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laligin ([personal profile] laligin) wrote2008-09-12 11:23 pm

Harkness, PI

Next door they're having a disco. Over here I'm still quivering with fury because... well...

My laptop died.

As in dead. As in beyond turning it off and turning it back on again. As in, try frantically to copy the hard drive and buy a new thing with Vista and whatever, and hope and pray that I haven't lost all the new stuff I added since I last backed it up.

So. Jantolution. Sorry, it's not finished. This, here, this, is what I have just now retyped from my notebook. The rest is to come. There is *so* much more of this travesty... This is all your fault!

Fandom: Torchwood (shock horror!)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 669 (so far, thousands to follow)
Warnings: Oh dear heavens, I am going to the special hell for writing this. Attempts at Mills and Boon style... Mills and Boon melodrama... and so on.
Summary: AU! As in way out whacked AU where Torchwood does not exist... But Jack Harkness, PI, does! And Ianto needs him. Badly. But he just can't say... (*insert swoon, sigh, unrequited!love here...*)

Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #13, Harlequin

Harkness, PI

Ianto checked again that his quarry hadn’t moved, then ducked back out of sight into the doorway. The man at the end of the alley was still leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of his long military coat, looking out across the adjoining street, apparently waiting. As far as Ianto could tell, he was watching one door among the shop fronts across the road – the entrance to one of Cardiff’s finer establishments, if he was going to be polite about the matter.

The door opened suddenly, and another man – a blond – left the building. Ianto’s quarry didn’t even startle. He simply straightened up fluidly and sauntered out of the alley after the blond man. Ianto hurried to follow.

The man his man was pursuing headed towards the park at a brisk walk, and when Ianto’s quarry hurried to keep after him, Ianto lost them briefly among the trees. He stopped, cursing silently to himself.

“Don’t lose him,” he muttered, straining his eyes in the darkness to try and see any sign of his man. Again, he wished he could have brought a torch, but he knew he stood no chance of remaining unseen if he shone lights on the man he was following. “Just don’t lose him, Ianto,” he repeated, sighing. He needed to know what the other man did at any time of the day or night, needed to have every scrap of information he could get before he risked any contact with the man. This whole thing was dangerous enough already.

Suddenly, there was a yell off to his right, and he ran to see what had happened.

The two men he’d been following were now engaged in a scuffle in a small clearing, rolling around on the ground as the blond did his best to beat seven kinds of hell out of his pursuer. He looked set to succeed when one flying fist connected with his opponent’s head, briefly stunning him. Ianto stopped thinking and stepped in to lend a hand.

A couple of minutes later, the stranger was unconscious and Ianto was gingerly feeling his way along the bleeding scratch at his hairline, while his quarry dabbed blood from a split lip. Only then did they stop to exchange sheepish grins at the battered state they’d got into, and Ianto paused.

Oh, damn. I didn’t expect him to be this pretty close up, he thought, startled, and then the other man glanced at his fallen assailant and claimed, “I had it under control, you know.”

You think so?

“Of course,” Ianto agreed, raising an eyebrow, and his quarry laughed.

“Jack Harkness,” he said easily, offering Ianto his hand. “And you are?”

“Jones,” Ianto told him, “Ianto Jones,” and shook hands, mostly ignoring Jack’s words (he already knew all that) but learning so much more than he’d expected from his appearance and manner. After all, what use were names anyway? ‘Jack Harkness’ couldn’t convey warm blue eyes or tousled chestnut brown hair, let alone his idiosyncratic dress sense – period military, really? It was almost too much for Ianto to believe, but he was seeing it with his own eyes.

And the very way Jack introduced himself told Ianto volumes. The man’s self-confidence was almost palpable – it would have been arrogance on anyone else, but Jack carried it with such casual charm it became instantly, dazzlingly attractive. He was the kind of man men wanted to be and women wanted to have. Except that Ianto was having trouble choosing his side.

If they’d met under other circumstances, he thought ruefully, it would have been so very easy (and enjoyable) to let Jack work his charms. But he had a job to do.

Because he knew Jack Harkness was a private investigator – and he had information Ianto needed. He knew now, after weeks of following Jack, that the only way he was going to get that information was through trickery and lies. He couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong.

He couldn’t afford to get distracted.




TO BE CONTINUED!!

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