruesome death now that he'd seen what had led it here - the last of two of its species who had wiped themselves out with their own insatiable lust for war.

'There's a mop out back,' Jack told her, taking a wild guess that was where it was located after having asked the question without getting any affirmative answer from either of his two teammates. There's a whole lotta melted alien back there that needs cleaning up. That earned him a scowl from Gwen who was affronted by the relegation to cleaning duties. Jack gave a little shrug. Sometimes this job sucked. Ianto couldn't do all the cleaning, and Jack had other duties for him.

As soon as Gwen was out in the back kitchen, Jack turned his attention back to their other headache, as the glass doors of the chip shop began to heave with Cardiff residents trying to force their way back in. Jack didn't know what that would achieve since Jack had already dispensed with the staff and sent them home for thr night. He didn't fancy Gwen would be keen to get the fryers going again and whip up two hundred pounds of battered chicken and chips to feed the natives.

Ianto leant heavily against the door to try and stop them from breaking it down. 'A little help?'

Jack added his own shoulder weight to the door opposite him and then grabbed Ianto's face with both hands, pulling him in for a proper kiss.

There was that initial jolt of surprise, but despite the heaving sensation in his right shoulder from holding shut the door against its protesters, Ianto gave into the kiss. The shuddering of the glass doors lasted only a few more seconds before the rowdy drunks they were trying to keep out gave up their trying to force it open, too shocked at what they were seeing on the other side of the glass.

Jack took the opportunity to remove his weight from it and snake his arms around Ianto properly. He half expected Ianto to pull away at that point, realising that they were being seen by several dozen people, but either Jack's kissing was so spectacularly distracting, or Ianto had simply stopped caring.

The woman who'd been their biggest problem - figuratively and literally - was now pressed up against the glass with both hands, her breath fogging unpleasantly on the glass as she tried to get close enough to join them. Either she was going to lick the window or soon be able to draw rude things in the fog she created. The drunken girls from the hen's night were hooting and cheering, adding their own suggestions of what they'd like to see next.

'Take it off, baby! Get it on! More tongue!' and similar cries were melding together in a raucous din. Jack kept going, not to amuse them, but just because he couldn't remember the last time they'd gotten a moment to enjoy like this. Jack wasn't one to be bothered by having an audience. If anything it only made it more interesting.

A few beefy rugby blokes made their own opinions known, irritated that fatty food was not only off the menu, but that it was coupled with a healthy dose of homosexuality. They banged their fists on the windows in frustration but Jack opened his eyes long enough to confirm they were leaving. There were always other chips shops ready to taken them in on a Saturday night.

Ianto didn't stop there, sliding Jack's cost off his shoulders and onto the floor, before doing the same to slip his braces off. They only made it as far as the crook of Jack's elbows before coming to a stop. Jack's hands were too busy cupping Ianto's buttocks and keeping their hips pressed tightly together. Ianto began working on Jack's shirt buttons, eyes closed, mouth open, and expertly undoing them one by one without breaking contact. That earned them a few more cat calls and lewd remarks.

'Excuse me,' Gwen said in a sharp and distinctive, annoyed tone, breaking them from their task. She was holding the mop and bucket in one hand and looking decidedly murderous. 'I'm up to me knees mopping gloopy, deep-fried alien, and here you two are snogging like a pair of teenagers. Can't you ever just show a little bit of restraint?'

'It's not what it looks like,' Jack tried to assure her, even though it probably was exactly what she'd described. The fact that he was standing there partly undressed probably attested to that. He didn't bother to start buttoning himself back up. 'We had a crowd control problem. You weren't handling it so I took matters into my own hands.'

Gwen's scowl deepened. 'You took Ianto's arse in your hands, you mean.'

'Hey, it worked didn't it? We were entertaining the masses so they'd stop rioting. Those who didn't like what they saw left, and the rest, well…' Jack gesticulated to the remaining audience, whose only complaint was that the show looked to be over before it had gotten really hot and heavy. A lone brunette woman seemed to be spoiling it for the rest of them.

'This isn't Amsterdam, ladies,' Jack told them. 'The rest is for my eyes only.' There was a smattering of boos and frumpy, disappointed pouting from the girls - and a few boys - but the crowd dispersed slowly when it became very clear that Ianto's shirt wasn't coming off. More's the pity.

Gwen was still scowling at Jack, and then swapping her ire with equal dirty looks in Ianto's direction. 'You think the ends justifies the means and you're pretty pleased with yourself, calling this work, don't you?'

Jack didn't feel the sense of shame that Gwen was attempting to inflict on him. 'Well, yeah.'

'And you shouldn't encourage him,' she added, directing that comment at Ianto.

If Ianto was embarrassed at being caught out he didn't show it. 'Trust me, he doesn't need encouragement. A leash, perhaps.'

Jack chuckled. 'Ooh, if only we'd had that. Think they'd have enjoyed a little S and M role playing, Ianto?'

'Those hen's night girls would have enjoyed listening to you read the instruction manual for a toaster. Fully dressed.'

'Then they have excellent taste.'

Ianto leaned down and picked up several notes that had been shoved under the door. 'And look, we made seventy five quid.'

'Cheapskates. You're worth more than that.'

Gwen rolled her eyes and groaned loudly. If anyone could inflict bodily harm using mop as a lethal weapon, it was her. 'Oh, for God's sake, would you stop? It's not the smell of frying alien that's got my stomach churning.' She left the mop leaning against the doorway, clearly not interested in leaving the place as they'd found it. So long as it was bereft of anything extraterrestrial, that was good enough. 'Are we done?'

Jack nodded. 'Just don't touch that alien weapon back there. Likes to fuse into your skin and meld with your neural networks. Dangerous stuff.' He'd very nearly succumbed to it by accident and didn't want to repeat that. Not even knowing what it was and how it now worked. The secure archives were the only safe place for it, with a large padlock stamped with the words "Not for use".

Gwen was all business agaun, having temporarily set aside her grievances with her teammates. 'I'll go fetch the chain mail gloves and a containment case for it. Try to behave yourselves for thirty seconds, yeah?'

Ianto shuffled the notes, splitting them in two. Jack put up a hand to stop him. 'Nope, you earned that. Keep it.'

Ianto didn't argue, pulling out his wallet and sliding the notes inside. 'I feel so cheap. Raunchy gay blokes making out in a chip shop window. Tonight really is full of new experiences. And bruises,' he reminded Jack. 'Still, it's beer money, I suppose. For whenever it might be that we get a Saturday night off to go drinking and partying like everyone else. And we get chips to take home with us. A bit cold now, but still not bad. Just not the ones that were in the same fryer as our unfortunate guest. Seventy five quid and free chips.' He sighed. 'That's us, living the dream.'

'You'll get the rest of your reward after,' Jack promised. Bruises or not, once they were alone he would show no restraint whatsoever.