Fffc Bingo Card - Spilling the beans

[m_findlow]

Title: Spilling the beans 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OC 
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 75 - Mouth at fffc
Summary: Jack has a stinging rebuke for one of his fellow department heads. 

Jack had well and truly been sitting there just waiting for his phone to ring. After the stinging email he'd penned late last night and shot off to the Brigadier in charge of UNIT in the wee hours of the morning, he knew it wouldn't take long for someone to pick up the phone. 

Jack didn't even feel tired after spending several hours putting his correspondence together. If anything, he'd still been completely wound up about it even after he'd clicked send. It had driven Ianto nuts, the way he'd tossed and turned in bed, wanting to pretty much dictate to Ianto what he'd written and continuing to discuss the matter well into the night. 

'Would you please just shut up and go to sleep?' Ianto had commanded him, rolling over and pulling the covers up over his head. 'Carry on being indignant in the morning after I've had sleep and coffee.' 

Of course he hadn't waited until then. Come the morning, he was already reiterating his position to Ianto as he was padding around the kitchen trying to get that much needed coffee going. 

'I'm not saying I disagree with you,' Ianto told him, doing his best to be patient with Jack while he was working up a fresh head of steam. 'Can we just be grateful we got wind of it before it happened?' 

'You're missing the point, Ianto,' Jack attempted to explain. 

'No, I don't think I am.' He set a mug and a plate of toast in front of Jack, clearly hoping that would shut him up. 'You'll get your chance to have your say in, oh,' he paused and checked his watch, 'about an hour from now. I know the Brigadier's schedule and he'll be at his desk and working before seven. The only thing that's likely to delay him picking up the phone will be having to go and clean the coffee he's spat all over his nice dress uniform after reading your email. Now eat that and give me five minutes of peace.'

Ianto had been right of course. At ten past seven, Jack's phone was buzzing on the desk in front of him and no one else would even be out of bed yet. 

'Brigadier,' Jack said, delivering the most curt greeting he could. 

'Captain,' the Brigadier replied, keeping his own response clipped. 'Might I commend you. Your email last night was as short as it was lengthy.' 

The witty remark did nothing to temper Jack's annoyance. 'Perhaps you'd like to explain to me now why it is that I'm hearing scuttlebutt about UNIT conducting a full foothold war games exercise without liaising with Torchwood?' 

'To be frank,' the Brigadier began, 'I'd like to know who around here has the big mouth, and which of your team has been speaking with my people to find out about this. It was all meant to be a covert operation, essential to our preparedness.' 

'I'm not prepared to throw anyone under the bus. Who in my team informed me and where they heard it from are not details I'm prepared to divulge.' He didn't care that if one of his team had done something similar he wouldn't have come down hard on them the way the Brigadier was proposing to do to his own staff. The difference was that Jack would be mad, raise his voice and then get over it. At UNIT, someone's career could be ruined over this. It wasn't worth losing your job for having done what Jack considered the right thing. He just thanked his lucky stars that when one of his team had a hunch about something fishy, they came and told him immediately. A few more probing questions from their insider at UNIT and Jack knew he had a very big problem on his hands. The kind that might not have been a problem if everybody didn't treat Torchwood like their poor, grubby cousin. 

'If you wanted to drive tanks and shoot rubber bullets all over the Brecon Beacons for a week, I couldn't care less. Except that's not what you're planning is it? A week long counter incursion exercise in the heart of Cardiff, am I right?' The silence on the end of that phone told Jack all he needed to know. The intel he'd gotten had been spot on. 

'These drills are all part of our regular military functions and operational readiness plans. We conduct exercises like this all year round and never once have I heard Torchwood kicking up a fuss about it.' 

'You don't think people will get a little twitchy when you people start rolling down the high street in black armored cars and hauling arse around the city with guns?' 

Jack could almost hear the Brigadier preening his brass buttons. 'Statistically speaking, the two highest risk targets for an alien incursionary force are London, because of its strategic value, and Cardiff, simply because of its proximity to the rift. The Home Office gave us the green light to conduct our scenarios in Cardiff as a simulation for a wider inner city suppression and elimination strategy.' 

Jack snorted.' I'll bet he did.' That pompous public school educated twat! 

'We will be reconsidering the location of our training exercises in light of your rather strongly worded objections.' 

'I'd rather you reconsidered how you might engage with Torchwood so that our strategies are aligned.' Was that so hard to ask? Or would they prefer to have both organisations at cross purposes in the event of an emergency? 

'We'll make it a consideration for future operations.' He could hear in the Brigadier's voice that he wasn't happy about the prospect of working with Torchwood but that was just too bad. 

'You had better,' Jack warned. 'Or the next time I see soldiers in red caps terrorising the citizens of this city with their little exercises, I'll take them to be a hostile force, and you'll find out just how good my people are at dealing with threats.'