Fic: What Planet Are You From?
Title: What Planet Are You From?
Fandom: Howl's Moving Castle/Torchwood
Spoilers: Spoils the book Howl's Moving Castle, teensy spoiler for Fragments.
Rating: PG (surprisingly
Summary: Howl Jenkins lives near Cardiff. Torchwood lives in Cardiff. Howl does magic. Torchwood notices magic...
Notes:
Sophie was laughing helplessly in the corner, Calcifer convulsed with cackles, and even Michael was having a hard time muffling his giggles. Howell did not think it was remotely funny, but that was his family for you.
"No, really," the man currently pinning him to the floor said, sounding just a touch unnerved. He was nearly as handsome as Howell was, which was saying something. "What's going on?"
The slim Asian woman wandered around the room, eyes glued to a device that skipped and chattered like a Geiger counter. "Definitely rift activity," she called over her shoulder. "It's spiking all over the place."
"Yeah, no kidding, Tosh." The speaker, a thin pale man with spiky black hair, was peering out the window into Market Chipping. "That doesn't look like Cardiff."
"Oh," Howell said, as sarcastically as he could manage while pressed to his impeccable floorboards. That was one good thing about being married to Sophie; when he got his face jammed into the floor, he was at least not inhaling several years' worth of dust. "Such a clever young man he is. Where did you pick him up?"
"Cardiff Hospital," the handsome man said. "Care to explain why there's a massive amount of rift activity centered right on your house?"
"And why we're somewhere other than Cardiff," the spiky young man added. "Don't forget that one."
Sophie had managed to calm herself down enough to talk,
finally, because she said, with considerable steadiness for someone whose husband was currently being held at gunpoint, "Look, I'm sure Howl deserves whatever it is you're doing--"
"Oi!" Howell objected, from the floor, even though she was probably right.
"--but," Sophie continued, unruffled, "this is my house, and he's my husband, and I should like him back in one piece, if you don't mind terribly. Who are you, anyway?"
The handsome man looked up, and turned a brilliant grin on Sophie, who thankfully looked completely unimpressed. She'd been spoilt by his charm, Howell thought. "Captain Jack Harkness, ma'am," he said. "These are my team members, Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper. We're Torchwood."
"Yes, that's very nice," Sophie said, patiently. "But what are you doing here?"
"Oh!" The woman--Toshiko Sato--had just come face to face with Calcifer. "What are you?"
"Fire demon," Calcifer said, and leered at her. "Pleasure to meet you."
"What planet are you from?" Captain Harkness asked Calcifer, apparently in dead earnest.
Calcifer blinked at him. "I don't know," he said. "What planet are you from?"
"Earth," Howell said, over Michael's snorting and Sophie's renewed collapse into hysterics. "They're from Wales, sad to say. Never thought I'd see the day when my own countrymen were consorting with Americans."
Captain Harkness leaned over to bring the full impact of his profile into Howell's range of vision. "Do you want to tell me why you live on top of a rift in time and space, Mr. Jenkins?" he asked, sounding very polite. "And why you appear to have an alien in your kitchen?"
"If you let me up," Howell said, "I will. Maybe."
"I shouldn't trust him," Sophie put in, unhelpfully. "He's a great slitherer-outer. You wouldn't believe what I have to go through to get him to take out the garbage."
"It's true," Howell said, cheerfully. "I'm quite useless. You'd be better off leaving me alone and going back to wherever you all live."
"Don't touch that!" Michael shouted suddenly, and the man, Owen Harper, vanished suddenly in a flash of light.
Captain Harkness bounded off Howell and across the room. "Toshiko, cover them!" he roared as he went. "Owen!"
Howell, resigned to his fate, got up and dusted off his shirt, then, despite the gun being held on him, sauntered over to his wife. "Fine help you were."
"You probably did deserve it," Sophie said, serenely. "Was that the frog spell?"
He squinted at the bench, sighed, and said, "I think it was. A whole week of work gone!"
"Frog spell?" Toshiko Sato repeated, dubiously.
"Owen?" Captain Harkness turned over a fallen book and a series of plates before uncovering the frog that had once been Owen Harper. It looked mournfully up at him, and croaked. The spell would probably take another week to undo, and meanwhile there would be questions, and annoyances, and people tromping all about his house, annoying Sophie and disrupting Michael and probably at least one irritating Calcifer to the point of getting set on fire.
It should be marvellous.
"That's what you get for poking about a wizard's workroom," Howell said, smugly.
