Chapter 11: Introducing Captain Hart
Inspired by interactions in the Hotel California Panfandom RPG, this is a joint project between two women who adored the idea of Jack recruiting Buffy to Torchwood. Perhaps they adored it a little too much, but that remains to be seen.
Title: So Buffy Met Jack...
Authors: Amy tainted_crimson & Sarah magicom
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Torchwood
Spoilers: Through Buffy / Angel series finales and Torchwood Series 2 / Doctor Who Series 4. (Some elements borrowed from Season 8 comics)
Rating: FR-15
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10
INTRODUCING CAPTAIN HART
Ianto set Buffy's coffee on her desk as she entered the Hub, as he often did in the morning, provided he wasn't busy with something more urgent. That morning, exactly one month after Buffy arrived at Torchwood, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. In fact, between them, Jack and Ianto had arranged it that way.
There was a file on Buffy's desk with a report from the day before that she had to fill out the remaining portion of. On top of the file was a note, informing her that Jack wished to speak to her when she had the chance. It told her to see Ianto, since Jack was working in a different area of the Hub that morning. By the time Buffy reached her desk, Ianto was already at his own station studiously working. He barely looked up when she came in.
"Morning," he said distractedly as he shuffled through some papers.
"Morning," Buffy echoed just as distractedly as she slowly made her way into what she'd dubbed the Lobby. Her concentration was not on the innocently preoccupied Welshman off to the side, but on the contents of the bag she was currently rifling through. She was trying to find the cell phone that kept buzzing at her, clinking against keys and a stake and the various other things living in her newly purchased, very gorgeous purse.
Why was the phone buzzing at her? Because one Dawn Summers, who had stayed with Buffy over the most recent weekend, had decided it would be fun to make sure her sister got to work on time. And woke up on time. And had her midnight snack of time. A multitude of alarms had been set for a multitude of reasons and if Buffy never heard the word 'multitude' again, it would be too soon.
With a cry of victory, she finally wrestled the thing out of the bag and pressed the button that would stop the damn buzzing. She dropped into the chair at her station and glared down at the thing, wondering if Ianto would fix it if he heard how she planned on murdering the thing the next time it buzzed at her.
Glancing over at him, she sighed and guessed he'd probably give her a flat no. So she swiveled her chair around toward the delicious smell of awaiting coffee... and raised an eyebrow at the note on the desk.
"Ooookay...," she muttered to herself, looking over at Ianto again, then shook her head and took a long drink of the yummy chocolately coffee. It was the perk-up she needed to get the stupid paperwork done. It didn't even take her a full hour! She considered it an esteemed accomplishment.
Hauling herself out of her chair, she wandered over to Ianto with note in hand and leaned on the wall beside his station. "Alright, Almighty Caffeinated One," she started, giving the piece of paper a little wave, "I'm ready to find out what the sitch is."
Ianto didn't look up from what he was doing yet. "What the what is?" he asked absently. Something occurred to him and he did look at Buffy before she could answer the previous question. "What was going on with your mobile this morning?" he asked. "And why were you looking at it the way you were looking at that Frissonite that stained your new shoes last week?" he added. "You know it's inanimate and, thus, probably immune to the Buffy Glare of Doom, right?"
She rolled her eyes at his comparison, because really, she was sure the gooey guy had gotten a much meaner look with a lot more threat to it, and decided to completely ignore the latter part of the questioning. If she tried answering it, he might get the Glare of Doom and then no one would be happy.
"The evil that is my little sister decided to alarmify my phone," she explained with a unhappy pout. "She knows I can't figure out how to turn them all off, and last night she even called five minutes after one of them just to laugh at me. I even threatened to show her boyfriend the photos of her with four foot long neon green nose hair and all she did was hang up on me."
Ianto raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Why would she... 'alarmify' your phone?" he asked, clearly finding the word 'alarmify' just a little bit painful.
"Because she's evil?" Buffy said, as if that should be answer enough. "And she's also found it hard to grasp the concept that I actually do manage to get to work on time. Mostly."
Ianto nodded imperturbably. "Why can't you figure out how to unalarmify it?" he asked mildly. He knew she wasn't great with the technical stuff, but sometimes he liked to make her say it.
She narrowed her eyes at him in that way that left both Xander and Rhys running for the hills. "Because Buffy and technology are unmeshy things," she explained for the fiftieth time, knowing by now that he just did it to get at her. "And you are so not getting a Christmas present this year."
Ianto smiled ever so slightly. "I find there's a great deal more pleasure to be had in the non-material things in life," he told her airily. It wasn't his fault - she started this game. He was just good at following through and finishing things. It was his specialty. People around there should know better, really.
He took the note from her hand and read it over. "Ah," he said in comprehension as he handed it back to her. "This way." He lead her towards the stairs to the sublevels.
She continued to watch him with narrowed eyes for a moment before stuffing the note in the pocket of her pinstriped slacks and following him. Her boots clanked on the metal grating and then made solid clops on the stone floors as she began to realize that she had absolutely no idea where they were going. The sublevels reminded her a bit too much of Sunnydale's sewers for her to go wandering about in them just for kicks, so she'd never ventured away from the places that were actually used with a decent amount of frequency. Now she almost wished that she had; she really hated surprises. They tended to end badly.
Ianto had told Jack they were on their way down with a brief text message as Buffy was heading over to his station. When they got to sublevel three, Ianto lead her down a narrow corridor to a room where Jack was waiting outside the battered metal door, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.
"Buffy," he said with a nod in greeting.
Buffy stopped in front of Jack, eying the way he was just... standing there. Oh, this was not good. This was so not of the good. "Okay, boys, what's going on?" she finally questioned, hands on her hips as she looked back and forth between the two men. They were the troublemakers on the team. "Is this Play Pranks on Buffy Day? Because, really, I thought that was last week when our cute guard dog decided she was going to leave chocolate bits all over my station." There were post-chocolate bits too, but she doubted they needed that reminder.
"At least if she's eating chocolate, she's not eating the staff," Ianto pointed out. "Or sheep. Sheep bits all over your station is a lot more difficult to clean up."
Jack smirked at Ianto's answer, then resumed a more sober expression. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something much more serious," he told her. He looked at Ianto. "Thank you, Ianto."
Ianto nodded and left them alone.
Buffy's jaw dropped when Ianto just turned and left, but her look of disbelief was quickly replaced by a frustrated pout. "Okay, what did I do this time?" she finally asked, throwing her hands up in the air as she began to nervously pace. She wasn't good with the whole team thing, she knew it, and being an employee instead of the boss... Well, there had been bumpy spots along the way over the past month, and she just knew this had to be about another one. "Whatever it was, I didn't mean to, honestly. Was probably just trying to be helpful! You know me, Helpful Buffy!"
Jack nodded impassively. "Buffy," he said when he judged that she was done rambling. "I just want you to take a look at something for me, okay?" He pushed the door behind him open and gestured for her to enter.
She looked at him with suspicious, part of her jumping for joy that she hadn't majorly screwed up again, and the other part extremely doubtful that this was anything good. There was probably going to be a weevil in a pink tutu on the other side of the door, with her luck.
Finally, she rolled her eyes and stepped forward with a sigh, and was about to give a retort on how pink was so not her color when she actually saw what was inside the room. Her jaw hit the floor again as she continued in until she was at the center and could properly turn around and see everything.
"But... But he said stuff was backordered, and..." She couldn't even begin to form a coherent sentence as she took in the items carefully placed around the room. An industrial-strength punching bag, a wooden dummy for knife-throwing practice, swords hung along the wall... It was nothing like the back of the Magic Box had been, or the big training rooms at the New Council, but still it was perfect. "Ianto is such a LIAR!" she exclaimed with a grin, charging over to Jack to throw her arms around him for a giant hug.
"It was his idea," Jack said, returning her hug. "Gwen thought we should have a dinner or something to celebrate your one-month anniversary. Ianto thought you'd appreciate this more," he explained with a sweeping gesture as he released her.
"Yay Ianto!" she said, voicing her approval of the idea as she nearly bounced with the glee that could only be brought on by weapons and weapony things. It was a Happy Buffy glow that brightened up the entire room. "Seriously, this is amazing, and absolutely perfect."
"Well, I'm going to let you play for a bit," Jack told her. "I do have actual work I'm supposed to be doing," he joked. He looked at his watch. "I want to have a meeting in the conference room at eleven o'clock, okay?"
Actual work? Meetings? Jack was so lucky that she liked him. There were very few people who had the power to pull her away from something as shiny as a new training room in need of breaking in.
"Eleven, right, gotcha," she replied distractedly, unzipping her boots so she could walk barefoot across the only slightly cushy mat that covered the floor. The throwing knives were absolutely gorgeous, with a lovely polished shine to the blade... "Really, I'll be there," Buffy assured Jack with a grin, then gave one of the knives a practice throw. It landed right above the dummy's 'heart', which of course earned a Slayer happy dance.
Jack laughed. "You know, I'm going to have to ask Ianto if the throwing knives were strictly necessary. I'm not sure how I feel about those," he joked.
She rolled her eyes at him, tossing another knife so it flipped in the air before catching it again with ease. "Oh come on," she told the dear Captain. "I'm much safer with knives than I am with that cell phone."
"Hey," he reminded her, "you've gone a whole month without destroying that thing. New job, new city... maybe it's the start of a new relationship with pocket-sized technology," he suggested.
Snorting, Buffy tossed another knife at the dummy, this time hitting right where it would make a man the most uncomfortable. "Right," she said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "You should ask Ianto about the latest developments in that saga."
Jack raised an eyebrow at her, leaning on the doorframe. "Well, he was a little too calm when he was down here for you to have broken it," Jack pondered outloud. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Okay, I'll bite. What happened to it?"
She shook her head and waved him off. "Just ask Ianto," she directed dismissively. "I wouldn't want to deprive him of another chance at mocking me. That would just be cruel."
Jack smirked. "If you like," he said cheerfully. "See you at eleven."
He left the training room and went up to the 'Lobby'. If he wasn't careful, Buffy was going to have them all calling it that.
Ianto was at his station, doing something on his computer. It was hard to tell if it was important just from watching Ianto work. He wore the same expression of intense concentration in any endeavour he undertook. He could be writing an important report, doing research or playing minesweeper, for all Jack knew. He walked over to the archivist to find out what was up with Buffy's phone before their meeting in an hour's time.
Buffy spent that entire hour working up a sweat in her new training room, thoroughly enjoying herself. Well, working up a sweat was just a phrase of speech, of course. There were very few instances were she actually did sweat during a workout, as per the Slayer package, but she finally managed to feel that sweet burn that meant she was using her muscles in all the right ways.
She was almost sad when the clock on the wall read five 'til, (the clock had not been on her list, either, so it was most certainly one of Ianto's personal additions to the room,) but she did have an urge to shock a certain Coffee God with a giant, almost-bone-crushing hug. So she grabbed the sheer shirt she'd worn over her tanktop that day that had been tossed to the side when she'd started her fun, and headed upstairs.
She took the steps two at a time, in an unusually good mood for a Monday morning, since Mondays had become as cursed as Tuesdays in recent years, and nearly skipped into the Lobby. She was about to turn to go into the conference room when she noticed something on one of the monitors. The security camera outside... a figure walking toward the building, with an arrogant swagger to the walk... She'd know that walk anywhere.
Grinning, she hurried to the elevator, bouncing impatiently while the cog door took its sweet time rolling aside and nearly kicking the elevator to get it to move faster. And then, finally, she was running down the short hall and turning to skid into the little travel office.
He was already there, sitting in Ianto's chair with his feet propped up on the desk, a brochure held up to cover his face as he read in style. "What are you doing here?!" she demanded happily as she moved forward, prepared to plant a giant round of smoochies right on him as soon as he was in range. "You didn't say anything about visiting, you meanie, and, by the way, what are you wear--"
Her voice died as the man lowered the brochure and an instant later she had her gun pointed right at his head. "You aren't Spike." He looked like Spike, walked like Spike, but he definitely wasn't Spike. There was no vampire feel to him, no kindness in his eyes when he looked at her. It took only one glance to tell her that this man was not the love of her life.
The self-styled Captain John Hart had made his way to Cardiff to drop in on Jack. In truth, he needed some help. Bit of a sticky situation. These things happened. At any rate, he figured it'd be Jack that came up to 'greet' him. He'd just go down to the Hub himself, but last time he was there, Eye Candy looked ready to shoot him. If the Divine Ms Cooper hadn't gotten in between, he'd likely have an extra hole in his skull that he didn't need. He needed his handsome immortal buffer before he made the trip down the elevator.
What he hadn't expected was the pert little blonde who'd seemed so happy to see him for a brief moment - quite an achievement, considering he'd never seen her before... but then, she apparently realized she'd never seen him either.
"What the hell kind of a name is Spike?" he asked bluntly. He took his feet down from the desk. "I'm looking for Jack. Why don't you run along and tell him Captain Hart is here to see him, okay?" he said condescendingly, making a little waving motion towards the secret passage with his hands.
Captain?! Hart?! This was the psycho ex Jack had mentioned? The one who sounded a little too clingy for anyone's own good? Huh. Looks like she and Jack really did have similar tastes
Narrowing her eyes at the way the man seemed to be shooing her out of the room, she kept her gun trained on him just in case. One never knew with psycho ex-anythings. "Look, Captain, why don't you just sit there and keep your mouth shut before you get a face full of my boot?" she suggested none too kindly, reaching for the phone on the desk and pushing the button that would connect to the Hub.
"Jack," she said, imagining the look on her teammates' faces as her voice echoed around the stone walls downstairs, "if you wouldn't mind getting up to the tourist office now, you've got a visitor I'm about to make pulpy."
Jack was looking at the monitor before she even finished the sentence. "Great," he muttered. He looked between Ianto and Gwen. "I guess that meeting's postponed," he told them.
Ianto looked like he wanted to say something.
"Look, he helped us out last time," Jack told him. "I'll just see what he wants."
"He helped us out with a disaster that he caused," Ianto pointed out in a grumble.
Jack gave him a look and turned to go up to the tourist office. Ianto went unhappily back to his paperwork.
Buffy just stared at the Not Spike until she heard the door open again. "I was torn between the threat of shooting him or giving him a sound ass-kicking," she informed her boss, eyes never leaving the subject of the conversation. "The latter would be more fun for me, but the gun seems to have kept him in the chair."
Jack came up beside Buffy, putting a gentle hand on top of her gun and pressing it down towards the floor. "That won't be necessary," he told her. He looked at Hart pointedly. "Yet," he stressed.
Hart didn't move to get up yet. "I told you you needed a blonde," he pointed out cheerfully.
"Why are you here?" Jack asked, getting right to the point. He wasn't any happier than his team to see the man sitting at Ianto's desk, but their history made him more willing to hear him out.
Hart spread his hands in a slightly exasperrated gesture. "Can't I even come in?" he asked.
Jack eyed him warily. "I don't see why," he said slowly. "You're not staying."
"I just want to have a little chat with you about a couple of things," Hart said vaguely. "We could go down to your office and talk like civilized people." He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Jack didn't say anything, just kept his most scrutinizing look on his ex-partner.
Hart leaned forward, looking at Buffy a little warily before turning an imploring gaze towards Jack. "I'm in trouble," he said, all lightness gone from his tone.
Jack didn't move. "So?" he asked coldly.
"It's serious," Hart hissed. "Not just for me. It could be bad for a lot of people."
Jack rolled his eyes with a weary sigh. "Fine. Come on." He stood back, gesturing for Buffy to do the same, so John could precede them into the passageway.
Buffy was ready to fall over by the time they started heading downstairs, the lookalike at the front of the line. She'd never been trigger-happy with her gun before, but now she really wanted to shoot him. In the knee, so he wouldn't be able to run away when she kicked him in the head.
Not only did he look like Spike and move like Spike, but he sounded like Spike, too. Exactly. That same nonchalant and arrogant confidence born of many years of doing what he wanted, when he wanted, and not having anyone tell him no. It seemed that only his eyes were different...
"You sure I can't hit him?" Buffy inquired of Jack while they rode down, not bothering to try lowering her voice. "Just a punch or three, maybe break that nose so he doesn't look like my boyfriend's evil twin?" She sounded both pouty and hopeful all at the same time.
Jack looked at her oddly. "What?" he asked sharply. He was going to get into possible explanations with her when they arrived at the cog door. The moment it opened Hart pulled his gun out and pointed it at Ianto, who was standing at his station, where Jack had left him. Admittedly, it was hard to see what he was doing on the other side of the coffee machine, but Jack hadn't expected quite this reaction from Hart.
"Don't try it, Eye Candy," Hart said darkly. "I don't want to blow your pretty little head off."
Ianto frowned at him and looked at Jack, who was already striding into the middle of the room. From there, he could see exactly what Ianto was doing. He looked at Hart.
"He's holding a pen," Jack informed Hart in an infuriated tone of voice. "Put that thing away!"
Hart almost reluctantly holstered the weapon. "Can't be too careful," he muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear. "He tried to kill me last time I was here."
"You tried to kill us first," Ianto pointed out. "And everyone else, for that matter."
Jack put his hands up to stop the argument before it escalated into Hart reminding them all that he hadn't been the mastermind of that attack, though he had carried it out, and gestured towards his office.
"Office," he barked at Hart. He headed after him, glancing over his shoulder at the other three members of Torchwood. "The rest of you can go back to your work," he said firmly.
Buffy watched them walk off, glowering at the man in the funky outfit that looked like something out of a trippy pirate movie, then made a decision. She hurried after the two men who had an encyclopedia of history, catching up just as they were entering Jack's office. She slid in before Jack could shut the door.
"You said go back to work," she explained before Jack could question her. "This is my work."
She went to Jack's desk where a tray of coffee had been sitting and removed everything from the tray before turning to approach the offending captain. "Weapons," she demanded, her voice and gaze made of steel. "All seven of them." She gave him a once-over and amended, "Make that eight."
ohn Hart was already seating himself in the chair across from Jack's desk when Buffy approached him. He put his feet up on the desk, raised an eyebrow at her, then looked past her at Jack.
Jack stood beside the desk and crossed his arms. "You heard the lady," he said non-commitally. Frankly, he would have preferred to handle the situation by himself, but he was going to back his people up before Hart.
Hart sighed in a long-suffering kind of way and pushed himself to his feet, making sure it was clear that all of this was both very silly and a great inconvenience. He dutifully began removing the weapons and placing them on the tray, looking Buffy over as he did so.
"You know," he said conversationally, "Eye Candy usually holds the tray." He gave her a flirty smile. "You're not a bad substitute though," he added, setting the last of his weapons down. He looked at Jack. "I want them back this time."
Buffy had to concentrate very hard on not smacking that smile right off the bastard's face. Something weird was going on, and when weird involved Spike in any way, shape, or size, she was not a happy Slayer.
Balancing the full tray with one hand, she used the other to forcefully push the recently arrived pain in her ass back into his chair, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder while she leaned in to speak. "Then you'd better come to terms with the fact that he's not the one you have to sweet talk to get your toys back," she informed him before giving his shoulder a little pat and straightening up again.
"Have a nice chat," she called over her shoulder as she left the room.
Jack watched her go and waited for the door to close behind her before calmly moving around the desk to sit in his chair.
Hart, for his part, seemed pleasantly surprised more than anything else. He looked at Jack good-naturedly. "She's very interesting," he commented. He leaned forward. "And I thought Ms Cooper was fiery." He grinned wolfishly. "You just have good taste all around."
Jack didn't react. He just gave Hart an inquiring look. "You said you have a problem?" he reminded the former Time Agent. "Speak now or forever hold your peace."
Down in the Hub, Ianto cleaned the coffee machine fastidiously in an effort to avoid looking in the direction of Jack's office. He heard the door shut, the sound of Buffy's boots on the grating. He didn't look up from his work. He'd been hoping they wouldn't see Hart again. Ever. He supposed that was too much to ask. He briefly wondered if Buffy would notice that he was occupying himself with something he didn't usually do during the day, but quickly decided that he didn't care if she did. She didn't seem any happier to see Hart than the rest of them were. He almost wondered why that was, since she'd never met him, but of course the answer would be that Jack had told her about him. Jack had, apparently, told her everything in two weeks that it had taken him two years to learn. He slammed the brush down on the counter and picked up a cloth.
Buffy's hands were tight around the tray of weapons, her grip almost to the point of accidentally bending the thing in half. Truthfully, she wanted to toss the whole lot into the water at the center of the lobby, or maybe find a pile of pterodactyl poop to nestle a gun or two in, but figured that could wait until the guy actually did something to her. Then she could let her evil side out to play.
Gwen had apparently wandered off to take care of something, probably checking to make sure no other guests were about to spring themselves on the team, so that left Ianto. The quietly fuming Slayer made her way over to where he was cleaning, which really was kind of odd in itself, wasn't it?, and set the tray down on a nearby table. Leaning against said table, she crossed her arms and pouted. "I really want to punch that guy."
"That's pretty much the popular opinion," Ianto replied without looking up. He carried on with his work in silence for a moment, but could see from his peripheral vision that Buffy was still leaning on the table.
"What does he want?" Ianto asked grudgingly. He was curious to know if Hart had an actual reason for being there or if he was just making up excuses to see Jack.
She shrugged, not really much caring why the face thief was there so long as he left pronto. "Said he was in trouble," she mumbled, glaring up at Jack's office. "Big bad other people effected troubled." Otherwise she was fairly certain Jack would have thrown him out on his ear. She remembered the recent stories as being not so very pleasant.
Tilting her head, she pondered aloud, "Maybe a broken nose, and a scar... right along those gorgeous cheekbones..." Yeah, that would do it. Kill the resemblance good and dead.
He actually stopped what he was doing and looked at her at that last bit. "What?" he asked, confused.
Buffy blinked and looked back at Ianto. "What?" she repeated, wearing her own confused expression, then shook her head as realization dawned. "Oh, right. He looks like my boyfriend's evil twin clone. Sounds like him, too, the bastard. Well, the hair's different, but Spike bleaches his, so I guess that makes sense..."
Ianto looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. He put down the cloth he was using to clean the machine and took a deep breath. "Captain Hart looks like your boyfriend?" he clarified with a small amount of disbelief in his voice.
She nodded, giving Ianto a look that clearly said she didn't get what part of it he wasn't understanding. "Exactly," she confirmed. "Even the walk is the same. It's... freaky." And she did not like it.
Ianto looked at her for another moment before picking up the brush again and turning his attention back to the machine. "Just be glad you didn't meet this one first, then," he advised as he worked. "He would have put you off the other one."
Buffy couldn't help it. A single, solitary laugh burst out of her, followed by a pause... and then a waterfall of giggles. "Well, to be fair," she forced out after nearly slipping off the table, "the first time I saw Spike, he told me he was going to kill me on Saturday. And then he spent the next few years trying to fulfill that threat."
Ah, memories.
"And I thought my personal life was ridiculous," he said laconically. He put the brush down and looked at Buffy. "And if you want to break his nose, join the queue," he told her flatly. "I was here first." He picked up the brush again and turned his attention, once again, to meticulously scrubbing every nook in the machine's surface.
"That's fair," she agreed amicably, standing away from the table and stretching her arms up over her head. "Just don't kill the coffee machine, okay?" she requested, turning to head over to her own station. "And keep an eye on those weapons for me, will ya? Need to know where they are in case they go 'missing.'"
Oh yes, Buffy Summers was a woman not to be messed with.
Title: So Buffy Met Jack...
Authors: Amy tainted_crimson & Sarah magicom
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Torchwood
Spoilers: Through Buffy / Angel series finales and Torchwood Series 2 / Doctor Who Series 4. (Some elements borrowed from Season 8 comics)
Rating: FR-15
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10
INTRODUCING CAPTAIN HART
Ianto set Buffy's coffee on her desk as she entered the Hub, as he often did in the morning, provided he wasn't busy with something more urgent. That morning, exactly one month after Buffy arrived at Torchwood, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. In fact, between them, Jack and Ianto had arranged it that way.
There was a file on Buffy's desk with a report from the day before that she had to fill out the remaining portion of. On top of the file was a note, informing her that Jack wished to speak to her when she had the chance. It told her to see Ianto, since Jack was working in a different area of the Hub that morning. By the time Buffy reached her desk, Ianto was already at his own station studiously working. He barely looked up when she came in.
"Morning," he said distractedly as he shuffled through some papers.
"Morning," Buffy echoed just as distractedly as she slowly made her way into what she'd dubbed the Lobby. Her concentration was not on the innocently preoccupied Welshman off to the side, but on the contents of the bag she was currently rifling through. She was trying to find the cell phone that kept buzzing at her, clinking against keys and a stake and the various other things living in her newly purchased, very gorgeous purse.
Why was the phone buzzing at her? Because one Dawn Summers, who had stayed with Buffy over the most recent weekend, had decided it would be fun to make sure her sister got to work on time. And woke up on time. And had her midnight snack of time. A multitude of alarms had been set for a multitude of reasons and if Buffy never heard the word 'multitude' again, it would be too soon.
With a cry of victory, she finally wrestled the thing out of the bag and pressed the button that would stop the damn buzzing. She dropped into the chair at her station and glared down at the thing, wondering if Ianto would fix it if he heard how she planned on murdering the thing the next time it buzzed at her.
Glancing over at him, she sighed and guessed he'd probably give her a flat no. So she swiveled her chair around toward the delicious smell of awaiting coffee... and raised an eyebrow at the note on the desk.
"Ooookay...," she muttered to herself, looking over at Ianto again, then shook her head and took a long drink of the yummy chocolately coffee. It was the perk-up she needed to get the stupid paperwork done. It didn't even take her a full hour! She considered it an esteemed accomplishment.
Hauling herself out of her chair, she wandered over to Ianto with note in hand and leaned on the wall beside his station. "Alright, Almighty Caffeinated One," she started, giving the piece of paper a little wave, "I'm ready to find out what the sitch is."
Ianto didn't look up from what he was doing yet. "What the what is?" he asked absently. Something occurred to him and he did look at Buffy before she could answer the previous question. "What was going on with your mobile this morning?" he asked. "And why were you looking at it the way you were looking at that Frissonite that stained your new shoes last week?" he added. "You know it's inanimate and, thus, probably immune to the Buffy Glare of Doom, right?"
She rolled her eyes at his comparison, because really, she was sure the gooey guy had gotten a much meaner look with a lot more threat to it, and decided to completely ignore the latter part of the questioning. If she tried answering it, he might get the Glare of Doom and then no one would be happy.
"The evil that is my little sister decided to alarmify my phone," she explained with a unhappy pout. "She knows I can't figure out how to turn them all off, and last night she even called five minutes after one of them just to laugh at me. I even threatened to show her boyfriend the photos of her with four foot long neon green nose hair and all she did was hang up on me."
Ianto raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Why would she... 'alarmify' your phone?" he asked, clearly finding the word 'alarmify' just a little bit painful.
"Because she's evil?" Buffy said, as if that should be answer enough. "And she's also found it hard to grasp the concept that I actually do manage to get to work on time. Mostly."
Ianto nodded imperturbably. "Why can't you figure out how to unalarmify it?" he asked mildly. He knew she wasn't great with the technical stuff, but sometimes he liked to make her say it.
She narrowed her eyes at him in that way that left both Xander and Rhys running for the hills. "Because Buffy and technology are unmeshy things," she explained for the fiftieth time, knowing by now that he just did it to get at her. "And you are so not getting a Christmas present this year."
Ianto smiled ever so slightly. "I find there's a great deal more pleasure to be had in the non-material things in life," he told her airily. It wasn't his fault - she started this game. He was just good at following through and finishing things. It was his specialty. People around there should know better, really.
He took the note from her hand and read it over. "Ah," he said in comprehension as he handed it back to her. "This way." He lead her towards the stairs to the sublevels.
She continued to watch him with narrowed eyes for a moment before stuffing the note in the pocket of her pinstriped slacks and following him. Her boots clanked on the metal grating and then made solid clops on the stone floors as she began to realize that she had absolutely no idea where they were going. The sublevels reminded her a bit too much of Sunnydale's sewers for her to go wandering about in them just for kicks, so she'd never ventured away from the places that were actually used with a decent amount of frequency. Now she almost wished that she had; she really hated surprises. They tended to end badly.
Ianto had told Jack they were on their way down with a brief text message as Buffy was heading over to his station. When they got to sublevel three, Ianto lead her down a narrow corridor to a room where Jack was waiting outside the battered metal door, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.
"Buffy," he said with a nod in greeting.
Buffy stopped in front of Jack, eying the way he was just... standing there. Oh, this was not good. This was so not of the good. "Okay, boys, what's going on?" she finally questioned, hands on her hips as she looked back and forth between the two men. They were the troublemakers on the team. "Is this Play Pranks on Buffy Day? Because, really, I thought that was last week when our cute guard dog decided she was going to leave chocolate bits all over my station." There were post-chocolate bits too, but she doubted they needed that reminder.
"At least if she's eating chocolate, she's not eating the staff," Ianto pointed out. "Or sheep. Sheep bits all over your station is a lot more difficult to clean up."
Jack smirked at Ianto's answer, then resumed a more sober expression. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something much more serious," he told her. He looked at Ianto. "Thank you, Ianto."
Ianto nodded and left them alone.
Buffy's jaw dropped when Ianto just turned and left, but her look of disbelief was quickly replaced by a frustrated pout. "Okay, what did I do this time?" she finally asked, throwing her hands up in the air as she began to nervously pace. She wasn't good with the whole team thing, she knew it, and being an employee instead of the boss... Well, there had been bumpy spots along the way over the past month, and she just knew this had to be about another one. "Whatever it was, I didn't mean to, honestly. Was probably just trying to be helpful! You know me, Helpful Buffy!"
Jack nodded impassively. "Buffy," he said when he judged that she was done rambling. "I just want you to take a look at something for me, okay?" He pushed the door behind him open and gestured for her to enter.
She looked at him with suspicious, part of her jumping for joy that she hadn't majorly screwed up again, and the other part extremely doubtful that this was anything good. There was probably going to be a weevil in a pink tutu on the other side of the door, with her luck.
Finally, she rolled her eyes and stepped forward with a sigh, and was about to give a retort on how pink was so not her color when she actually saw what was inside the room. Her jaw hit the floor again as she continued in until she was at the center and could properly turn around and see everything.
"But... But he said stuff was backordered, and..." She couldn't even begin to form a coherent sentence as she took in the items carefully placed around the room. An industrial-strength punching bag, a wooden dummy for knife-throwing practice, swords hung along the wall... It was nothing like the back of the Magic Box had been, or the big training rooms at the New Council, but still it was perfect. "Ianto is such a LIAR!" she exclaimed with a grin, charging over to Jack to throw her arms around him for a giant hug.
"It was his idea," Jack said, returning her hug. "Gwen thought we should have a dinner or something to celebrate your one-month anniversary. Ianto thought you'd appreciate this more," he explained with a sweeping gesture as he released her.
"Yay Ianto!" she said, voicing her approval of the idea as she nearly bounced with the glee that could only be brought on by weapons and weapony things. It was a Happy Buffy glow that brightened up the entire room. "Seriously, this is amazing, and absolutely perfect."
"Well, I'm going to let you play for a bit," Jack told her. "I do have actual work I'm supposed to be doing," he joked. He looked at his watch. "I want to have a meeting in the conference room at eleven o'clock, okay?"
Actual work? Meetings? Jack was so lucky that she liked him. There were very few people who had the power to pull her away from something as shiny as a new training room in need of breaking in.
"Eleven, right, gotcha," she replied distractedly, unzipping her boots so she could walk barefoot across the only slightly cushy mat that covered the floor. The throwing knives were absolutely gorgeous, with a lovely polished shine to the blade... "Really, I'll be there," Buffy assured Jack with a grin, then gave one of the knives a practice throw. It landed right above the dummy's 'heart', which of course earned a Slayer happy dance.
Jack laughed. "You know, I'm going to have to ask Ianto if the throwing knives were strictly necessary. I'm not sure how I feel about those," he joked.
She rolled her eyes at him, tossing another knife so it flipped in the air before catching it again with ease. "Oh come on," she told the dear Captain. "I'm much safer with knives than I am with that cell phone."
"Hey," he reminded her, "you've gone a whole month without destroying that thing. New job, new city... maybe it's the start of a new relationship with pocket-sized technology," he suggested.
Snorting, Buffy tossed another knife at the dummy, this time hitting right where it would make a man the most uncomfortable. "Right," she said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "You should ask Ianto about the latest developments in that saga."
Jack raised an eyebrow at her, leaning on the doorframe. "Well, he was a little too calm when he was down here for you to have broken it," Jack pondered outloud. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Okay, I'll bite. What happened to it?"
She shook her head and waved him off. "Just ask Ianto," she directed dismissively. "I wouldn't want to deprive him of another chance at mocking me. That would just be cruel."
Jack smirked. "If you like," he said cheerfully. "See you at eleven."
He left the training room and went up to the 'Lobby'. If he wasn't careful, Buffy was going to have them all calling it that.
Ianto was at his station, doing something on his computer. It was hard to tell if it was important just from watching Ianto work. He wore the same expression of intense concentration in any endeavour he undertook. He could be writing an important report, doing research or playing minesweeper, for all Jack knew. He walked over to the archivist to find out what was up with Buffy's phone before their meeting in an hour's time.
Buffy spent that entire hour working up a sweat in her new training room, thoroughly enjoying herself. Well, working up a sweat was just a phrase of speech, of course. There were very few instances were she actually did sweat during a workout, as per the Slayer package, but she finally managed to feel that sweet burn that meant she was using her muscles in all the right ways.
She was almost sad when the clock on the wall read five 'til, (the clock had not been on her list, either, so it was most certainly one of Ianto's personal additions to the room,) but she did have an urge to shock a certain Coffee God with a giant, almost-bone-crushing hug. So she grabbed the sheer shirt she'd worn over her tanktop that day that had been tossed to the side when she'd started her fun, and headed upstairs.
She took the steps two at a time, in an unusually good mood for a Monday morning, since Mondays had become as cursed as Tuesdays in recent years, and nearly skipped into the Lobby. She was about to turn to go into the conference room when she noticed something on one of the monitors. The security camera outside... a figure walking toward the building, with an arrogant swagger to the walk... She'd know that walk anywhere.
Grinning, she hurried to the elevator, bouncing impatiently while the cog door took its sweet time rolling aside and nearly kicking the elevator to get it to move faster. And then, finally, she was running down the short hall and turning to skid into the little travel office.
He was already there, sitting in Ianto's chair with his feet propped up on the desk, a brochure held up to cover his face as he read in style. "What are you doing here?!" she demanded happily as she moved forward, prepared to plant a giant round of smoochies right on him as soon as he was in range. "You didn't say anything about visiting, you meanie, and, by the way, what are you wear--"
Her voice died as the man lowered the brochure and an instant later she had her gun pointed right at his head. "You aren't Spike." He looked like Spike, walked like Spike, but he definitely wasn't Spike. There was no vampire feel to him, no kindness in his eyes when he looked at her. It took only one glance to tell her that this man was not the love of her life.
The self-styled Captain John Hart had made his way to Cardiff to drop in on Jack. In truth, he needed some help. Bit of a sticky situation. These things happened. At any rate, he figured it'd be Jack that came up to 'greet' him. He'd just go down to the Hub himself, but last time he was there, Eye Candy looked ready to shoot him. If the Divine Ms Cooper hadn't gotten in between, he'd likely have an extra hole in his skull that he didn't need. He needed his handsome immortal buffer before he made the trip down the elevator.
What he hadn't expected was the pert little blonde who'd seemed so happy to see him for a brief moment - quite an achievement, considering he'd never seen her before... but then, she apparently realized she'd never seen him either.
"What the hell kind of a name is Spike?" he asked bluntly. He took his feet down from the desk. "I'm looking for Jack. Why don't you run along and tell him Captain Hart is here to see him, okay?" he said condescendingly, making a little waving motion towards the secret passage with his hands.
Captain?! Hart?! This was the psycho ex Jack had mentioned? The one who sounded a little too clingy for anyone's own good? Huh. Looks like she and Jack really did have similar tastes
Narrowing her eyes at the way the man seemed to be shooing her out of the room, she kept her gun trained on him just in case. One never knew with psycho ex-anythings. "Look, Captain, why don't you just sit there and keep your mouth shut before you get a face full of my boot?" she suggested none too kindly, reaching for the phone on the desk and pushing the button that would connect to the Hub.
"Jack," she said, imagining the look on her teammates' faces as her voice echoed around the stone walls downstairs, "if you wouldn't mind getting up to the tourist office now, you've got a visitor I'm about to make pulpy."
Jack was looking at the monitor before she even finished the sentence. "Great," he muttered. He looked between Ianto and Gwen. "I guess that meeting's postponed," he told them.
Ianto looked like he wanted to say something.
"Look, he helped us out last time," Jack told him. "I'll just see what he wants."
"He helped us out with a disaster that he caused," Ianto pointed out in a grumble.
Jack gave him a look and turned to go up to the tourist office. Ianto went unhappily back to his paperwork.
Buffy just stared at the Not Spike until she heard the door open again. "I was torn between the threat of shooting him or giving him a sound ass-kicking," she informed her boss, eyes never leaving the subject of the conversation. "The latter would be more fun for me, but the gun seems to have kept him in the chair."
Jack came up beside Buffy, putting a gentle hand on top of her gun and pressing it down towards the floor. "That won't be necessary," he told her. He looked at Hart pointedly. "Yet," he stressed.
Hart didn't move to get up yet. "I told you you needed a blonde," he pointed out cheerfully.
"Why are you here?" Jack asked, getting right to the point. He wasn't any happier than his team to see the man sitting at Ianto's desk, but their history made him more willing to hear him out.
Hart spread his hands in a slightly exasperrated gesture. "Can't I even come in?" he asked.
Jack eyed him warily. "I don't see why," he said slowly. "You're not staying."
"I just want to have a little chat with you about a couple of things," Hart said vaguely. "We could go down to your office and talk like civilized people." He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Jack didn't say anything, just kept his most scrutinizing look on his ex-partner.
Hart leaned forward, looking at Buffy a little warily before turning an imploring gaze towards Jack. "I'm in trouble," he said, all lightness gone from his tone.
Jack didn't move. "So?" he asked coldly.
"It's serious," Hart hissed. "Not just for me. It could be bad for a lot of people."
Jack rolled his eyes with a weary sigh. "Fine. Come on." He stood back, gesturing for Buffy to do the same, so John could precede them into the passageway.
Buffy was ready to fall over by the time they started heading downstairs, the lookalike at the front of the line. She'd never been trigger-happy with her gun before, but now she really wanted to shoot him. In the knee, so he wouldn't be able to run away when she kicked him in the head.
Not only did he look like Spike and move like Spike, but he sounded like Spike, too. Exactly. That same nonchalant and arrogant confidence born of many years of doing what he wanted, when he wanted, and not having anyone tell him no. It seemed that only his eyes were different...
"You sure I can't hit him?" Buffy inquired of Jack while they rode down, not bothering to try lowering her voice. "Just a punch or three, maybe break that nose so he doesn't look like my boyfriend's evil twin?" She sounded both pouty and hopeful all at the same time.
Jack looked at her oddly. "What?" he asked sharply. He was going to get into possible explanations with her when they arrived at the cog door. The moment it opened Hart pulled his gun out and pointed it at Ianto, who was standing at his station, where Jack had left him. Admittedly, it was hard to see what he was doing on the other side of the coffee machine, but Jack hadn't expected quite this reaction from Hart.
"Don't try it, Eye Candy," Hart said darkly. "I don't want to blow your pretty little head off."
Ianto frowned at him and looked at Jack, who was already striding into the middle of the room. From there, he could see exactly what Ianto was doing. He looked at Hart.
"He's holding a pen," Jack informed Hart in an infuriated tone of voice. "Put that thing away!"
Hart almost reluctantly holstered the weapon. "Can't be too careful," he muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear. "He tried to kill me last time I was here."
"You tried to kill us first," Ianto pointed out. "And everyone else, for that matter."
Jack put his hands up to stop the argument before it escalated into Hart reminding them all that he hadn't been the mastermind of that attack, though he had carried it out, and gestured towards his office.
"Office," he barked at Hart. He headed after him, glancing over his shoulder at the other three members of Torchwood. "The rest of you can go back to your work," he said firmly.
Buffy watched them walk off, glowering at the man in the funky outfit that looked like something out of a trippy pirate movie, then made a decision. She hurried after the two men who had an encyclopedia of history, catching up just as they were entering Jack's office. She slid in before Jack could shut the door.
"You said go back to work," she explained before Jack could question her. "This is my work."
She went to Jack's desk where a tray of coffee had been sitting and removed everything from the tray before turning to approach the offending captain. "Weapons," she demanded, her voice and gaze made of steel. "All seven of them." She gave him a once-over and amended, "Make that eight."
ohn Hart was already seating himself in the chair across from Jack's desk when Buffy approached him. He put his feet up on the desk, raised an eyebrow at her, then looked past her at Jack.
Jack stood beside the desk and crossed his arms. "You heard the lady," he said non-commitally. Frankly, he would have preferred to handle the situation by himself, but he was going to back his people up before Hart.
Hart sighed in a long-suffering kind of way and pushed himself to his feet, making sure it was clear that all of this was both very silly and a great inconvenience. He dutifully began removing the weapons and placing them on the tray, looking Buffy over as he did so.
"You know," he said conversationally, "Eye Candy usually holds the tray." He gave her a flirty smile. "You're not a bad substitute though," he added, setting the last of his weapons down. He looked at Jack. "I want them back this time."
Buffy had to concentrate very hard on not smacking that smile right off the bastard's face. Something weird was going on, and when weird involved Spike in any way, shape, or size, she was not a happy Slayer.
Balancing the full tray with one hand, she used the other to forcefully push the recently arrived pain in her ass back into his chair, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder while she leaned in to speak. "Then you'd better come to terms with the fact that he's not the one you have to sweet talk to get your toys back," she informed him before giving his shoulder a little pat and straightening up again.
"Have a nice chat," she called over her shoulder as she left the room.
Jack watched her go and waited for the door to close behind her before calmly moving around the desk to sit in his chair.
Hart, for his part, seemed pleasantly surprised more than anything else. He looked at Jack good-naturedly. "She's very interesting," he commented. He leaned forward. "And I thought Ms Cooper was fiery." He grinned wolfishly. "You just have good taste all around."
Jack didn't react. He just gave Hart an inquiring look. "You said you have a problem?" he reminded the former Time Agent. "Speak now or forever hold your peace."
Down in the Hub, Ianto cleaned the coffee machine fastidiously in an effort to avoid looking in the direction of Jack's office. He heard the door shut, the sound of Buffy's boots on the grating. He didn't look up from his work. He'd been hoping they wouldn't see Hart again. Ever. He supposed that was too much to ask. He briefly wondered if Buffy would notice that he was occupying himself with something he didn't usually do during the day, but quickly decided that he didn't care if she did. She didn't seem any happier to see Hart than the rest of them were. He almost wondered why that was, since she'd never met him, but of course the answer would be that Jack had told her about him. Jack had, apparently, told her everything in two weeks that it had taken him two years to learn. He slammed the brush down on the counter and picked up a cloth.
Buffy's hands were tight around the tray of weapons, her grip almost to the point of accidentally bending the thing in half. Truthfully, she wanted to toss the whole lot into the water at the center of the lobby, or maybe find a pile of pterodactyl poop to nestle a gun or two in, but figured that could wait until the guy actually did something to her. Then she could let her evil side out to play.
Gwen had apparently wandered off to take care of something, probably checking to make sure no other guests were about to spring themselves on the team, so that left Ianto. The quietly fuming Slayer made her way over to where he was cleaning, which really was kind of odd in itself, wasn't it?, and set the tray down on a nearby table. Leaning against said table, she crossed her arms and pouted. "I really want to punch that guy."
"That's pretty much the popular opinion," Ianto replied without looking up. He carried on with his work in silence for a moment, but could see from his peripheral vision that Buffy was still leaning on the table.
"What does he want?" Ianto asked grudgingly. He was curious to know if Hart had an actual reason for being there or if he was just making up excuses to see Jack.
She shrugged, not really much caring why the face thief was there so long as he left pronto. "Said he was in trouble," she mumbled, glaring up at Jack's office. "Big bad other people effected troubled." Otherwise she was fairly certain Jack would have thrown him out on his ear. She remembered the recent stories as being not so very pleasant.
Tilting her head, she pondered aloud, "Maybe a broken nose, and a scar... right along those gorgeous cheekbones..." Yeah, that would do it. Kill the resemblance good and dead.
He actually stopped what he was doing and looked at her at that last bit. "What?" he asked, confused.
Buffy blinked and looked back at Ianto. "What?" she repeated, wearing her own confused expression, then shook her head as realization dawned. "Oh, right. He looks like my boyfriend's evil twin clone. Sounds like him, too, the bastard. Well, the hair's different, but Spike bleaches his, so I guess that makes sense..."
Ianto looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. He put down the cloth he was using to clean the machine and took a deep breath. "Captain Hart looks like your boyfriend?" he clarified with a small amount of disbelief in his voice.
She nodded, giving Ianto a look that clearly said she didn't get what part of it he wasn't understanding. "Exactly," she confirmed. "Even the walk is the same. It's... freaky." And she did not like it.
Ianto looked at her for another moment before picking up the brush again and turning his attention back to the machine. "Just be glad you didn't meet this one first, then," he advised as he worked. "He would have put you off the other one."
Buffy couldn't help it. A single, solitary laugh burst out of her, followed by a pause... and then a waterfall of giggles. "Well, to be fair," she forced out after nearly slipping off the table, "the first time I saw Spike, he told me he was going to kill me on Saturday. And then he spent the next few years trying to fulfill that threat."
Ah, memories.
"And I thought my personal life was ridiculous," he said laconically. He put the brush down and looked at Buffy. "And if you want to break his nose, join the queue," he told her flatly. "I was here first." He picked up the brush again and turned his attention, once again, to meticulously scrubbing every nook in the machine's surface.
"That's fair," she agreed amicably, standing away from the table and stretching her arms up over her head. "Just don't kill the coffee machine, okay?" she requested, turning to head over to her own station. "And keep an eye on those weapons for me, will ya? Need to know where they are in case they go 'missing.'"
Oh yes, Buffy Summers was a woman not to be messed with.