Torchwood: Fanfic: Wedding crashers

[m_findlow]

Title: Wedding crashers
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 787 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, Jack, he'd always wanted to crash a wedding" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack has a long bucket list, and crashing a wedding is right near the top.

Jack knew he should be worried about the news that Owen had just delivered. The last thing he wanted was one of his team in danger. Worst still that some other alien might have the equivalent of a fatwa on their heads, but all he could think about was Gwen's wedding.

He'd been so excited about it for weeks. He loved weddings. They were always fraught with drama, though this wasn't quite the kind of drama he'd had in mind. It would just be nice to see Gwen so radiant and happy, able to find a tiny slice of normality in their otherwise crazy lives. It would also make her married, taking any temptation on his part out of the equation. He loved Ianto, but that didn't mean he couldn't love someone else as well. He'd always had too much capacity for love. It was only this planet's silly conventions that said you could love only one person at a time. But at the end of the day, Rhys had gotten there first, and Gwen loved him to bits. It was nothing more than a fanciful thought that Jack could ever pursue anything with Gwen. She was feisty and full of life and that was what he found so attractive. She grabbed hold of life by the horns and didn't let go. They should all live like that. Their lives were so brief compared to his own.

A wedding was just what everyone needed to refocus their internal compasses. He was looking forward to the after party. Ianto had so far eluded his attempts to agree to a dance. Jack wasn't going to let Ianto slip away that easily though. He could say no all the way up until the rings were on fingers and the corks on the champagne popped, but Jack would snaffle his dance come hell or high water, even if he had to cuff Ianto's hands to his own.

Then all his thoughts of romantic waltzes had been scuppered. All because he couldn't keep his big mouth shut, as Ianto would have phrased it. Joking about being impregnated by an alien and calling off the wedding was the straw that had broken the donkey bride's back. She was going ahead with the wedding, and Jack was very much uninvited as a consequence. She didn't want Torchwood interfering with her big day. No one else had been uninvited of course, but it was clear that there were politics at play. Tosh was given the green light to be there as moral support and to keep an eye on things. Owen just didn't do weddings, so he said, and Ianto remained behind so that Jack wouldn't feel left out. All in all the day was starting to suck.

And then Owen delivered the bad news. The alien was coming for Gwen to claim its baby. It wasn't going to wait until after the honeymoon. It wasn't even going to wait for them to say "I do". There was no option. They had to go and stop the wedding, get Gwen back to the hub and get the thing out, or at least put her out of the path of the alien.

He wondered why he let Ianto drive them there. He was such an old woman behind the wheel, even doing thirty miles over the speed limit. Jack would have done sixty. Either way, they weren't going to make it there before everything kicked off. He only hoped that by kicked off, he was only referring to the ceremony and not the disembowelment.

True to form, the grounds outside the chapel were empty. Everyone was already inside. Oh, yes. It was almost too good to be true. He'd always wanted to crash a wedding, to come storming down the aisle to sweep the bride - or the groom, depending on the wedding - away from their beloved and ride off into the sunset with them. Okay, so maybe there wouldn't be any elopement on a white horse - blazing away in a black SUV, perhaps - but if there was one thing Jack knew how to do, it was how to make a dramatic entrance.

Ianto hadn't even turned the engine off before Jack was unclipping his seat belt and rushing toward the grand double doors. This wasn't a moment for the team to come storming in. This was all his. Oh, this was going to be great! Gwen was going to hate him, but hey, it was something to scratch off his long bucket list. She could thank him for saving her life, and her future marriage, later.

He burst through the doors and ran down the aisle, feeling his coat flapping heroically behind him.

'Stop the wedding!'