Fic: A Horrible Fate
Title: A Horrible Fate
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1957
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: There’s something horrible lurking in the Hub, and Ianto is determined to deal with it. He could use a hand though.
Written For: Challenge 381: Amnesty 63 at fan_flashworks, using Challenge 250: Promise.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
“I warned you something like this would happen,” Ianto said, staring apprehensively at the… creature, he supposed. It was staring back at him, unblinking, and he didn’t dare look away to see where Jack was, just in case it took the opportunity to pounce on him and… uh… do something unpleasant. Maybe suffocate him. It could happen.
“Ianto…” Jack started from somewhere behind him. Whatever he was about to say though, Ianto didn’t let him finish. Normally he had better manners, but this time he felt fully justified in interrupting.
“You didn’t believe me. In fact, as I recall, you laughed at me.” If Jack decided to wander off leaving Ianto to handle the threat all by himself, Ianto was going to track his lover down and kill him, just because. Unless he didn’t survive the encounter himself, in which case Jack was going to be very sorry indeed! Maybe Ianto would come back and haunt him for the rest of eternity. “I guarantee you won’t be laughing if it attacks me.”
“Come on, Ianto! Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”
Ah, good, Jack was still there, he hadn’t just left his lover to a horrible fate. Maybe Ianto wouldn’t kill him, at least not quite yet.
“Overreacting? Look at it! Does that look like a dust bunny to you or not?” Because it certainly did to Ianto, albeit a dust bunny that was a good eighteen inches across and perhaps a few inches more in height, all greyish and wispy, and staring at him with beady black eyes, ready to pounce on him and savage him with its razor-sharp claws and its fangs dripping with venom.
Okay, so he couldn’t actually see any claws or fangs, or a mouth for that matter, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, somewhere. The thing was obviously just trying to look innocent and harmless to lull them into a false sense of security. That was what things like this did. Ianto was Torchwood; he’d seen such creatures before, their cute and cuddly appearance belying their vicious nature.
“Well…” Jack finally drawled, stepping up alongside Ianto, arms folded over his chest and head cocked to one side as he studied the menace. “I guess it sort of does, I mean it’s roughly the same colour and kind of fuzzy.”
“See? This is what I was telling you the other day! Has to be something to do with the Rift. The dust bunnies are mutating, taking on lives of their own. Next thing you know, they’ll achieve sentience, if they haven’t already, and start trying to take over the world! We’ll all be doomed, and it’ll be your fault because you kept distracting me every time I tried to clean under your shelves.”
“What can I say? The sight of you on your knees with your arse in the air, poking around beneath the shelves in my office never fails to inspire me. I can’t help myself. I still think you’re being melodramatic about this, and anyway, what do you mean by ‘they’? There’s only the one, isn’t there?”
“That’s what they want you to think! Even as we speak, they’re probably creeping about, keeping out of sight, and as soon as they have us surrounded, they’ll swarm over us, and it’ll be game over. We’ll be nothing but fodder for their young. You might survive, being immortal, but what about me?”
To Ianto’s disgust Jack started laughing again; he would have glared at his lover, but that would have meant taking his eyes off a potential threat, and being a trained Torchwood agent, he knew better than to do that. He hadn’t lived this long by being careless.
“I hardly think it’ll try to eat us; it doesn’t even have anything to eat us with, no teeth or even a mouth,” Jack said, not even trying to hide his amusement. “It’s just a bigger than usual dust bunny. I never knew you had such an active imagination.”
“A dust bunny with eyes,” Ianto pointed out.
“Yeah, alright, that’s a bit unusual I’ll grant you, but look at it! What harm could a clump of fluff like that possibly do? There’s almost nothing to it. As for the possibility of it taking over the world, I doubt it would know where to start.”
“This is Torchwood, Jack! Anything can happen, no matter how bizarre it might seem, and just because something doesn’t look particularly dangerous at first glance doesn’t automatically mean it’s harmless. Or have you forgotten the swarm of evil sock creatures that tried to suffocate me a few years back? How many people did they kill before we managed to locate and stop them?”
Jack was silent for a long moment, finally admitting with a resigned sigh, “Okay, you might have a point there. So what do you think we should do about it?”
“Why are you asking me? You’re the boss.”
“And you’re the one who supposedly knows everything, so what d’you suggest?”
“Containment for a start,” Ianto said firmly. “We need to capture it and lock it away where it can’t carry out whatever nefarious plans it might have.”
“You want to lock a dust bunny in the cells?”
“No!” Ianto gasped. “The cells might not be secure enough; suppose it managed to ooze out through the air holes! It could go anywhere, and we might never find it again before it was too late!”
“You’re right, that would be bad. Keep an eye on it while I fetch a containment box; we can drop it over the top of our friend there then slip the lid underneath, that way we won’t have to lay a finger on it.”
“That’s actually not a bad plan. Okay, go, just don’t take too long; it might just be waiting for the chance to get one of us alone.”
“Oooh, maybe you should get the box then; if it attacks, I’ll stand a better chance of surviving than you would.”
“Fine, I’ll go. Just whatever you do, don’t take your eyes off that thing, not for a second.”
“I won’t, I promise,” Jack assured him. “You can count on me!”
“I should hope so. Back in a minute.” Leaving Jack watching the monstrous dust bunny, Ianto hurried away, keeping the creature in sight for as long as he could, but when he returned less than five minutes later…
“Where is it? I thought you were keeping an eye on it!”
“I was!” Jack sounded anguished. “It was right there by the sofa, but then I blinked, and…” He looked at Ianto. “I’m sorry!”
“Never mind apologising; we have to find it!” Ianto looked around frantically, eyes searching for anywhere big enough for the dust bunny to hide in. But then he had a horrible thought; it looked so insubstantial, what if it could squash itself down into a much smaller space? It could be anywhere! He turned to Jack, face pale. “It could lurk in the shadows, growing bigger and bigger, spawning more of its kind, just waiting…”
“Ianto! Behind you!” Jack shouted.
Ianto whirled as fast as he could but it wasn’t fast enough; he didn’t know if it was the same dust bunny as before, or the parent of the one they’d been trying to catch, but it was immense, easily twice Ianto’s height, and it was on him before he could move, smothering him with its wispy body, pressing him down onto the ground, tangling around his limbs as he tried to fight it off! He flailed desperately! Why wasn’t Jack helping him?
“Jack, help! Get it of me! Get it off!”
“Ianto! Ianto!”
He felt hands on him, shaking him, and his eyes snapped open; he was in Jack’s bunk, tangled in the covers, and Jack was kneeling on the floor beside him.
“Where is it?” Ianto gasped, eyes darting around, peering into the shadows as he struggled free of the clinging blankets. “Where’d it go? Did you get it?”
“Get what?” Jack’s hair was all over the place and he was blinking blearily at Ianto as though he wasn’t completely awake. “You kicked me off the bed!”
Ianto glanced around the familiar small room in the dim light filtering through the open hatch. “I did?”
“Yes. I was asleep until I hit the floor, then I woke up and you were fighting with the covers, yelling like you were being attacked.”
“Oh, right, sorry.” Ianto felt suddenly foolish. “Nightmare.”
“Don’t worry about it. Was it the Weevil?” Jack asked, smiling sympathetically. They’d had a bit of a close call earlier when a particularly aggressive bull Weevil had come out of nowhere while they were trying to round up a smaller female. It had knocked Ianto flat on his back, and he’d lost his grip on his Weevil spray. He’d thought he was done for, Jack had been too far away to help, but the big Weevil had only had eyes for the one they’d been chasing, and the pair had immediately retreated to the sewers.
“Uh, no. It was nothing.”
“It must have been something.” Jack picked himself up, dusting himself off, and climbed back into bed. “That was a pretty extreme reaction. You should talk about it, otherwise you might end up dreaming about it again as soon as you fall asleep. So what was it? You can tell me.” Jack wrapped his arms comfortingly around his lover. “You really sounded scared.”
Ianto sighed; he was glad it had just been a nightmare, but he wasn’t eager to tell Jack about it. “You’ll laugh.”
“No I won’t. I promise. Just tell me. Please?”
“Fine. I was being attacked by a gigantic dust bunny,” he finally admitted.
“A dust bunny?” Jack stared at Ianto for a long moment, then his lips twitched. He tried not to, really he did, but he couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing.
Ianto kicked him off the bed again, this time deliberately.
“You promised you wouldn’t laugh! Just for that you can sleep on the sofa, and I hope the mutant dust bunny gets you.”
“But Ianto…”
“No, you’re not wheedling your way out of this! It wasn’t just any dust bunny, it was massive, and it was trying to suffocate me. There’s absolutely nothing funny about that!”
“Okay, you’re right, that wouldn’t be funny at all. I’m sorry.”
“I should think so.”
“Does that mean I can stay and protect you in case you have another nightmare?” Jack asked hopefully. “I don’t like the thought of you waking up alone and scared in the dark, even if you kicked me out of bed. Twice.”
Ianto sighed. “Well, alright, on one condition.”
“Anything,” Jack promised.
“Tomorrow, when I start cleaning under all the furniture in the Hub, you’re not to laugh, and you’ll keep your hands to yourself until I’ve rounded up every last dust bunny I can find. I’m not taking any chances; my nightmare could have been a premonition. We can’t afford to take unnecessary risks. Trust me, you won’t be laughing if the dust bunnies really do mutate and take over the Hub.”
Jack gave that some thought. “How about if I promise to help you move the furniture as well? That way the dust bunny roundup should go a lot faster.”
“It’s a deal.” Ianto settled himself comfortably and let Jack climb back into bed beside him, pulling the covers over both of them. “And Jack?”
“Hm?” Jack mumbled, wrapping his arms protectively around his lover, just in case.
“Tomorrow I’m going to order a bigger vacuum cleaner.”
“If that’s what will make you happy, you can order whatever you want. Use the Torchwood credit card.”
“Thank you. Those dust bunnies are going down.”
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1957
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: There’s something horrible lurking in the Hub, and Ianto is determined to deal with it. He could use a hand though.
Written For: Challenge 381: Amnesty 63 at fan_flashworks, using Challenge 250: Promise.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
“I warned you something like this would happen,” Ianto said, staring apprehensively at the… creature, he supposed. It was staring back at him, unblinking, and he didn’t dare look away to see where Jack was, just in case it took the opportunity to pounce on him and… uh… do something unpleasant. Maybe suffocate him. It could happen.
“Ianto…” Jack started from somewhere behind him. Whatever he was about to say though, Ianto didn’t let him finish. Normally he had better manners, but this time he felt fully justified in interrupting.
“You didn’t believe me. In fact, as I recall, you laughed at me.” If Jack decided to wander off leaving Ianto to handle the threat all by himself, Ianto was going to track his lover down and kill him, just because. Unless he didn’t survive the encounter himself, in which case Jack was going to be very sorry indeed! Maybe Ianto would come back and haunt him for the rest of eternity. “I guarantee you won’t be laughing if it attacks me.”
“Come on, Ianto! Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”
Ah, good, Jack was still there, he hadn’t just left his lover to a horrible fate. Maybe Ianto wouldn’t kill him, at least not quite yet.
“Overreacting? Look at it! Does that look like a dust bunny to you or not?” Because it certainly did to Ianto, albeit a dust bunny that was a good eighteen inches across and perhaps a few inches more in height, all greyish and wispy, and staring at him with beady black eyes, ready to pounce on him and savage him with its razor-sharp claws and its fangs dripping with venom.
Okay, so he couldn’t actually see any claws or fangs, or a mouth for that matter, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, somewhere. The thing was obviously just trying to look innocent and harmless to lull them into a false sense of security. That was what things like this did. Ianto was Torchwood; he’d seen such creatures before, their cute and cuddly appearance belying their vicious nature.
“Well…” Jack finally drawled, stepping up alongside Ianto, arms folded over his chest and head cocked to one side as he studied the menace. “I guess it sort of does, I mean it’s roughly the same colour and kind of fuzzy.”
“See? This is what I was telling you the other day! Has to be something to do with the Rift. The dust bunnies are mutating, taking on lives of their own. Next thing you know, they’ll achieve sentience, if they haven’t already, and start trying to take over the world! We’ll all be doomed, and it’ll be your fault because you kept distracting me every time I tried to clean under your shelves.”
“What can I say? The sight of you on your knees with your arse in the air, poking around beneath the shelves in my office never fails to inspire me. I can’t help myself. I still think you’re being melodramatic about this, and anyway, what do you mean by ‘they’? There’s only the one, isn’t there?”
“That’s what they want you to think! Even as we speak, they’re probably creeping about, keeping out of sight, and as soon as they have us surrounded, they’ll swarm over us, and it’ll be game over. We’ll be nothing but fodder for their young. You might survive, being immortal, but what about me?”
To Ianto’s disgust Jack started laughing again; he would have glared at his lover, but that would have meant taking his eyes off a potential threat, and being a trained Torchwood agent, he knew better than to do that. He hadn’t lived this long by being careless.
“I hardly think it’ll try to eat us; it doesn’t even have anything to eat us with, no teeth or even a mouth,” Jack said, not even trying to hide his amusement. “It’s just a bigger than usual dust bunny. I never knew you had such an active imagination.”
“A dust bunny with eyes,” Ianto pointed out.
“Yeah, alright, that’s a bit unusual I’ll grant you, but look at it! What harm could a clump of fluff like that possibly do? There’s almost nothing to it. As for the possibility of it taking over the world, I doubt it would know where to start.”
“This is Torchwood, Jack! Anything can happen, no matter how bizarre it might seem, and just because something doesn’t look particularly dangerous at first glance doesn’t automatically mean it’s harmless. Or have you forgotten the swarm of evil sock creatures that tried to suffocate me a few years back? How many people did they kill before we managed to locate and stop them?”
Jack was silent for a long moment, finally admitting with a resigned sigh, “Okay, you might have a point there. So what do you think we should do about it?”
“Why are you asking me? You’re the boss.”
“And you’re the one who supposedly knows everything, so what d’you suggest?”
“Containment for a start,” Ianto said firmly. “We need to capture it and lock it away where it can’t carry out whatever nefarious plans it might have.”
“You want to lock a dust bunny in the cells?”
“No!” Ianto gasped. “The cells might not be secure enough; suppose it managed to ooze out through the air holes! It could go anywhere, and we might never find it again before it was too late!”
“You’re right, that would be bad. Keep an eye on it while I fetch a containment box; we can drop it over the top of our friend there then slip the lid underneath, that way we won’t have to lay a finger on it.”
“That’s actually not a bad plan. Okay, go, just don’t take too long; it might just be waiting for the chance to get one of us alone.”
“Oooh, maybe you should get the box then; if it attacks, I’ll stand a better chance of surviving than you would.”
“Fine, I’ll go. Just whatever you do, don’t take your eyes off that thing, not for a second.”
“I won’t, I promise,” Jack assured him. “You can count on me!”
“I should hope so. Back in a minute.” Leaving Jack watching the monstrous dust bunny, Ianto hurried away, keeping the creature in sight for as long as he could, but when he returned less than five minutes later…
“Where is it? I thought you were keeping an eye on it!”
“I was!” Jack sounded anguished. “It was right there by the sofa, but then I blinked, and…” He looked at Ianto. “I’m sorry!”
“Never mind apologising; we have to find it!” Ianto looked around frantically, eyes searching for anywhere big enough for the dust bunny to hide in. But then he had a horrible thought; it looked so insubstantial, what if it could squash itself down into a much smaller space? It could be anywhere! He turned to Jack, face pale. “It could lurk in the shadows, growing bigger and bigger, spawning more of its kind, just waiting…”
“Ianto! Behind you!” Jack shouted.
Ianto whirled as fast as he could but it wasn’t fast enough; he didn’t know if it was the same dust bunny as before, or the parent of the one they’d been trying to catch, but it was immense, easily twice Ianto’s height, and it was on him before he could move, smothering him with its wispy body, pressing him down onto the ground, tangling around his limbs as he tried to fight it off! He flailed desperately! Why wasn’t Jack helping him?
“Jack, help! Get it of me! Get it off!”
“Ianto! Ianto!”
He felt hands on him, shaking him, and his eyes snapped open; he was in Jack’s bunk, tangled in the covers, and Jack was kneeling on the floor beside him.
“Where is it?” Ianto gasped, eyes darting around, peering into the shadows as he struggled free of the clinging blankets. “Where’d it go? Did you get it?”
“Get what?” Jack’s hair was all over the place and he was blinking blearily at Ianto as though he wasn’t completely awake. “You kicked me off the bed!”
Ianto glanced around the familiar small room in the dim light filtering through the open hatch. “I did?”
“Yes. I was asleep until I hit the floor, then I woke up and you were fighting with the covers, yelling like you were being attacked.”
“Oh, right, sorry.” Ianto felt suddenly foolish. “Nightmare.”
“Don’t worry about it. Was it the Weevil?” Jack asked, smiling sympathetically. They’d had a bit of a close call earlier when a particularly aggressive bull Weevil had come out of nowhere while they were trying to round up a smaller female. It had knocked Ianto flat on his back, and he’d lost his grip on his Weevil spray. He’d thought he was done for, Jack had been too far away to help, but the big Weevil had only had eyes for the one they’d been chasing, and the pair had immediately retreated to the sewers.
“Uh, no. It was nothing.”
“It must have been something.” Jack picked himself up, dusting himself off, and climbed back into bed. “That was a pretty extreme reaction. You should talk about it, otherwise you might end up dreaming about it again as soon as you fall asleep. So what was it? You can tell me.” Jack wrapped his arms comfortingly around his lover. “You really sounded scared.”
Ianto sighed; he was glad it had just been a nightmare, but he wasn’t eager to tell Jack about it. “You’ll laugh.”
“No I won’t. I promise. Just tell me. Please?”
“Fine. I was being attacked by a gigantic dust bunny,” he finally admitted.
“A dust bunny?” Jack stared at Ianto for a long moment, then his lips twitched. He tried not to, really he did, but he couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing.
Ianto kicked him off the bed again, this time deliberately.
“You promised you wouldn’t laugh! Just for that you can sleep on the sofa, and I hope the mutant dust bunny gets you.”
“But Ianto…”
“No, you’re not wheedling your way out of this! It wasn’t just any dust bunny, it was massive, and it was trying to suffocate me. There’s absolutely nothing funny about that!”
“Okay, you’re right, that wouldn’t be funny at all. I’m sorry.”
“I should think so.”
“Does that mean I can stay and protect you in case you have another nightmare?” Jack asked hopefully. “I don’t like the thought of you waking up alone and scared in the dark, even if you kicked me out of bed. Twice.”
Ianto sighed. “Well, alright, on one condition.”
“Anything,” Jack promised.
“Tomorrow, when I start cleaning under all the furniture in the Hub, you’re not to laugh, and you’ll keep your hands to yourself until I’ve rounded up every last dust bunny I can find. I’m not taking any chances; my nightmare could have been a premonition. We can’t afford to take unnecessary risks. Trust me, you won’t be laughing if the dust bunnies really do mutate and take over the Hub.”
Jack gave that some thought. “How about if I promise to help you move the furniture as well? That way the dust bunny roundup should go a lot faster.”
“It’s a deal.” Ianto settled himself comfortably and let Jack climb back into bed beside him, pulling the covers over both of them. “And Jack?”
“Hm?” Jack mumbled, wrapping his arms protectively around his lover, just in case.
“Tomorrow I’m going to order a bigger vacuum cleaner.”
“If that’s what will make you happy, you can order whatever you want. Use the Torchwood credit card.”
“Thank you. Those dust bunnies are going down.”
The End