Almost Perfect

IANTO MISSES POCKETS

They were sat in the Torchwood SUV. A traffic warden was coming towards them across the car park. Jack was sat humming quietly to himself. Gwen realised, sadly, that the man had no real idea what ‘Pay and Display’ actually meant.

‘Ianto, hun, could you go and feed the meter? Quickly.’

‘Sure,’ said Ianto, and hefted something onto his lap the size of a labrador with handles. It appeared to be the world’s largest handbag. He dived into it muttering, ‘I’m sure I’ve got a purse in here somewhere.’

Gwen stifled a laugh. ‘Oh, no one needs a bag that large!’

Ianto looked up, puzzled. ‘But, I needed something big enough for my gun. And my house keys, and my MP3, and the phone, the PDA, the chargers, and a copy of Captain Corelli. Honestly, by the time you slip in some mints and a spare pair of tights, it’s full house, I can tell you.’

Jack arched an eyebrow.

The traffic warden tapped on the windscreen.

Jack held up his Torchwood ID. The traffic warden shook his head.

Jack looked back, placatingly, and started fishing around in his pockets. ‘Honestly, we save this city from alien disaster several times a year, and they still make us adhere to parking regulations. Do you know who really developed the internal combustion engine? Torchwood did. And this is the thanks we get. Well, that and one-way systems – the product of a tiny mind.’ Jack pouted, looking for all the world like a spoiled child. It was at moments like this, those rare moments when little things didn’t go Jack’s way, that Gwen saw the true hero. A man not frightened by vast evil, corrupt states or lost souls, but baffled by pettiness, bureaucracy and muddling mediocrity. Why he had sentenced himself to Wales, she would never really understand.

They were parked outside Rhys’s work.

That morning, Gwen had stormed into Torchwood, magnificently worried.

‘My husband’s too pretty!’ she’d yelled. ‘You’ve got to do something, Jack!’ She caught the look in his eye. ‘Don’t you go sassing me, Harkness. I am deadly serious.’

‘Sass?’ tutted Jack in mock affront. ‘I don’t do sass, do I? I prefer to think of it as kittenish charm. What do you think, Ianto?’

‘Definitely kittenish,’ said Ianto.

‘Sod the kittens,’ Gwen was in full flow. ‘Rhys woke up bloody gorgeous this morning, and I want to find the woman who’s done that to him.’

As she spoke, she was flinging photos from her phone up onto the Hub’s screens, until pictures of Rhys bobbed across the wall. Some were of their wedding, two were before and after shots of the back of his head, and one was of him this morning, wearing only a towel and waving sheepishly at the camera.

‘Look at Rhys!’ Gwen shrieked. ‘Overnight he’s gained an extra two inches!’

Jack carefully didn’t say anything. Ianto examined the intricate walnut inlay of the table surface.

Gwen pressed on. ‘It’s not natural. It’s wrong, that’s what it is. He goes on a date with a supermodel. He wakes up the next day all Abercrumpet. Shortly after Ianto wakes up bloody gorgeous. Buzzz! I rather do think there just may be a link.’

She suddenly knew she had Jack’s full attention. Finally.

‘Emma Webster. This woman is speed-dating, Jack. She is combing through Cardiff’s singletons – those she likes get a free makeover, those she doesn’t end up dead. Whatever she’s using, whatever her power, it’s not been around more than a week. She’s got her hands on some alien thing and… and… she’s using it to make her ideal man.’

‘Rhys?’ said Ianto and Jack.

They looked again at the picture of the jovial, weakly smiling bloke drifting across the walls of their boardroom.