Fffc Bingo Card - Worth his salt

[m_findlow]

Title: Worth his salt
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 73 - Salt at fffc
Summary: Ianto is tasked with an exhausting shopping trip.

Ianto tried not to let the confused look of the girl on the checkout break his resolve. If he faltered for even a second she was going to start questioning him, or worse, call over the store manager to sit him down and make him explain. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out as slowly as he could. So long as he acted calm, like there was absolutely nothing wrong, he was going to get away with this. 

'You're out of bags, sir.' 

'Hmm?' The question caught him off guard. 

'Reusable bags,' she replied. 'I can't fit anymore boxes in here. It's 10p for a plastic bag or 50p for a canvas bag.' 

'Canvas please,' he said, watching as she pulled a few more branded bags out from under the counter to continue filling with his goods. She rang them up in advance and asked him to swipe his card. 

Was he mad? Was he going to get away with this? It looked like he just might. Thank God. He checked his phone. Great, only seventeen more supermarkets in the Cardiff Bay area to go. He quickly paid and helped her load the last of the boxes into the bags he'd just purchased and high-tailed it out of there before anyone from security could stop him. 

He breathed a sigh of relief as he unloaded them into the car, counting them up. Sixty two boxes of table salt. More than he'd assumed a supermarket might have on their shelves and enough that he didn't dare push his luck and ask if they had anymore out back. He'd rather take his chances at another store, hoping that they weren't cross-referencing his credit card to his purchases, putting up a red flag that Ianto Jones was buying up every last box of table salt in the city. He doubted there was anything criminal about it, but it was the kind of thing that could attract all the wrong kinds of attention. 

Bloody Torchwood, he mentally cursed as he slid back into the driver's seat of the SUV. It had to be food grade salt, didn't it? Not that he thought there was anywhere in the city where he could go and buy forty pound bags of pool salt. People in Wales didn't have pools and so they didn't need pool salt. But apparently their latest alien who had dropped through the rift needed salt water to survive in, at three times the concentration of any water they could extract from the bay. Of course, in a pinch, they were starting with sea water, courtesy of the underground docking bay that housed their various submersible vehicles, and adding more salt to it, but apart from a few small salt shakers from their kitchen to be used on fish and chips, there wasn't a stockpile at the hub. Thus Ianto's citywide adventure to strip the supermarket shelves. 

He knew he shouldn't be mad or frustrated. It wasn't the alien's fault that it had gotten sucked through the rift and dumped here. In fact, it was lucky to have survived at all. Flailing helplessly in an abandoned shopping trolley in a parking lot behind an op shop, it was dehydrated and close to death by the time they'd gotten the alert and located it. Jack identified it straight away and it was a frantic hustle back to the hub, carrying the six foot long thing that looked like a cross between a fish and a cow down to the docking bay and dropping it in the water as a temporary measure. The rift pool would have been easier but it was too small and too shallow. 

Whilst he was out shopping, the others would be working on a tank big enough for it, but not so big that it would be impossible to fill and keep at the right salinity levels. He didn't begrudge them that task. If anything, he'd gotten off easy, though his suit was still a little damp and smelled funny from helping to carry it into the hub in the first instance. There wasn't time to change clothes. Jack was already barking orders at him, telling Ianto what he needed and that was that. 

'Ianto,' chirped the voice in his earpiece, as if Jack had sensed being thought about. 'How's that salt coming on?' 

'Working on it,' he reported back. 

'Good. We've managed to construct a watertight containment box within the docking bay to house it. Tosh has run some calculations on the salinity required to keep it alive for at least the next two weeks. Figure that should be enough time to get it back home.' 

'And how much does that come to, sir?' 

'Call it eight hundred and fifty pounds, give or take.' 

Ianto reached for the bag on the passenger seat, extracting one of the boxes and checking the weight. He did the math in his head until it started to hurt his brain. Only thirteen hundred hundred or so boxes, assuming he could buy all of it in boxes. Someone from the police was definitely going to be calling by his house to ask him a lot of very difficult questions. His next call would be Gwen to get her looking up wholesale suppliers for restaurants and food manufacturers to find out how long it would take to start shipping it via the bagload. Or whether Hardwoods had any deliveries in situ that could be accidentally diverted. 

'Good to have a definitive number,' he replied. 'Oh, and I'm going to need to keep the SUV and a fuel and accommodation allowance.' 

Jack frowned. 'Why's that?' 

'Because at this rate I'm going to have to strip every Tesco, Lidl and Sainsbury from here to Wrexham until we can secure a more wholesale supply.' 

Jack nodded. 'Okay then. Buy me some scorched almonds if you see them on your way? Oh, and we're out of milk at home.'

Ianto scowled his displeasure. 'Don't push your luck.'