m_findlow

Title: Message in a bottle
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 601 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for falkner's prompt "any, any, message in a bottle" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack discovers something interesting on the beach

It wasn't often that Jack and Ianto could say they had time for a proper date, but this afternoon had proven to be the exception that did indeed prove the rule. Admittedly the weather hadn't really come to the party for their planned picnic on the beach, but both of them were so used to to the bitter winds that kicked up off the Bristol Channel that neither of them noticed. Besides which they were both sufficiently rugged up in coats and in each other. Even the light drizzle that had started up didn't detract from the relative peace of their stroll down the damp shoreline.

Jack was even enjoying the simple act of beachcombing and dragging along a thin piece of driftwood he'd found, lazily drawing swirls in the sand as they walked. It wasn't the same as the beaches on Boeshane. Here the sand was much more gritty and strewn with larger pebbles and rocks. The beaches were sometimes short and cut off by the rocky cliffs that jutted out and dominated the landscape. Beaches on Boeshane had been rather flatter and smoother, and the waves lapped gently up the berm. Here they tended to crash violently, sending up a spray of white foam and salt. Still he quite liked it. It was somehow more primal than peaceful. Like the land and it's people had been forged from the very same elements.

He'd been collecting several larger smooth pebbles which now felt heavy in his pocket when he spied the object lodged in the sand a few yards in front of him. He pointed it out to Ianto who was otherwise daydreaming and staring off vacantly at the ocean. In truth, he was thinking about the sand that he would have to dislodge from the inside of Jack's coat pockets when they got home.

'Sea glass?' he asked.

As the approached it became clear that it wasn't sea glass. At least not the naturally occurring sort.

'It's a bottle,' Jack declared.

'Just when you thought people had finally gotten the message about littering.'

Jack pulled it from it's deeply buried spot in the wet sand and examined it more closely.

'Hey, there's a message inside!' Jack cried excitedly. 'It could be a message from someone trapped on a deserted island, or lost at sea, or it could be a letter written to a long lost lover.'

'Or a treasure map,' Ianto added deadpanned.

Jack, refusing to let Ianto deflate his enthusiasm, carried the bottle up the beach until they found a large boulder on which they could sit and extract the mystery contents.

It took a fair amount of brute force to dislodge the tightly packed cork, and even more ingenuity to extract the paper that had unravelled inside the glass to a size much wider than the neck of the bottle itself.

Still Jack's determination won out in the end, and the paper was eventually pulled free from its vessel.

'I can't wait to see what it says!'

Even Ianto's curiosity had piqued in the build up of helping Jack free the message.

Jack carefully unfolded the weathered paper and read it aloud.

'If you are reading this, please recycle me.'

Jack's crestfallen look made Ianto take pity on him.

'Not quite the groundbreaking revelation you were hoping for, but an important message all the same.'

'Someone has a sick sense of humour.' Jack moaned.

'Maybe you should try rubbing the bottle instead and hoping it grants you three wishes.'

'If they all involve Ianto Jones, what are my chances they'll be granted?'

'Pretty good I should imagine.'