Ficlet: Boing!

Feb 24, 2022 17:21

Title: Boing!
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Weird noises should always be investigated, especially around the Hub.
Word Count: 559
Written For: cyberiad_queen’s prompt ‘Any, any: Boing, boing, splat!’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.

Working for Torchwood could never be described as normal, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There were undoubtedly times Ianto might have wished for a bit more normality in his life, but if there was one thing he could count on as a Torchwood agent, it was that he was seldom bored. Confused, bewildered, shocked, embarrassed, exasperated, annoyed, and even scared, yes, but not bored. Even carrying out his most routine day-to-day tasks, encountering the unexpected was always a possibility, to the point where, on his worst days, he sometimes wondered if a bit if boredom might be a pleasant change of pace…

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Ianto couldn’t for the life of him figure out what the weird sound was, or exactly where it was coming from. There were a lot of echoes in the lower levels of the Hub, and particularly in the archives because of all the shelves full of strange, often unidentifiable, objects.

He’d started hearing the sound the moment he’d let himself in through the main door to the labyrinthine complex of rooms and passageways that constituted Torchwood Three’s archives. Setting the pile of filing he’d been carrying on the end of the desk in the area he used as his office, he set out to investigate. Through experience, he’d learned that it was never a good idea to ignore weird noises around the place, at least not until you’d identified the source and determined that nothing untoward was about to happen. Far better to know that the Hub was about to implode before it happened rather than after. It was just safer that way for everyone concerned.

Boing! Boing! Boing!

The sound continued without a pause, its rhythm unchanged. Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting louder and closer, meaning that Ianto was heading in the right direction. Or possibly the wrong direction. It would all depend on what he found when he reached the source.

Stepping out of one of the many interconnecting rooms into the corridor that ran alongside them, he hurriedly stepped back again to avoid being mown down, and rubbed his eyes. They had to be playing tricks on him; surely he couldn’t really have seen what he thought he’d seen?

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Eyebrows creeping higher and higher, Ianto stared in disbelief as Jack went bouncing past the doorway, coat tails
flapping up and down behind him. He saw Jack turn his head and smile, raising one hand briefly in a cheery wave, heard his lover call out a greeting…

“Hey, Ianto, look what I found! Isn’t it great?” Then he was gone, and all that was left was that sound…

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Splat!

Breaking out of his stupor, Ianto dashed out the door and stopped, folding his arms over his chest and huffing annoyance.

“Serves you right, you should have watched where you were going,” he told Jack, who’d managed to bounce himself face first into a wall.

Jack picked himself up, wincing as he straightened his nose. “Don’t worry about me; I’m fine, no permanent harm done.”

“I wasn’t worried.” Striding forward, Ianto plucked Jack’s erstwhile mode of transport from the floor. “How many times do I have to tell you not to go poking around down here by yourself? Looks like I’ll have to find a better hiding place for this bloody pogo stick!”

The End

fic, jack/ianto, fic_promptly, jack harkness, ianto jones, torchwood fic, fic: one-shot, ficlet, fic: pg

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