for pi_sparrow: When a hobby is not a hobby

[quitehomoerotic]

Even Jack Harkness needed a hobby.

Okay, no, he didn't. He was actually quite busy. Too busy for a hobby, but he wanted one. Torchwood was all consuming, and it was important sometimes to have the odd thing to relax the mind. Of course Jack didn't relax his mind like most people, he relaxed his mind by reading a series of very interesting police reports from a D.I. Shipton about an old house in London and a series of events the year before.

Just a hobby, of course.

A hobby, that was, until Jack found the house in question had been purchased and was to be renovated and made into a museum of all things. It rang alarm bells, and though he couldn't quite pinpoint why, he wanted to take a look for himself.

So the very busy man did as all very busy men do. He delegated. Delegated and of course disappeared without much explanation to his team other than he'd 'be back in a couple of days'.

And there he was, back in London and breaking every rule in the highway code in his oversized SUV, careering far too fast and far too dangerously along roads that were never built for it. Wester Drumlins was his goal; the building in question. He was almost there but then there was a distraction (there's always a distraction). A little blip on one of the scanners. Something that shouldn't have been there. Probably nothing, but, well, Jack was certainly nothing if not curious.

He could make a slight detour.

The blip, though, seemed to move. Move and it was something of a wild goose chase. Until it stopped, and Jack followed it until he was parking outside an unassuming little shop.

He climbed from the car, glancing just briefly at the sign above the door, and he headed in.

Inside, he glanced from side to side; headed forward and poked at a few packs of envelopes on a shelf. He glanced towards the till and nodded over at the girl there.

Interesting.

Comments

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

Sally had just gotten the news that morning. The morning paper, innocent looking while it was still furled, had dropped a ticking bomb of information when she'd opened it. 'Wester Drumlins to be renovated as Private Museum', the headlines read. Thankfully, she was sure the spilt coffee would come out of the carpet eventually, although they'd be needing another mug...

She couldn't even bring herself to read the article, mind spinning with thoughts of that damned house and all it contained. Her name behind the walls, and the things in the basement, just waiting to be reawakened with the first crew of construction workers...

It wasn't surprising that she hadn't been able to keep breakfast down and had opened the shop that morning looking pale and shaky. What had happened in that place almost two years ago still kept her from sleeping more nights than she'd care to admit.

But in the midday sunlight that came through the front windows and danced across the counter, she sat idly behind the till, fiddling with a pen. It was a quiet summer day, and customers were few and far between, so when the man in the RAF greatcoat walked in the front door, he sort of stood out.

He lurked over by the postcard stand, glancing over his shoulder as he shuffled about with the empty envelopes. Sally raised an eyebrow, "Can I help you?" She asked skeptically.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Nonchalance was the name of Jack's game. Or, well, the name of this game in particular. He moved around like he actually gave a damn about the contents of the shop; picking up a postcard here or a notebook there. He zig zagged his way over to the counter.

And when there, he responded with a slight grin on his face, and his arms rested forward against the desk in front.

"Oh I hope so..." he looked at her name tag, "...Sally."

He straightened a little then and nodded towards her. "See I'm looking for something, and something tells me you might know where it is."

Of course the fact that as of yet he had no idea what exactly it was what caused the blip was entirely irrelevant...

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

Well, so it seemed he was the flirt with the shopgirl type, which wasn't as strange as just how much he didn't look like their usual clientele. She looked him once over, "Really? Historical documentaries are on the back wall", she suggested, only half serious.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's eyes didn't move to the back wall. In fact, Jack's eyes didn't move at all. He continued to watch her, curious.

Maybe going the easy way would be the best. Bit of retcon later and nobody would be any the wiser.

"Not documentaries," he said, "been there seen that... quite literally. No. No I'm looking for something else. Something alien. Now, Sally, care to save me some time, tell me where that might be?"

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

Sally raised an eyebrow, watching him carefully, trying to figure out what his game was while still following the line of conversation. Hiding her surprise when he mentioned something alien was a bit harder, but she played it off as casually as possible, "Well, this is London, not exactly lacking in 'things alien' lately", she added lightly.

The truth was, she'd come across something a few days ago. She just might have been keeping her ear to the ground for anything odd, and just maybe she'd heard something about strange lights spotted on a local street. And she just might have slipped out to give the scene a look one night. And maybe she can across a very odd looking device behind the dumpster next to the car with the strangely melted windows. But not if Larry asked she hadn't.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's expression softened a little. "Touché," he said, because really she was right. As though spaceships and Cybermen and Christmas stars hadn't been enough.

He turned his head then, a little thoughtful. Trying to work out how best to approach this.

"Sally..." he said with a heavy sigh. Laboured and somewhat worn.

But he stopped. Sally. Sally. And he remembered the name on the outside of the building, it had meant nothing, but he remembered it now. Sparrow.

And it made sense.

"...You're Sally Sparrow," he said. And he straightened up. "We need to talk. About the Angels."

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

"Was the nametag a tipoff...?" She asked, not sure where exactly he was headed with this, that is, until he spoke next. Her jaw may have dropped just a little, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder, into the back room where her business partner and, well, boyfriend, was going through the new shipments, he didn't appear to have heard.

"Larry! Mind the counter?" She called back, ducking around it as soon as his head perked up.

"Outside", she said curtly to the newcomer, before heading out the front door.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack put his hands behind his back and took a step back from the counter. He knew how these things went. Well, usually.

He waited and then when she moved, he moved to, heading out the shop behind her and taking a few steps towards his SUV.

"Get in," he said, and climbed into the driver's seat.

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

"Sorry?" She asked, with an incredulous glance, "Give me a good reason to just get in the car of a man I've barely met, and don't try to smile this off, it won't work on me."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Oh he liked her.

"Because," he said, stalling with his door half open. "Because I'm Captain Jack Harkness. Because I know what the Angels are and what they can do. Because if they get out there then we can wave goodbye to life as we know it."

Beat.

"And because I've got air con in the car."

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

"You realizing name dropping doesn't work if I don't know who you are...." Sally added skeptically, looking at the waiting passenger seat, "Alright", she said finally, sliding into the front seat and shutting the door, "But only because I'm inclined to believe you, and also the shop fan is broken. Now talk."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Okay. Fine," he said, pulling his door shut. "Dropping my name not impressing you how about I talk about the Doctor. That grab you?"

He reached his arm down and pulled from under his seat a folder, full of police reports. Police reports on Wester Drumlins.

"You've met them, haven't you? You know what they can do. And they'll do it again."

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

"Alright, you've got my attention", she said, after a minute, buckling her seatbelt. She took the folder and started flipping through it, but didn't find anything that she didn't have a copy of herself in a drawer back at the flat. Good old Billy Shipton had made sure to give her the password to a certain police archive before he'd died.

"Two years ago", she said softly, still looking through the file, "Solved the problem...for now. But all it will take is one construction manager..."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Of course he had. The Doctor's name was a powerful one, and one he never would use lightly. He knew it would do the trick here.

"And they've started," he said with an over the top ominous tone. "Only a matter of time now. So, there's nothing for it, they have to be stopped. So, how do we kill something that can't be killed."

Beat.

"And to think this was just a hobby."

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

"Well TNT has crossed my mind from time to time", she said curtly, "And anyone who thinks they can just walk away from this stuff and go back to normal is either delusional or stupid", (so what did that make her?)

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack let out a slight laugh in the back of his throat. "Oh, normal is relative. And sure, we could blow them, but we have no idea what that'd do. It'd be blowing up rock, who's to say they wouldn't just reform. They're an unknown quantity."

He turned his head to her and grinned. "So that's where we come in."

[pi-sparrow.livejournal.com]

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that 'we' referred less to me and more to whoever's got your back on this one", she said dryly, "Which, while I'm flattered, stil begs the question why I'm here."

He seemed to have as much, if not more information on the Angels as she did, so unless he was just in habit of snatching up prety young things for a laugh, she didn't quite see how she factored into this.