Ficlet: Just Desserts

Jul 27, 2017 18:45

Title: Just Desserts
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Gwen. Owen, Tosh, Jack, OC.
Rating: G
Spoilers: Not really. Set just before or near the start of Greeks Bearing Gifts.
Summary: Owen and Gwen are being annoying and get what they deserve.
Word Count: 564
Written For: My own prompt ‘Any, Any, They sound like ducks squabbling. Quack quack quack!’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.


Ianto rolls his eyes; they’re at it again! There’s never any peace in the Hub these days. Even since they started their little affair, Owen and Gwen are always either being nauseatingly playful, or arguing, and the longer it goes on the more often they fight. It’s getting on his nerves, and God only knows what it’s doing to poor Tosh, with her unrequited crush on Torchwood’s resident bastard.

They sound like ducks squabbling. Quack quack quack! If they keep it up much longer, Ianto is going to chuck a bucket of water over the pair of them, see if that’ll shut them up.

It’s almost a relief when the alarms go off, not that Owen and Gwen seem to notice; they just go right on sniping at each other all the way to the coordinates of the Rift spike, but at least Tosh doesn’t have to listen to them now, which is a small mercy. She’s back at the Hub, gathering data and relaying it to Jack via his Bluetooth earpiece.

Owen and Gwen aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing, both too busy arguing to listen to Jack’s instructions, so what happens is entirely their own fault. They’re lucky really; if they’d been dealing with something dangerous it might have cost them their lives, but as it is, it’s just their pride and their clothes that suffer.

Ianto knows he probably shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, but… revenge is sweet, even if you’re not actually the one handing it out. He really hopes Tosh can see this on CCTV; he’s pretty sure there are several cameras in the vicinity that should be capturing events for posterity. Maybe he’ll have Tosh burn a copy to disc for him; some days he could do with a good laugh.

Jack, of course, doesn’t even try to keep a straight face; he’s doubled over with laughter as he watches their two colleagues floundering about in the mud, and making no move to help them. Ianto’s not helping them either; his suit was expensive and he’s not getting mud all over it, not for the sake of those two. They can get out by themselves, though he might be kind enough to hose them down after. Mud is hell to get out of the SUV’s upholstery.

For now, he’ll content himself with doing the job they’re here for, containing the creature that has turned a building site into a mud wallow. It’s actually quite small and inoffensive; he’s seen several before, back when he worked at Torchwood One, though they weren’t treated well. Their slime, exuded as a defence mechanism when they feel threatened, has healing properties when used on humans, so the ones that Yvonne Hartman’s people captured got threatened a lot. This one was probably alarmed by the strident argument between Gwen and Owen. Ianto can understand that, because their voices were setting his teeth on edge too.

It doesn’t take much to persuade the little animal into a carrying box and he soon has it secured. They’re not that far from the Hub, so Jack tells him to take the SUV and get their guest settled in a cell. He’ll walk back with the others once they manage to extricate themselves from the morass they’re in. That suits Ianto just fine.

Maybe Owen and Gwen will keep their bickering to themselves in future.

The End

fic, fic_promptly, owen harper, jack harkness, ianto jones, toshiko sato, gwen cooper, torchwood fic, fic: one-shot, ficlet, fic: g

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