Title: Places to be
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,330 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 426 - Dash
Summary: Jack has an important engagement but other things keep getting in the way.



Jack fidgeted in his chair. It wasn't that he was bored. If anything, what was being said was in fact quite fascinating. The Cardiff university researcher had come up with some startling revelations about how matter could traverse without the need for the application of normal quantum mechanics. Some of it was over his head but he understood the basic premise. He should offer her a job, he realised about three quarters of the way through, even if she was edging towards sixty. Torchwood could always use more bright minds no matter what their age. She didn't have to be a field agent per set, though the field very often came to them. Still, it was worth exploring.

'Did that last part make sense?' she asked.

'Hmm?' He looked up and realised he hadn't heard a word of it.

'You're distracted. Bored. Desperate to get out of here. I can tell.'

Jack blushed at being caught out. 'Sorry. It's not like that, I assure you.'

'But you have somewhere else you need to be?'

He nodded. He most certainly did, checking his watch but not unduly concerned. They still had a little time up their sleeves.

'Why don't we wrap this up and I can email you my research papers. Presumably that's what government agencies normally do? File it away to be reviewed in ten years time?'

'I think your work is great,' Jack replied. 'And yes, if you could email me through everything you've done I promise I'll look at it in detail and maybe we could catch up again to ask questions.' Or offer her that job.

'You'll actually read it?'

When I don't have other things on my mind, yes,' he promised. 'This is… revolutionary.' there was really no other word for it.

She gave him a sceptical look. 'But you've still got even more compelling things to do?'

'Just for this week. After that I'll have all the time in the world.'

She extended her hand. 'Then I'll look forward to reconvening.'

He shook the hand, his day on the up. He checked the clock on the SUV's dash and blew out a breath. Still time to spare, he thought, turning left and heading for the motorway on ramp. Then his phone rang.

'What is it?'

'We've got a hoix on the loose in Radyr.'

'So deal with it.' They didn't need his permission. Not for a hoix of all things.

'You're the closest asset,' came the report back. 'It's in a shopping centre.'

Jack clenched his teeth. It wasn't that he didn't want to deal with it. Hoix weren't hard to wrangle. They were just inherently stupid and more volatile that your average weevil. And in a populated, confined space… He sighed, spinning the steering wheel almost a full three sixty degrees. 'I'm on it, but send backup ASAP.'



Jack could usually wrangle a hoix in under half an hour. The trouble was that this one was prowling a supermarket and whilst he was normally able to bait them with food, the endless shelves of edibles on offer gave him little chance of distracting it long enough to get the jump on it. He might as well have been trying to get the attention of a magpie in a jewellery store.

Eventually, after considering alternatives and landing, rather unfortunately, on the idea that climbing the shelves and leaping on it from behind was the only alternative, he managed to snag it underneath his own weight. Local police, though useless for the most part, at least had handcuffs on hand to help restrain the hoix until Adelaide and Andy could get there to take it off his plate.

'Don't you have somewhere else to be?' Adelaide asked, checking her smartwatch and frowning at him like he'd sinned.

'Yeah, I know. I'll be there,' Jack promised her.
He parted ways with the team and jumped back into his car, flipping the keys in the engine when his phone rang. Probably a certain someone wanting to know where he was.

'I'm coming,' Jack said, not even bothering to look at who was calling.

'You are?' came the strange voice.

Jack gave that phone a puzzled look before putting it back against his ear. 'Who's this?'
He only recognised the voice once it had reminded him. The patriarch of an alien clan he'd resettled in Neath only a few months ago.

'The power has gone out and we don't know what to do.'

Jack wedged the phone between his ear and his shoulder, already pulling the SUV out of the car park and back into the main road. 'The whole neighbourhood?'

'No. Just ours.'

'It's probably just a blown fuse,' Jack replied, sometimes forgetting that simple things he took for granted were totally alien to… well, aliens. He did his best to explain what a fuse box was and what to look for ,but he could tell his explanation wasn't getting them anywhere.

'Please, could you come and take a look?'

'I…' He tried to find some excuse.

'We desperately need the heating back on. The little ones depend on it.'

Jack guiltily remembered their species' need for constant high heat, particularly the younglings who were susceptible to all kinds of problems if they weren't kept warm enough. Living anywhere in Wales was a challenge since it rarely rose above cool. Heating cranked up as high as it would go was the best consolation Jack could offer. 'Okay, I'm on my way.' He gave the dashboard clock a brief, cringing look. 'Still time,' he mumbled to himself.



Jack floored it all the way from Neath to the small Valleys church which had been his original intended destination before his afternoon had become a series of disruptions. The tyres went nearly spinning off the edge of the road once and making sure he took the corners just a little bit slower. He intended to make it there, not have the car go end over end down a mountain.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the small stone building came into view, one shiny black sedan already parked out front as Jack slammed the door and jogged the rest of the way inside. He was out of breath as he came to stop under the ancient stained glass windows.

Ianto turned and gave Jack a look that was part curious and part relieved. 'I was beginning to think that you might not turn up.'

Jack chewed the inside of his lip. That Ianto could even conceive that Jack wouldn't show was unthinkable. 'Work tried to have other ideas,' he replied. 'I've been dashing all across town trying to get here on time.'

'Let's hope it doesn't plan on doing that on the big day. It's one thing to be late for the rehearsal, but I plan on marrying you and Torchwood is not getting in the way of that.'

Jack grabbed him by the hips, pulling him in for a kiss. 'Not going to happen.' The world would literally have to be ending before he even debated it, and even then only because Ianto would be the one suggesting that they should probably do something about that. He kissed Ianto again, long and slow.

Ianto eventually pulled back.' Well, I think you've got that part well practised, except you might want to do the ceremony in the opposite order. The kissing part comes last, remember?'

Jack chuckled. 'I guess that must be why we need to rehearse. I've got nowhere else I need to be now. I'm all yours.'

'Good to know. I thought I was going to have to bribe you not to dash off again by making you wait an hour for the opportunity to kiss me.'

Jack didn't need bribing. He was right where he was meant to be, albeit not quite on time. 'We can practise that bit extra hard later,' he vowed. 'At home. For as long as it takes to get it just perfect.'