Fanfic: Three Men and a Maserati (Torchwood/Top Gear)
Title: Three Men and a Maserati
Author: twitchbell
Fandom: Torchwood/Top Gear
Rating: 13+
Characters: Jack Harkness, Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond
Warnings: RPS. No others so far as I know.
Spoilers: None
Summary: "My name is Jack Harkness. I'm not here to fix your car, I'm here to remove you from it for your own safety."
Disclaimer: Torchwood/Top Gear belong to the BBC. The presenters belong to themselves.
Archive: Yes, but contact me, so I know where it's going.
Notes: Written for The 'Captain Jack Sexes Everyone In Every Fandom Ever' Challenge. Because I am weak and can resist everything except temptation. Extensive knowledge of cars (hah!), and Top Gear presenters' motor vehicle preferences, cribbed entirely from the Internet. Apologies if it's all bollocks.
Jack Harkness checked his watch. Five minutes to ground zero.
Then the last nest of blood-beetles - mercifully still at the larval stage - would be blown back to hell. A dozen mature blood-beetles could kill a full-grown man in seconds: existing on electricity, they sucked it from the blood glucose of any living thing they came across, killing them in the process. As each nest had upwards of fifty thousand larvae, failure to wipe them all out would have been very bad news indeed.
This last one - located under a dirt track on a remote Welsh hillside - had been the most isolated site of them all. Jack leaned back on the bonnet of his Mitsubishi Warrior and was just about to congratulate himself on a job well done when he heard the unmistakable growl of an engine.
The next minute a silver car rolled around the corner and came to a dead stop right on top of the blood-beetle nest.
Of all the unlikely vehicles to be driving up a remote Welsh hillside, this sleek thoroughbred of a saloon came damn near the top of the list. And now it was sitting immobile in the worst possible place, its engine utterly dead - thanks to the ion emitter Jack had buried alongside the explosives to prevent any early maturing blood-beetles making a bid for freedom. Jack breathed out a quick expletive and then focussed his attention where it now belonged - getting the occupants of the car out of it before their number was up.
And they were far too busy bickering to even notice his approach.
"Oh for God's sake! Now what have you done? Why won't it start? Have you broken it?"
"I have not! Look, I wasn't doing anything! I was just driving it along and -" Voluble indignation.
"And it stopped. Just like that." Withering sarcasm.
"It's not my fault! If you'd only read the map properly, we wouldn't even be here!"
"Well, it could be mechanical failure." A third voice, a voice of reason. "On the other hand, you could be right and Hammond has completely buggered it up." Or not.
"Gentleman." Jack bent down and peered through the partly open window on the driver's side. "You have a problem, and I'm here to help."
A moment's silence. Then, "I know the adverts have the AA popping up instantly in every bloody emergency, but frankly this is just a little too immediate to be credible." Mr Withering Sarcasm, the front seat passenger. Tall, middle-aged and grumpy.
"He's not the AA. You can tell. He doesn't have the right jacket." Mr Sometimes Voice of Reason, back seat passenger. Fluffy hair - probably left behind from another decade entirely.
"RAC?" said the driver hopefully. Short, nice teeth and way cuter than any adult male had a right to be. "Or maybe even Europ Assistance?"
"Who?" Grumpy.
"My mate's got breakdown cover with them."
"Why?"
"They're cheap."
"But are they any good?"
"I don't know. She hasn't broken down yet."
"Please." Jack forced his way into the conversation, because he had a feeling that if he didn't they would continue their pointless banter until it was too late. "My name is Jack Harkness. I'm not here to fix your car, I'm here to remove you from it for your own safety."
"Why? What's wrong with it?" The cute one.
"Apart from the fact that it's stopped moving and won't restart," qualified the fluffy one helpfully.
"Because Hammond broke it," added the grumpy one.
"I did not!"
This was going nowhere fast, Jack reflected. Pretty much like the car, in fact. He decided it was time for more direct action. He drew his gun. "Get out of the damned car! NOW!"
That had the desired effect. Partly. The three men exchanged startled looks, as if trying to decide whether Jack was winding them up or was a lunatic. By some unspoken agreement, they seemed to arrive at the second conclusion and stirred themselves to follow his instructions, clutching their various bags and briefcases.
"All right! We're out of the car. Now what? If this is a carjacking, I have to tell you that your logic is seriously screwed."
"Jeremy, don't upset him!" The cute one - Hammond - was looking anxious in a most adorable way. "He might be dangerous."
"I am." Jack gestured them away from the car, with a shark-like smile. "Move."
"Good God, he's actually got whiter teeth than Hammond," the fluffy one muttered.
"American," said Jeremy tersely. "Teeth-whitening. National sport."
"Where are we going?" Hammond asked a little nervously.
"Initially, to a safe distance," Jack replied, aiming his smile directly at Hammond, and turning it into something altogether more warm and intimate. It was a natural reaction; Jack's default setting was flirt. And while these guys were undoubtedly irritating and baffling in equal amounts, they didn't seem to represent a threat. Except to themselves, obviously. "You, my friends, are in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"And that would be the fault of Clarkson's map-reading," said the fluffy one, who must have a name, but no one had actually mentioned it yet. "A short-cut to Cardiff, he said."
"How was I to know your wretched maps were twenty years out of date? What sort of anally retentive idiot hoards maps for twenty years and then expects them to be of any use whatsoever as a navigational aid?"
"We were doing perfectly well until you failed to notice that this road went over some green and brown splodges which are the generally recognised symbols for higher ground."
"James has a point," Hammond said judiciously. "Especially as we wouldn't have needed to use his back-up maps anyway if you hadn't buggered about with the sat-nav and stopped it working."
"I was only -" Jeremy stopped and scowled. "Look, Mr. My-name-is-Jack-Harkness. I'd like to know, firstly, what constitutes a safe distance and, secondly, a safe distance from precisely what?"
Jack indicated his Mitsubishi, pulled off-road and half-hidden behind a bank of stunted trees. "When we're behind that, we're a safe distance. As for what, keep your head down and you'll find out soon enough." Not that finding out would make Jeremy any happier, Jack predicted. That scowl wouldn't be going away anytime soon. He holstered his gun and shoved the three of them unceremoniously behind the Mitsubishi. Something of his urgency must have finally communicated itself to them because they actually didn't argue.
In point of fact, they made it to safety just twenty seconds before the blast rocked the vicinity. As explosions went, this one was pretty spectacular - mostly due to the car's fuel tank igniting, Jack suspected. There was a muffled boom and then a further blast - that would have been the car - followed by a wave of heat, a scorched smell and a lot of mud and soil raining through the air. A ball of fire blossomed up above the road.
"Bloody hell!" Hammond yelped.
"You've just blown something up!" Jeremy said; for a moment he sounded rather impressed as if Jack had somehow risen in his estimation. Then he caught on, and his face altered. "Oh God! You didn't! Tell me you didn't!"
"I'm sorry," Jack said obliquely. "Like I said, you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all I can say - my reason for being here is classified."
"Classified? What the fuck does that mean?" Jeremy's voice rose by several octaves. "Does that give you the authority to blow up a dirt road in Wales that just happens to have my car on it?"
"Yes," said Jack. "Actually, it pretty much does."
"Who the hell are you? Some sort of terrorist?" Hammond was obviously not thinking very clearly.
"I doubt it," James said, with a more sensible appreciation of events. "Or he wouldn't have bothered getting us out of the car before he blew it up."
"He blew it up!" Jeremy almost wailed the words. "I don't believe this is happening! Eighty thousand pounds worth of car and he blew it up!"
Eighty thousand pounds? Oh shit! Why in the name of all that was holy couldn't this lunatic trio have been driving something small, nasty and, above all, cheap?
Jeremy was already out from behind the Mitsubishi and heading back to the track, and the other two weren't far behind him. Jack wasn't entirely sure why they were so eager to go back and look - morbid curiosity? Surely they didn't imagine there would be anything left to salvage?
There wasn't. Just a blazing hole in the ground and a lot of dirt and a pile of twisted metal. If you squinted real hard through the flames, the metal did just about take on the shape of a crumpled car.
"Well, it was quite an impressive explosion," James allowed. "Certainly did the job."
"And you do like blowing things up, Jeremy, remember?" Hammond said encouragingly.
"Yes! Yes! I do! But not a Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT! If it were a Hyundai Accent, I'd be the first to start dancing around its charred remains. But it wasn't, was it?"
"Well, no," said Hammond, "Because obviously we wouldn't have been in a Hyundai Accent in the first place."
That was a pity, Jack thought. He was still on a learning curve as far as twenty-first century vehicles went, but if these guys were so sneery about Hyundai Accents he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn't cost eighty thousand pounds to replace one. He took out his scanner and turned his attention back to more practical matters. A close inspection of the detonation zone revealed that the telltale signature of the blood-beetles was nowhere to be found. The flames were already starting to die back; it was a damp day after a week of rain, and the light mist beginning to rise from the valleys would ensure that what remained of the fire was effectively smothered.
Jack pocketed the scanner and stared at Hammond, James and Jeremy. Obviously he was going to have to take them with him, at least as far as the nearest town. And then gather some details so that Torchwood could make the necessary reparations.
Hammond, James and Jeremy had paid Jack no attention whatsoever as he went about his inspection, which was something to be grateful for. Jeremy seemed to be going through a mourners' shopping list in his mind, itemising every last detail about the wretched car as if it would some how make a difference to the smoking ruin in front of him.
"It had a 4.2 litre V8 engine, and it went from 0 to 62 mph in just 5.2 seconds!"
"I think it went skyward a lot quicker than that," James observed. Hammond gave him a little shove and mock-frowned at his levity.
Jack cleared his throat in a remember-me-I'm-still-here kind of way. "I'm through here," he said. "Time to move out."
He was ignored. Jeremy, for one, was far too busy grieving to pay him any attention. "It was a masterpiece of Italian design!" he wailed, gesturing wildly at the wreckage with all the grace of a drunken marionette.
This lament was sort of splendid in an absurdly English way, Jack thought, deciding furthermore that Jeremy in this sort of angst-ridden mood was unexpectedly attractive.
"It had a top speed of one hundred and sixty seven miles an hour!"
Of course, he'd probably be even more attractive if he actually stopped talking, Jack reflected.
"Over 75% of the maximum torque was available at just 2,500 revolutions per minute!"
Or was prevented from talking. Jack's preferred method was novel, and technically counted as assault, but on the plus side it was highly effective and non-lethal.
"And it cost- "
Lunging smoothly with the ease of long practise, Jack sealed his mouth swiftly on Jeremy's. He intended the kiss to be light and teasing. But it didn't turn out at like that at all because Jeremy - Jeremy! - responded by wrapping one hand around the back of Jack's head and deepening the kiss into something altogether more thorough and promissory.
When they parted, it was Jack who was left temporarily speechless, running his tongue repeatedly over his lips. But Jeremy had definitely been distracted. He stared at Jack, an intense gleam in his eyes, and there was actually the faintest hint of a smile around his mouth before he spoke.
"You, Mr. Jack Harkness, are a complete bastard. You blew up my beautiful car, and no, I absolutely do not want to kiss you again."
"Oh yes you absolutely do, mate," James said wryly.
"Right!" Hammond sounded more animated than normal, if such a thing were actually possible. "There's no fooling us. We know you far too well."
"You do?" Jack tore his gaze away from Jeremy and onto James and Hammond.
The two were standing very close together, and James had one hand wrapped around Hammond's waist with a casual familiarity. They were both perfectly at ease with each other - and with the situation.
"Oh look, Mr. Jack Harkness is all confused." Jeremy's tone of voice pretty much defined sardonic. "You know, I have this sneaking suspicion that we're not behaving at all as he expected."
"Well, you certainly aren't. He didn't expect you to enjoy, being kissed, much less snog him back, now did he?" Hammond pointed out. "The poor sod was only trying to shut you up."
"Like we haven't all tried to do that at some point in our lives," James muttered. "With varying degrees of success, obviously. This was a novel approach, I have to say, even if not entirely successful."
"I should say not," Hammond agreed, "Seeing as the only one who has actually shut up is Jack himself."
"Just trying to get things a little clearer in my mind, is all," Jack murmured. "And to get a word in edgewise."
"Oh we don't need words." Hammond was grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Go on, kiss him again."
"And then you can kiss us," James added. "Because I don't know about Hammond here, but I'm bloody curious. I haven't seen Clarkson look that entranced since he drove the Bugatti Veyron."
"And he said driving that was utterly, stunningly, mind blowingly, jaw droppingly brilliant," Hammond put in.
"He was incoherent for days afterwards, it was that good," James said earnestly.
"That good?" said Jack. He feigned alarm at this information, before gifting Jeremy with the most provocative smile he had in his extensive repertoire, the one that practically rewrote the phrase come-hither. "So, there's absolutely no pressure on me at all, then."
"You strike me as the sort of man who can handle a lot of pressure," Jeremy breathed. It was his turn to swoop on Jack, raiding his mouth in a way that sent a thrill of lust spiking through Jack's nerve endings. He wasn't at all averse to letting Jeremy take control, of course - a dominant Jeremy would clearly make for interesting times - but if Jack could later cajole him into a more submissive role it would be a particularly sweet cherry on an already delicious cake.
"My turn," Hammond said when they drew apart.
"I was next," said James.
"Gentlemen, please." Jack frowned in mock reproof. "There's plenty of me to go around. Just form an orderly queue."
"Oh, we don't do orderly much," James said mildly.
"Or queues," added Hammond. "I mean, really, they're just something you have to stand in at bus stops."
"I wouldn't know -" Jack was silenced as James made his move. Obviously he could be quite forceful when the mood took him. He might be less nakedly aggressive than Jeremy, but he was particularly thorough and insistent and Jack relished every moment of it.
Hammond was positively humming with eagerness by the time it got to his turn. Jack did his damnedest to make sure that the wait was worthwhile, drawing on every bit of technique he had at his disposal - which is to say quite a lot. To judge from his enthusiastic - and by no means amateur - response, Hammond was appreciative. By the time Jack let him go, he was flushed and grinning from ear to ear.
"Nice! Very nice!"
Jack sketched a small bow. "And there's plenty more where that came from."
"I should damn well hope so," Jeremy said. "Believe me, we've every intention of finding out exactly how you handle." The predatory gleam in his eyes would have been slightly unnerving had it not been for the fact that his mouth was twitching with the effort to look fierce enough and kept threatening to collapse into a silly grin.
"But not out here," said Hammond firmly. "It's too bloody cold and wet. And that Mitsubishi of yours is about as suitable for sex as a generously sized filing cabinet."
James nodded in agreement. "No leg room in the rear seats. Not a hope in hell that it would accommodate the needs of four adults."
"So you need to take us back to your place," Jeremy finished with the air of a man solving a not too difficult problem.
"And on the way, you can flirt some more with the Hamster because he likes that sort of thing," James put in. "He's a bit of a tart that way."
"Hey!" Hammond was indignant. "Who are you calling a tart?" The others ignored him with an ease clearly borne of long practise.
"And what if I have other places to be, and people to see?" Jack queried out of mild interest.
"Not interested. Look, you've blown up my car and completely failed to give us any satisfactory explanation other than 'it's classified'. You owe me, matey."
"Yes," Hammond nodded. "You owe him eighty thousand pounds to be exact."
"And right here is where you start paying," James threw in cryptically.
"You mean you actually want me to pay off a debt of eighty thousand pounds by - er - servicing all of you?" Jack wasn't entirely sure how seriously to take this latest twist in the conversation: sometimes the British had a very odd sense of humour.
"Of course we don't, because that would make us extremely stupid," said Jeremy. "We want the money as well. So. Are you up for it?"
It. Jack allowed himself a moment's reflection. He was in no doubt that the sex would be one long glorious muddle, full of squabbles and mind games about who got to do what to whom and in which order. He was also pretty certain that this would all be punctuated by much pointless banter, with some obscure discussions about the respective merits of a variety of motor vehicles he'd never heard of thrown in for good measure.
In short, it would be an experience not to be missed.
"Oh yes," said Jack with complete conviction. "Gentlemen, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
THE END
Author: twitchbell
Fandom: Torchwood/Top Gear
Rating: 13+
Characters: Jack Harkness, Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond
Warnings: RPS. No others so far as I know.
Spoilers: None
Summary: "My name is Jack Harkness. I'm not here to fix your car, I'm here to remove you from it for your own safety."
Disclaimer: Torchwood/Top Gear belong to the BBC. The presenters belong to themselves.
Archive: Yes, but contact me, so I know where it's going.
Notes: Written for The 'Captain Jack Sexes Everyone In Every Fandom Ever' Challenge. Because I am weak and can resist everything except temptation. Extensive knowledge of cars (hah!), and Top Gear presenters' motor vehicle preferences, cribbed entirely from the Internet. Apologies if it's all bollocks.
Jack Harkness checked his watch. Five minutes to ground zero.
Then the last nest of blood-beetles - mercifully still at the larval stage - would be blown back to hell. A dozen mature blood-beetles could kill a full-grown man in seconds: existing on electricity, they sucked it from the blood glucose of any living thing they came across, killing them in the process. As each nest had upwards of fifty thousand larvae, failure to wipe them all out would have been very bad news indeed.
This last one - located under a dirt track on a remote Welsh hillside - had been the most isolated site of them all. Jack leaned back on the bonnet of his Mitsubishi Warrior and was just about to congratulate himself on a job well done when he heard the unmistakable growl of an engine.
The next minute a silver car rolled around the corner and came to a dead stop right on top of the blood-beetle nest.
Of all the unlikely vehicles to be driving up a remote Welsh hillside, this sleek thoroughbred of a saloon came damn near the top of the list. And now it was sitting immobile in the worst possible place, its engine utterly dead - thanks to the ion emitter Jack had buried alongside the explosives to prevent any early maturing blood-beetles making a bid for freedom. Jack breathed out a quick expletive and then focussed his attention where it now belonged - getting the occupants of the car out of it before their number was up.
And they were far too busy bickering to even notice his approach.
"Oh for God's sake! Now what have you done? Why won't it start? Have you broken it?"
"I have not! Look, I wasn't doing anything! I was just driving it along and -" Voluble indignation.
"And it stopped. Just like that." Withering sarcasm.
"It's not my fault! If you'd only read the map properly, we wouldn't even be here!"
"Well, it could be mechanical failure." A third voice, a voice of reason. "On the other hand, you could be right and Hammond has completely buggered it up." Or not.
"Gentleman." Jack bent down and peered through the partly open window on the driver's side. "You have a problem, and I'm here to help."
A moment's silence. Then, "I know the adverts have the AA popping up instantly in every bloody emergency, but frankly this is just a little too immediate to be credible." Mr Withering Sarcasm, the front seat passenger. Tall, middle-aged and grumpy.
"He's not the AA. You can tell. He doesn't have the right jacket." Mr Sometimes Voice of Reason, back seat passenger. Fluffy hair - probably left behind from another decade entirely.
"RAC?" said the driver hopefully. Short, nice teeth and way cuter than any adult male had a right to be. "Or maybe even Europ Assistance?"
"Who?" Grumpy.
"My mate's got breakdown cover with them."
"Why?"
"They're cheap."
"But are they any good?"
"I don't know. She hasn't broken down yet."
"Please." Jack forced his way into the conversation, because he had a feeling that if he didn't they would continue their pointless banter until it was too late. "My name is Jack Harkness. I'm not here to fix your car, I'm here to remove you from it for your own safety."
"Why? What's wrong with it?" The cute one.
"Apart from the fact that it's stopped moving and won't restart," qualified the fluffy one helpfully.
"Because Hammond broke it," added the grumpy one.
"I did not!"
This was going nowhere fast, Jack reflected. Pretty much like the car, in fact. He decided it was time for more direct action. He drew his gun. "Get out of the damned car! NOW!"
That had the desired effect. Partly. The three men exchanged startled looks, as if trying to decide whether Jack was winding them up or was a lunatic. By some unspoken agreement, they seemed to arrive at the second conclusion and stirred themselves to follow his instructions, clutching their various bags and briefcases.
"All right! We're out of the car. Now what? If this is a carjacking, I have to tell you that your logic is seriously screwed."
"Jeremy, don't upset him!" The cute one - Hammond - was looking anxious in a most adorable way. "He might be dangerous."
"I am." Jack gestured them away from the car, with a shark-like smile. "Move."
"Good God, he's actually got whiter teeth than Hammond," the fluffy one muttered.
"American," said Jeremy tersely. "Teeth-whitening. National sport."
"Where are we going?" Hammond asked a little nervously.
"Initially, to a safe distance," Jack replied, aiming his smile directly at Hammond, and turning it into something altogether more warm and intimate. It was a natural reaction; Jack's default setting was flirt. And while these guys were undoubtedly irritating and baffling in equal amounts, they didn't seem to represent a threat. Except to themselves, obviously. "You, my friends, are in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"And that would be the fault of Clarkson's map-reading," said the fluffy one, who must have a name, but no one had actually mentioned it yet. "A short-cut to Cardiff, he said."
"How was I to know your wretched maps were twenty years out of date? What sort of anally retentive idiot hoards maps for twenty years and then expects them to be of any use whatsoever as a navigational aid?"
"We were doing perfectly well until you failed to notice that this road went over some green and brown splodges which are the generally recognised symbols for higher ground."
"James has a point," Hammond said judiciously. "Especially as we wouldn't have needed to use his back-up maps anyway if you hadn't buggered about with the sat-nav and stopped it working."
"I was only -" Jeremy stopped and scowled. "Look, Mr. My-name-is-Jack-Harkness. I'd like to know, firstly, what constitutes a safe distance and, secondly, a safe distance from precisely what?"
Jack indicated his Mitsubishi, pulled off-road and half-hidden behind a bank of stunted trees. "When we're behind that, we're a safe distance. As for what, keep your head down and you'll find out soon enough." Not that finding out would make Jeremy any happier, Jack predicted. That scowl wouldn't be going away anytime soon. He holstered his gun and shoved the three of them unceremoniously behind the Mitsubishi. Something of his urgency must have finally communicated itself to them because they actually didn't argue.
In point of fact, they made it to safety just twenty seconds before the blast rocked the vicinity. As explosions went, this one was pretty spectacular - mostly due to the car's fuel tank igniting, Jack suspected. There was a muffled boom and then a further blast - that would have been the car - followed by a wave of heat, a scorched smell and a lot of mud and soil raining through the air. A ball of fire blossomed up above the road.
"Bloody hell!" Hammond yelped.
"You've just blown something up!" Jeremy said; for a moment he sounded rather impressed as if Jack had somehow risen in his estimation. Then he caught on, and his face altered. "Oh God! You didn't! Tell me you didn't!"
"I'm sorry," Jack said obliquely. "Like I said, you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all I can say - my reason for being here is classified."
"Classified? What the fuck does that mean?" Jeremy's voice rose by several octaves. "Does that give you the authority to blow up a dirt road in Wales that just happens to have my car on it?"
"Yes," said Jack. "Actually, it pretty much does."
"Who the hell are you? Some sort of terrorist?" Hammond was obviously not thinking very clearly.
"I doubt it," James said, with a more sensible appreciation of events. "Or he wouldn't have bothered getting us out of the car before he blew it up."
"He blew it up!" Jeremy almost wailed the words. "I don't believe this is happening! Eighty thousand pounds worth of car and he blew it up!"
Eighty thousand pounds? Oh shit! Why in the name of all that was holy couldn't this lunatic trio have been driving something small, nasty and, above all, cheap?
Jeremy was already out from behind the Mitsubishi and heading back to the track, and the other two weren't far behind him. Jack wasn't entirely sure why they were so eager to go back and look - morbid curiosity? Surely they didn't imagine there would be anything left to salvage?
There wasn't. Just a blazing hole in the ground and a lot of dirt and a pile of twisted metal. If you squinted real hard through the flames, the metal did just about take on the shape of a crumpled car.
"Well, it was quite an impressive explosion," James allowed. "Certainly did the job."
"And you do like blowing things up, Jeremy, remember?" Hammond said encouragingly.
"Yes! Yes! I do! But not a Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT! If it were a Hyundai Accent, I'd be the first to start dancing around its charred remains. But it wasn't, was it?"
"Well, no," said Hammond, "Because obviously we wouldn't have been in a Hyundai Accent in the first place."
That was a pity, Jack thought. He was still on a learning curve as far as twenty-first century vehicles went, but if these guys were so sneery about Hyundai Accents he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn't cost eighty thousand pounds to replace one. He took out his scanner and turned his attention back to more practical matters. A close inspection of the detonation zone revealed that the telltale signature of the blood-beetles was nowhere to be found. The flames were already starting to die back; it was a damp day after a week of rain, and the light mist beginning to rise from the valleys would ensure that what remained of the fire was effectively smothered.
Jack pocketed the scanner and stared at Hammond, James and Jeremy. Obviously he was going to have to take them with him, at least as far as the nearest town. And then gather some details so that Torchwood could make the necessary reparations.
Hammond, James and Jeremy had paid Jack no attention whatsoever as he went about his inspection, which was something to be grateful for. Jeremy seemed to be going through a mourners' shopping list in his mind, itemising every last detail about the wretched car as if it would some how make a difference to the smoking ruin in front of him.
"It had a 4.2 litre V8 engine, and it went from 0 to 62 mph in just 5.2 seconds!"
"I think it went skyward a lot quicker than that," James observed. Hammond gave him a little shove and mock-frowned at his levity.
Jack cleared his throat in a remember-me-I'm-still-here kind of way. "I'm through here," he said. "Time to move out."
He was ignored. Jeremy, for one, was far too busy grieving to pay him any attention. "It was a masterpiece of Italian design!" he wailed, gesturing wildly at the wreckage with all the grace of a drunken marionette.
This lament was sort of splendid in an absurdly English way, Jack thought, deciding furthermore that Jeremy in this sort of angst-ridden mood was unexpectedly attractive.
"It had a top speed of one hundred and sixty seven miles an hour!"
Of course, he'd probably be even more attractive if he actually stopped talking, Jack reflected.
"Over 75% of the maximum torque was available at just 2,500 revolutions per minute!"
Or was prevented from talking. Jack's preferred method was novel, and technically counted as assault, but on the plus side it was highly effective and non-lethal.
"And it cost- "
Lunging smoothly with the ease of long practise, Jack sealed his mouth swiftly on Jeremy's. He intended the kiss to be light and teasing. But it didn't turn out at like that at all because Jeremy - Jeremy! - responded by wrapping one hand around the back of Jack's head and deepening the kiss into something altogether more thorough and promissory.
When they parted, it was Jack who was left temporarily speechless, running his tongue repeatedly over his lips. But Jeremy had definitely been distracted. He stared at Jack, an intense gleam in his eyes, and there was actually the faintest hint of a smile around his mouth before he spoke.
"You, Mr. Jack Harkness, are a complete bastard. You blew up my beautiful car, and no, I absolutely do not want to kiss you again."
"Oh yes you absolutely do, mate," James said wryly.
"Right!" Hammond sounded more animated than normal, if such a thing were actually possible. "There's no fooling us. We know you far too well."
"You do?" Jack tore his gaze away from Jeremy and onto James and Hammond.
The two were standing very close together, and James had one hand wrapped around Hammond's waist with a casual familiarity. They were both perfectly at ease with each other - and with the situation.
"Oh look, Mr. Jack Harkness is all confused." Jeremy's tone of voice pretty much defined sardonic. "You know, I have this sneaking suspicion that we're not behaving at all as he expected."
"Well, you certainly aren't. He didn't expect you to enjoy, being kissed, much less snog him back, now did he?" Hammond pointed out. "The poor sod was only trying to shut you up."
"Like we haven't all tried to do that at some point in our lives," James muttered. "With varying degrees of success, obviously. This was a novel approach, I have to say, even if not entirely successful."
"I should say not," Hammond agreed, "Seeing as the only one who has actually shut up is Jack himself."
"Just trying to get things a little clearer in my mind, is all," Jack murmured. "And to get a word in edgewise."
"Oh we don't need words." Hammond was grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Go on, kiss him again."
"And then you can kiss us," James added. "Because I don't know about Hammond here, but I'm bloody curious. I haven't seen Clarkson look that entranced since he drove the Bugatti Veyron."
"And he said driving that was utterly, stunningly, mind blowingly, jaw droppingly brilliant," Hammond put in.
"He was incoherent for days afterwards, it was that good," James said earnestly.
"That good?" said Jack. He feigned alarm at this information, before gifting Jeremy with the most provocative smile he had in his extensive repertoire, the one that practically rewrote the phrase come-hither. "So, there's absolutely no pressure on me at all, then."
"You strike me as the sort of man who can handle a lot of pressure," Jeremy breathed. It was his turn to swoop on Jack, raiding his mouth in a way that sent a thrill of lust spiking through Jack's nerve endings. He wasn't at all averse to letting Jeremy take control, of course - a dominant Jeremy would clearly make for interesting times - but if Jack could later cajole him into a more submissive role it would be a particularly sweet cherry on an already delicious cake.
"My turn," Hammond said when they drew apart.
"I was next," said James.
"Gentlemen, please." Jack frowned in mock reproof. "There's plenty of me to go around. Just form an orderly queue."
"Oh, we don't do orderly much," James said mildly.
"Or queues," added Hammond. "I mean, really, they're just something you have to stand in at bus stops."
"I wouldn't know -" Jack was silenced as James made his move. Obviously he could be quite forceful when the mood took him. He might be less nakedly aggressive than Jeremy, but he was particularly thorough and insistent and Jack relished every moment of it.
Hammond was positively humming with eagerness by the time it got to his turn. Jack did his damnedest to make sure that the wait was worthwhile, drawing on every bit of technique he had at his disposal - which is to say quite a lot. To judge from his enthusiastic - and by no means amateur - response, Hammond was appreciative. By the time Jack let him go, he was flushed and grinning from ear to ear.
"Nice! Very nice!"
Jack sketched a small bow. "And there's plenty more where that came from."
"I should damn well hope so," Jeremy said. "Believe me, we've every intention of finding out exactly how you handle." The predatory gleam in his eyes would have been slightly unnerving had it not been for the fact that his mouth was twitching with the effort to look fierce enough and kept threatening to collapse into a silly grin.
"But not out here," said Hammond firmly. "It's too bloody cold and wet. And that Mitsubishi of yours is about as suitable for sex as a generously sized filing cabinet."
James nodded in agreement. "No leg room in the rear seats. Not a hope in hell that it would accommodate the needs of four adults."
"So you need to take us back to your place," Jeremy finished with the air of a man solving a not too difficult problem.
"And on the way, you can flirt some more with the Hamster because he likes that sort of thing," James put in. "He's a bit of a tart that way."
"Hey!" Hammond was indignant. "Who are you calling a tart?" The others ignored him with an ease clearly borne of long practise.
"And what if I have other places to be, and people to see?" Jack queried out of mild interest.
"Not interested. Look, you've blown up my car and completely failed to give us any satisfactory explanation other than 'it's classified'. You owe me, matey."
"Yes," Hammond nodded. "You owe him eighty thousand pounds to be exact."
"And right here is where you start paying," James threw in cryptically.
"You mean you actually want me to pay off a debt of eighty thousand pounds by - er - servicing all of you?" Jack wasn't entirely sure how seriously to take this latest twist in the conversation: sometimes the British had a very odd sense of humour.
"Of course we don't, because that would make us extremely stupid," said Jeremy. "We want the money as well. So. Are you up for it?"
It. Jack allowed himself a moment's reflection. He was in no doubt that the sex would be one long glorious muddle, full of squabbles and mind games about who got to do what to whom and in which order. He was also pretty certain that this would all be punctuated by much pointless banter, with some obscure discussions about the respective merits of a variety of motor vehicles he'd never heard of thrown in for good measure.
In short, it would be an experience not to be missed.
"Oh yes," said Jack with complete conviction. "Gentlemen, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
THE END