Title: High Jinks, Green Fur
Author: theohsocurlyone
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood, nor a certain other show referenced within this story.
A/N: Set between Something Borrowed and From Out of the Rain. Written for the Day One Challenge at redismycolour.
Summary: "The abandoned fair, the car, the caretaker. He doesn't see it at all, does he?"

***

"Okay, Tosh," called Jack from the front seat, revving the engine as soon as they got onto the main road, "Hit me."

"Henry Doyle," said Tosh from behind, rapidly tapping keys as the seats beneath them shook with the speed of the vehicle, "Bought out Spader's Funfair in 1999; started making major renovations to the rides and improving the surrounding land, then just...stopped. He hasn't been seen by his family, or anyone else, since September, and the fair's been closed since he bought it."

"Good riddance; back end of nowhere, that place." groused Owen, arranging parts of his gun on his knees. "What's it got to do with us, then?"

Gwen glanced back from the passenger seat in front, giving Owen a barely-concealed glare.

"Anyone who's gone to search the fair for him has been chased off by, in their words, a big green hairy thing with huge claws."

"Always green." muttered Ianto. Jack grinned.

"Any idea of the species, Tosh?" Gwen asked.

Tosh scanned her computer screen, fingers moving at break-neck speed. "Not sure. Could be an Jegyelston, but they're not carnivores, as far as I can tell. And the Fromonites are evolving so quickly they probably don't have hair anymore. I've narrowed it down to about ten breeds; I'll be able to tell once we're there. Footprints and surrounding air content."

"Good girl," said Jack, approvingly. "Ianto, we covered?"

"Three nets, four stun guns, a portable air shield and the singularity scalpel," Ianto recited, casting a look at Jack through the rearview mirror. "Plus that huge weapon you insist on carting around."

"Hey, don't knock the gun! I killed a Nostrovite with that thing." He grinned. "Sometimes size is important, Mr Jones."

Even without looking at him, Ianto could sense Jack's eyebrows gearing up.

"True," Ianto agreed, assembling his gun with a sharp click, "Although one could argue that it's not the size, it's how you..."

"Anyway!" Owen cut in loudly, glaring at Ianto, "Could these two events be separate? Could this alien have just appeared and Doyle been taken by the Rift?"

"There's been no negative Rift spikes in the past few months. There was Rift activity around the time this thing appeared, but the two events don't really correspond. I don't know why."

"Well, we're about to find out." called Jack, hitting the brakes as the other four braced themselves out of pure habit, feeling the SUV lunge to a very quick and screeching halt. Shutting off the engine, Jack looked at Owen, Tosh and Ianto and smiled. "Kids, let's go to the fair."

********************

The cold practically assaulted them as soon as they got out of the SUV; smashing into them and immediately seeping through their clothes within a few steps. The air was eerily still; not a breath of wind, the only sounds audible their own.

Gwen blew on her hands and pulled her jacket closer around her.

"Jesus." she murmured, "Ever considered a Torchwood transfer to Bermuda, Jack?"

"It probably wouldn't be in keeping with the catching aliens part of the job," Tosh replied with a small smile, busying herself with a scanner.

"Jack," said Ianto, his back to the rest of them, staring out over the edge of the drop ahead of them, "Look at this."

Jogging over, Jack cast his eyes over the view below him and caught his breath.

Spader's fair stretched out below them, just beyond the trees; the freezing cold giving the empty rides below them a sheen of glittering frost across their roofs and tracks. It was almost deafeningly silent and still below them; no children, no shouts, no music, nothing of any life could be seen or heard. The rides stood awkwardly, almost mournfully, in the cold; useless to anyone.

It was hard to imagine a more lonely place.

As they watched, a sudden movement caught their eyes; an identified blur rapidly running down a path within the fair, and out of sight.

"That's our cue," murmured Jack, Webley at the ready. "C'mon, let's go."

********************

After a quick track downwards, through scuffed and muddy footpaths, and a scramble over the locked and frozen shut main gate of the fair (which Jack managed, his coat unsnagged, as if he'd been doing it for years), the team assembled at a crossroads, between rides.

Within the fair it was even more eerie; the merry-go-round sat resolutely still, and the absence of any life on the pathways gave the air a feeling of tension, of uneasiness. A permanently empty fair, quiet as death, wasn't natural, wasn't right. It wasn't even human.

"Right," said Jack, his voice cutting through the silence surrounding them, "Let's split here, and see if we can..."

"Oh, no no no!" Owen interrupted.

"What?"

"Jack, we split up almost every job we go on and it never ends well." He looked back at Tosh and Gwen for support. "Right, girls?"

"He's got a point," said Gwen, "We'd be much safer if we stuck together."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Owen. "Splitting up's a death sentence, Jack. Haven't you seen any horror films?"

"I have better things to do with my time, Owen." replied Jack, irritably. "We stay together in somewhere big as this, we don't cover nearly as much ground. You three take that path, we'll go up towards the Dodgems. Any sign of Doyle, get him back to the SUV soon as you can. You find that alien, stun it to hell. C'mon, Ianto."

With that, and a parting sharp glance at Owen, Jack was off, rapidly disappearing down the left path, determination and focus radiating from him with every step.

Either that, or the strong desire for any remaining candy floss.

"He doesn't get it, does he?" said Gwen, a smile playing at her mouth.

"Doesn't get what?" asked Ianto.

"This." she made a vague arm gesture, encompassing the rides around them. "The abandoned fair, the car, the caretaker. Us. He doesn't see it at all, does he?"

"He will, soon enough." replied Ianto, before running off in the same direction.

********************

It was difficult getting used to the emptiness and quiet of the fair, even when the three of them had been weaving past abandoned rides, slowly building up rust, for over an hour. The cold persisted, wherever they went, chilling their faces and feet, making their fingers ache simply with the effort of being uncovered.

Owen couldn't relax; every fifth or sixth step he turned round in his tracks, gun at the ready, pointing it at the empty air.

"Will you calm down?" Gwen snapped at him, after the fiftieth time he must have done it in the last hour. "If someone was behind us, we'd hear them. It's quiet enough, after all."

"Well, I can't help it! Keep expecting children of the fucking corn to jump out at me."

"It is a little creepy." murmured Tosh, eyes flicking down to her scanner.

"Any readings?" asked Gwen, as they passed what was left of a mini-roller coaster, headed by a garish mascot, one of its teeth missing and lying abandoned on the pathway.

"There's alien activity, but it's not settled in any specific location; it's spread all over the place."

"Brilliant," muttered Owen, "Our monster's got a mate. We should..."

Before he could finish his sentence, out of nowhere a pair of hairy paws the size of dinner plates landed on the path barely two feet in front of them. They looked up, momentarily caught off-guard, to find their charge standing over them; six foot tall, moss-green, hairy, and (if the ferocious expression on its wrinkled face was anything to go by) looking really rather pissed off.

It made as if to roar; its cavernous mouth opening wide, then it spotted the guns in Owen and Gwen's hands and stopped short.

For one indeterminable moment, Gwen and the monster stared at each other, each equally non-plussed. Then, with a sound suspiciously like a squeal, the thing took off and sprinted back the way it had came.

"RUN!" yelled Owen, and the three of them took off, tearing down the path and vaulting over obstacles, Owen scaling the railings of rides standing in their way and chasing the monster through platforms, swerving round loudly-coloured ride cars.

It was odd; for an alien, the monster wasn't nearly as fast as he looked; he was only just evading Owen's chase, taking a huge amount of short-cuts around rides and abandoned stalls, clambering over barriers without breaking a sweat. He clearly knew the place well.

"You won't catch him, Owen!" shouted Gwen from behind him, already sounding breathless. "He's too fast!"

"No, no!" yelled Owen back, urging himself forward and getting a grip on his stun gun in his good hand at the same time. "Make me proud." he whispered to himself, before hurling the stun gun with all his might towards the monster.

Miraculously, it hit its target; a spark of blue light and the monster was down, felled between the teacups and the building housing the Blitzer rides.

"Come on, girls!" shouted Owen, behind him. "Let's get him inside!"

Reaching the beast, gun still drawn, Owen gingerly kicked him onto his back with his foot. The beast's head lolled uselessly; it was definitely out cold. Owen bent down to examine him, taking stock of the ruffled fur, the wrinkled snout, and...

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding."

********************

Jack and Ianto's luck was running a little drier. They kept a sharp eye out for Henry Doyle, checking every dark corner and every ride car they could find. Not a sign, and not a sound. Ianto kept hold of his stun gun; such a tight hold that he could feel its shape making grooves in the skin of his hand.

After a long while, the two found themselves at a crossroads, cast in shadow by the merry-go-round towering above them.

"Wait a minute," said Ianto, looking above him, then back at Jack. "We've been here before."

"Have we?" replied Jack, lowering his gun.

Ianto gave him a look of pure exasperation. "Jack, you were navigating!"

"Okay, okay! Human error, Ianto. Next time I'll bring my compass."

Ianto sighed in annoyance, turning away from him and hopping onto the merry-go-round, before clambering onto a chocolate-brown horse, steadying himself by grabbing the pole next to him. Standing from here he could catch a glimpse of the sun, poking through the dense cloud cover, lighting up the rides and making the frost glisten in the dim light.

Jack grinned at the sight of him, surrounded by stationary animals and garish colours, and hopped up too, swinging precariously from the twisted pole for a lack of anywhere solid to stand.

"Came here when I was a kid." said Ianto, surveying the empty fair.

"Really?" replied Jack, his mind instantly picturing a young Ianto, running around and through the rides, his head high on every kind of sugar. He smiled.

"Oh, yeah. It was one of my favourite places. I took my first girlfriend here, when I was fourteen."

Jack swung closer. "How'd that go?"

Ianto glanced at him, with a wry little smile. "I took her on the most spinning, upside-down ride there was and she was sick all over me. Then I spent all my money trying to get a toy for her, which didn't work, and she eventually went off with one of my best friends. So, not that well." He looked over the park again, his eyes taking in the abandoned kiosks, the broken bulbs of the now joyless rides. "It's so empty..."

Jack had seen that look in Ianto's eyes before; his mourning of the loss of something wonderful, something beautifully timeless. In a Hub, and a world, filled with gadgets and digits and all the information and entertainment anyone could ever need on a screen, Ianto favoured the tangible, the solid, the impressive. This fair was a ghost of what used to be, what it should be.

It was a look Jack hated seeing, and he liked to get rid of it the best way he knew how.

"Well," he murmured, swinging close enough that he could whisper into Ianto's ear, "I'm sure I can make up for a bad date."

"Oh?" replied Ianto, his eyes falling shut.

"Mmm." said Jack, his voice a low rumble in Ianto's ear. He moved his mouth, slowly, to kiss the side of Ianto's neck.

"Jack..." Ianto whispered, his voice a breathless warning, his hand coming up to clutch at Jack's coat sleeve to prevent himself from slipping. "I'll fall off."

"Well, I'll catch you." Jack told him, before kissing him on the mouth, trying to press as close as he could without using his hands, which were still clutching the pole as tight as they could.

Ianto murmured something Jack didn't catch, his hand moving up Jack's arm and over his shoulder, settling in Jack's hair, pulling him closer.

All of a sudden, the freezing silence surrounding them was interrupted by an insistent chittering from the ground. Pulling away from Ianto, Jack glanced down to see a veritable army of tiny, blue-haired creatures, about the size of large spiders, scuttling through the merry-go-round and surrounding the horse they were standing on.

"Oh, boy." Jack said, lifting his legs clear of the ground.

"How bad?" asked Ianto, fingers twitching against his stun gun.

"Keep your legs above ground. Little flesh-eating bastards, these things; they smell humans and like to burrow through their clothes and nibble at the skin."

His comm bleeped and Owen's tinny voice filtered through; "Jack? We've found our green thing."

"Good," replied Jack, glancing at the rustling creatures below them. "I think we've found the reason for our Rift spike. Get it into the SUV and secure it; we'll be there as soon as we can."

"Yeah, that's the thing," said Owen, almost sounding as if he might laugh. "You should probably come and have a look at this."

********************

Owen, Tosh and Gwen had trapped their charge into a kiosk next to a ride; tying the monster to a chair, as it slowly regained consciousness with a series of moans.

"Bit extreme, don't you think?" Jack asked, as he and Ianto found them, guns at the ready. "Couldn't you have just got him up the hill when he was still out?"

Gwen shook her head. "Not exactly." She advanced towards the twitching monster. "I think you should see this."

Slowly, she extended a hand and took hold of the creature's snout. It snarled at her, but with a flourish she pulled, and off came the creature's face, falling to the floor with a quiet flump.

Emerging from the huge neck hole was a man's head; hairy, covered in sweat, and looking thoroughly exhausted.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Jack exclaimed, moving forward and examining him.

"No," said Tosh quietly, her voice shaking with the effort to keep down a laugh, "I'm afraid we're not. May we introduce Henry Doyle, missing caretaker of Spader's funfair."

"He was the monster all along, turns out." said Owen, not bothering to disguise his grin.

"What the hell were you doing?" Jack asked Doyle, his face a cross between anger and bewilderment.

"Insurance scam," croaked Doyle, shifting in his chair. "The fair wasn't making a lot of money, in the back of beyond over here. Repairs went dodgy. Thought I could cash in; say something had killed me. Got the costume from the Ghost Train."

"But..." said Tosh, sounding confused.

"You couldn't think of anything simpler than that?" asked Gwen.

Doyle shrugged as best he could. "This city's filled with aliens, ain't it? People don't believe it, but it's true. If you're gonna fake your own death, why not make it interesting?"

Jack narrowed his eyes. "Well, it's actually quite lucky that this place hasn't been open; there's a bunch of Hexplaxia come through the Rift that would have gone for kids, if they'd been here. Lucky escape. Still, that has to be the most stupid plan I've ever heard."

"Well, I would have gotten away with it," said Doyle, roughly, "If it hadn't been for you..."

"Mr Doyle, I think I speak for all of us when I beg you not to finish that sentence." Ianto said, turning to Jack. "Retcon, then police?"

"I think so." replied Jack, nodding. He glanced at the others, who were still grinning, and shook his head. "Only Torchwood, huh?"

********************

Several hours later, when the police had been called and taken Doyle away, and the Hexplaxia had been lured (with extreme difficulty) and caught in one of Ianto's nets, the team all at different vantage points swinging across the poles and structures on the merry-go-round; when Tosh and Gwen took the creatures to the SUV and Owen disposed of the monster suit, Ianto leaned forward and murmured into Jack's ear.

"I'll be waiting for you to make it up to me, you know."

"Really?" asked Jack, turning. "Well, it won't be here, but I promise it'll be good."

Ianto's smile was small, and sly. "It'd better be."

"Zoinks!" said Jack, with a grin. "I'd better start making plans."

The look of sarcasm Ianto gave him would have felled a lesser man, he was sure. So much for maintaining a theme.

"Too far?" he asked, apologetically.

"Far too far." Ianto told him, leaning in to kiss him regardless.

Jack grinned, pulling Ianto in. The high jinks of the day had barely begun.

***