[birthday fic] hikaru sulu, botanist extraordinaire
FOR KELLY: echoing what I've said a million times already, but you are the best cast and non-cast mate that I could have ever had the pleasure of randomly stumbling on in an entry that I thought up simply because I had no idea what I should be doing with my two Torchwood boys. There you appeared, and made my rp life awesome, and here we are more than a year after the fact and now it is your birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY, I WROTE YOU A FIC! <3 Hopefully it is entertaining, and that you like it. That's what I was aiming for ;3;
It always seemed that the most exciting of meetings between Ianto and Sulu started out with a phone call, and this one was no different.
Sulu had been given the go-ahead that his shift was over and that he should be returning to his quarters to get some rest when a call came through over his comm. Such a thing really shouldn't be possible, but due to the nature of the community, certain liberties in the laws of reality were taken, and this was one of them. Flipping it open, he didn't even get a chance to speak up for himself before Ianto's voice was tumbling forth from the communications device.
"How fast do you say it would be possible for a plant to grow? Theoretically?"
Sulu's eyebrows raised. Not the normal way they started out their private conversations. He chuckled, slightly. "Well. It really depends. What sort of plant are we talking about here?" he asked, with the nonchalance of someone who knew exactly what they were talking about but didn't want to seem too forthwith with the information.
"I'm not sure. Alien, green, vine-like? Came through the Rift this morning, we put it in the hot house, I went downstairs to work on the archives and now... It's taken over the Hub." Ianto's voice was somewhere between distressed, bemused, and annoyed.
"It's what?" Sulu asked, pointedly. He was familiar with some pretty strange plants, if Audrey III was anything to go by, but he'd never heard of one staging a take-over before. "Ianto, slow down. What are you talking about?"
"It's taken over the Hub," Ianto repeated. "I'm... I'm in the passageway leading up from the archives, and I can't get out. It's everywhere. Somehow it's managed to grow, or stretch, or... I don't know, you're the plants expert! I mean that it's attached to the flipping ceiling and the walls and the walkways, and made the place a bleeding jungle is what I mean. Worse than a jungle, it's as thick as ropes, it's taken over the armory, and I certainly am not going to risk pulling anything out of the archives to cut it with. I need you to come down here and..." He trailed off. God, but here he was asking Sulu to come and rescue him again. "...please?" he tacked on.
Sulu was having a hard time imagining what the heck Ianto was even talking about, but he nodded to his device, starting down the hallway towards his quarters. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "I just got off duty, and I've got to grab a few things from the lab first, but I'll be down as quick as I can. Where did you say you were?"
"I'm in the archives hallway. ...here, I'll. I'll send you the coordinates." Moments later, said coordinates showed up on Sulu's PADD. "That... That should be sufficient enough for Scotty to get you here, yeah? All I've got is my phone, I don't... I don't have anything more specific..."
"It's fine," Sulu reassured him, checking them over. "You just... You sit tight, and I'll be there as soon as I can, alright?"
"Yeah, alright. I'll see you then." Ianto's voice was slightly reassured, although it was clear from the tone that he was obviously not pleased with everything that was going on. And then the connection cut out. Sulu tucked his comm back into its holster and tried not to be disappointed that he wasn't rescuing Ianto from a tower but from a basement, which didn't make quite as epic an image, as he started off towards his botany lab, to send a kit, pulling the device back out after a moment to comm Scotty and warn him that he'd be coming, to start readying the trans-dimensional beaming unit, if he could.
"Well, it's definitely some sort of vine," Sulu said, succinctly. He stood in the corridor that had become Ianto's veritable prison, dressed in his uniform still (he had tons of those, wouldn't want to ruin his civilian attire, especially if something ended up going bad with this plant), examining what had trapped Ianto there in the first place. It was quite impressive, really. Long green vines, with thorny leaves running through with blue and purple veins, almost like it were alive if Sulu didn't know any better. And what's more, it was exactly like Ianto said. It was everywhere. In what Sulu gleamed to be the span of hours, it had gone from one single length into a veritable jungle of the stuff. Interestingly enough, it seemed to be content not to span any further than the doorway to the passageway, and unlike what Ianto had said earlier, it only really went up ten feet or so before there seemed to be some sort of biological mechanism stopping it from growing any higher. Fascinating.
"Yes, I gathered that much," Ianto said, from behind him, slightly annoyed. "Even without your expertise, I could figure that one out. What I want to know is how to get rid of it. All of our equipment, our computers, they're all in that area. All of it brand new. This... This thing just took over, probably in the last five hours or so, and I need to figure out how to make it leave."
"I could just get Scotty to beam the pair of us out of here," Sulu said, leaning forward to examine the vines further.
"Yes, but then the Hub's still going to be like this when we're back." Ianto sighed. "Look, I know... That this is a long shot, but. Isn't there some sort of herbicide you might be able to make up or something? At the rate that it's growing, especially if it's fast-acting, the herbicide should be just as quick and effective in getting rid of it, yeah?"
Sulu shrugged, reaching into his kit and taking out a small box and a pair of scissors, hacking off a leaf and a bit of the vine and putting it all into the box and back into his kit. "It's worth a try," he said. "C'mon. Let's get Scotty to beam you back with me in the meantime. No reason to leave you down here alone while I do all the science stuff."
Ianto nodded, and with a reluctant glance at the fact that he was pretty much leaving their base unprotected (save for the hell plant), turned and moved to stand next to Sulu to clear themselves for beaming back aboard the Enterprise.
It hadn't taken Sulu too long to figure out something to get rid of the plant. It was a vine, after all, and something about it was reminiscent of ivy (despite the fact that ivy certainly didn't rope itself across rooms and behave like that). All he had to do was adapt an herbicide for ivy in such a way that would react with this plant, and that hadn't really taken too much time at all. He was actually pretty proud of himself. Once again, Ianto and Sulu found themselves standing in front of the plant, this time armed with spray guns, breathing masks, and gloves.
"...are you sure that we aren't being a little extreme?" Ianto asked. Sulu shook his head. "Did you see how fast this worked on the sample I took? I really don't want to take any chances getting it in our lungs or on our skin or anything like that. It is an herbicide, after all, and we are in a pretty enclosed space."
Ianto nodded and turned to face the plant. He really hoped that this worked on a larger scale. Jack being out of town, he hadn't wanted to call him and tell him that he'd been bested by an alien crawler of all things. He wanted to prove he could handle his own, and that maybe after that Jack might start putting him back on field work again.
"It's kind of a shame, really, that I can't take more of a sample of it back," Sulu said, gazing at the vine. He had one of a similar size to the original to study, but that wasn't enough to have it grow into anything bigger or anything like that. "It's a really fascinating breed. I mean, look what it's doing here. If I could just take a length of it..."
"Then it'll take over the Enterprise," Ianto countered. "Absolutely not. Don't even think about doing it. I'm not sure what made it stop, and we're lucky that there was no one around in that room."
Sulu turned to Ianto for a moment, before looking back at the vine. "...yeah," he said. "You're probably right. Better safe than sorry, with this one." He turned and checked the spray gun he had in his hand, and then the one in Ianto's, deeming that they were fit for use. "You ready for this?" he asked. Ianto nodded, and then, on the count of three, they stepped forward and starting squirting the potent liquid at the plant.
It was by far nowhere close to the most heroic moment of either of their careers, but it was definitely interesting to see how fast the spray worked. Within moments, the vines near them started to turn brown and brittle, and could be easily broken and moved aside to get to more vines to spray. The same process was done over and over and over, the pair of them branching out to cover every square foot of the Hub, until finally all the vines were dealt with. Sulu stood back and looked at the scene, grinning at a job well done. Ianto stood back and groaned. Because he knew what the next step was. ...cleanup. Putting down the spray guns and the breathing masks and their gloves, they got to work.
It had taken them hours to get it all taken care of, piled in a wheelbarrow that Ianto had found in the lower levels and taking it down to be incinerated as well. Just as they were loading the last barrow of the stuff into the incinerator, Sulu's alarm started going off. It took him a moment to figure out what the noise was and what it was coming from, but when he did, he groaned as he shut it off. "Shit." He was beyond exhausted, having served a full shift and then stayed up all night battling plants and cleaning up with Ianto. He had no idea how he was going to stay awake for the next hour, let alone the whole shift.
Ianto stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, smiling casually at him. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I took the liberty of phoning Scotty. He's told the Captain that you've come down with something and that you've been sentenced to bed rest for the day. He's got Lieutenant Uhura to back him up on it, as well, he should be fine." He smiled a bit wider. "You did a good job today, and we're both knackered. You could use the time off."
Sulu smiled at Ianto tiredly, shaking his head at the other man. "What am I going to do with you, phoning up my superior officers and having them lie to each other for me?" He chuckled, shaking his head. "Thank you, though. I don't know that I could've done an actual shift after this. I guess I just sort of lost track of time."
Ianto put a hand on his lower back and started leading Sulu out and up to the main level of the Hub. "Don't worry about it. Why don't we just go and lie down, yeah? Jack's fixed up his room a lot nicer than it used to be, we can just kip there."
Sulu didn't know how he felt about staying in Jack's room, and it seemed to show on his face, because Ianto spoke up again. "The amount of times he's stayed over at mine, we've got nothing to worry about. I could phone him too, though, if you'd prefer." Sulu gave him a sheepish smile, but nodded. "If you wouldn't mind," he said. He saw Jack as his Captain too, after all, and there was something about doing things without Jack's permission, something about wanting to inform him about everything that was going on, letting him know it all as his brother in arms, that would make Sulu feel a lot better about things.
Ianto sent Sulu down into Jack's room ahead of him, making the necessary call, and alright, the necessary conversation afterward, both to appease Sulu and now Jack, since he had to explain everything that had gone on and how he'd taken care of it and that they were fine, really, he didn't have to come home early just because some plant had decided to make itself at home. By the time he got down the ladder, Sulu was already mostly undressed and crawling into bed.
He smiled at Ianto, shrugging slightly. "I hope you don't mind. I'm about ready to fall asleep on my feet, honestly, and I needed to get ready while I still could." Ianto shook his head, starting to remove his clothes as well before he climbed in, wrapping his arms around the other man from behind.
"Go on to sleep," he said, even though he knew Sulu was mostly there anyway. "I'll make you some coffee, once we're both up again." Shortly thereafter, Ianto was falling asleep as well, tucked safely and contentedly against Sulu's back.
Ianto was normally a deep sleeper, but there were two things that woke him up. One was the inherently uncomfortable feeling that he had just about everywhere, as if shifting just wasn't going to work, as if there was an itch that was coming directly from his bones. The second was that Sulu seemed to be shifting beside him, a lot more restlessly than he normally did, that something must be bothering him as well. Not that Sulu normally didn't shift and sprawl and take up the whole bed and generally end up on top of him, but never in such a way as this. He reached out, shaking the other man awake, unsurprised that it didn't take much effort to do so, considering how restlessly he'd been sleeping before. Sulu let out a little groan, and then shifted uncomfortably again. Ianto had to resist the urge to do the same.
"Jeeze," Sulu said, "sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just... It feels like my skin's crawling." He moved to sit up, and Ianto did the same, a horrible thought came to his head. He turned to the bedside table to flick on the lamp. He didn't even need to turn or look around to know that his suspicion was confirmed, however, from the expletive that arose from Sulu immediately thereafter. Yet he turned and looked anyway.
The pair of them were covered in basically what was, as far as Ianto could tell, some sort of rash. It didn't itch in the normal way that a rash should, but who knows, it could just be some sort of matter of time before that started. Ianto groaned, wanting to put his head in his hands but not wanting to risk it. They should have showered before they went to bed. They should have showered and gotten all of the plant residue off of them, and made sure of it and now it was too late and...
"We're going to have to pay a visit to the med bay," Sulu said, groaning. He didn't really have a problem with being there, but he had a problem with the fact that he needed to be there in the first place. As a botanist, it was pretty embarrassing to once again have had his plants get the better of him. "Sorry. I know that you don't particularly like it there, but. We'll pass you off as an ensign from the lab, McCoy's not going to ask too many questions."
Ianto let out a noise of frustration, but nodded. "Tell you what," Sulu said, trying hard not to do all of the twitching and shifting that he wanted to. "I'll let Scotty know, to get ready to beam us back. Why don't... Why don't you go call Jack. Make us some coffee. It's going to be another long day, I'm afraid. But hey," he said, as an afterthought. "At least I've got that other sample, right? McCoy should be able to give us some antihistamines and some salve, and we should be good as new, alright? Too bad that it's both of us effected, though. I wouldn't mind playing nursemaid to you, rubbing creams and salves on you all day," Sulu said, trying to lighten the situation.
Ianto threw a pillow at his head. "You're lucky I like you, you git," he said, as fondly as he could, considering the circumstances.
It always seemed that the most exciting of meetings between Ianto and Sulu started out with a phone call, and this one was no different.
Sulu had been given the go-ahead that his shift was over and that he should be returning to his quarters to get some rest when a call came through over his comm. Such a thing really shouldn't be possible, but due to the nature of the community, certain liberties in the laws of reality were taken, and this was one of them. Flipping it open, he didn't even get a chance to speak up for himself before Ianto's voice was tumbling forth from the communications device.
"How fast do you say it would be possible for a plant to grow? Theoretically?"
Sulu's eyebrows raised. Not the normal way they started out their private conversations. He chuckled, slightly. "Well. It really depends. What sort of plant are we talking about here?" he asked, with the nonchalance of someone who knew exactly what they were talking about but didn't want to seem too forthwith with the information.
"I'm not sure. Alien, green, vine-like? Came through the Rift this morning, we put it in the hot house, I went downstairs to work on the archives and now... It's taken over the Hub." Ianto's voice was somewhere between distressed, bemused, and annoyed.
"It's what?" Sulu asked, pointedly. He was familiar with some pretty strange plants, if Audrey III was anything to go by, but he'd never heard of one staging a take-over before. "Ianto, slow down. What are you talking about?"
"It's taken over the Hub," Ianto repeated. "I'm... I'm in the passageway leading up from the archives, and I can't get out. It's everywhere. Somehow it's managed to grow, or stretch, or... I don't know, you're the plants expert! I mean that it's attached to the flipping ceiling and the walls and the walkways, and made the place a bleeding jungle is what I mean. Worse than a jungle, it's as thick as ropes, it's taken over the armory, and I certainly am not going to risk pulling anything out of the archives to cut it with. I need you to come down here and..." He trailed off. God, but here he was asking Sulu to come and rescue him again. "...please?" he tacked on.
Sulu was having a hard time imagining what the heck Ianto was even talking about, but he nodded to his device, starting down the hallway towards his quarters. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "I just got off duty, and I've got to grab a few things from the lab first, but I'll be down as quick as I can. Where did you say you were?"
"I'm in the archives hallway. ...here, I'll. I'll send you the coordinates." Moments later, said coordinates showed up on Sulu's PADD. "That... That should be sufficient enough for Scotty to get you here, yeah? All I've got is my phone, I don't... I don't have anything more specific..."
"It's fine," Sulu reassured him, checking them over. "You just... You sit tight, and I'll be there as soon as I can, alright?"
"Yeah, alright. I'll see you then." Ianto's voice was slightly reassured, although it was clear from the tone that he was obviously not pleased with everything that was going on. And then the connection cut out. Sulu tucked his comm back into its holster and tried not to be disappointed that he wasn't rescuing Ianto from a tower but from a basement, which didn't make quite as epic an image, as he started off towards his botany lab, to send a kit, pulling the device back out after a moment to comm Scotty and warn him that he'd be coming, to start readying the trans-dimensional beaming unit, if he could.
"Well, it's definitely some sort of vine," Sulu said, succinctly. He stood in the corridor that had become Ianto's veritable prison, dressed in his uniform still (he had tons of those, wouldn't want to ruin his civilian attire, especially if something ended up going bad with this plant), examining what had trapped Ianto there in the first place. It was quite impressive, really. Long green vines, with thorny leaves running through with blue and purple veins, almost like it were alive if Sulu didn't know any better. And what's more, it was exactly like Ianto said. It was everywhere. In what Sulu gleamed to be the span of hours, it had gone from one single length into a veritable jungle of the stuff. Interestingly enough, it seemed to be content not to span any further than the doorway to the passageway, and unlike what Ianto had said earlier, it only really went up ten feet or so before there seemed to be some sort of biological mechanism stopping it from growing any higher. Fascinating.
"Yes, I gathered that much," Ianto said, from behind him, slightly annoyed. "Even without your expertise, I could figure that one out. What I want to know is how to get rid of it. All of our equipment, our computers, they're all in that area. All of it brand new. This... This thing just took over, probably in the last five hours or so, and I need to figure out how to make it leave."
"I could just get Scotty to beam the pair of us out of here," Sulu said, leaning forward to examine the vines further.
"Yes, but then the Hub's still going to be like this when we're back." Ianto sighed. "Look, I know... That this is a long shot, but. Isn't there some sort of herbicide you might be able to make up or something? At the rate that it's growing, especially if it's fast-acting, the herbicide should be just as quick and effective in getting rid of it, yeah?"
Sulu shrugged, reaching into his kit and taking out a small box and a pair of scissors, hacking off a leaf and a bit of the vine and putting it all into the box and back into his kit. "It's worth a try," he said. "C'mon. Let's get Scotty to beam you back with me in the meantime. No reason to leave you down here alone while I do all the science stuff."
Ianto nodded, and with a reluctant glance at the fact that he was pretty much leaving their base unprotected (save for the hell plant), turned and moved to stand next to Sulu to clear themselves for beaming back aboard the Enterprise.
It hadn't taken Sulu too long to figure out something to get rid of the plant. It was a vine, after all, and something about it was reminiscent of ivy (despite the fact that ivy certainly didn't rope itself across rooms and behave like that). All he had to do was adapt an herbicide for ivy in such a way that would react with this plant, and that hadn't really taken too much time at all. He was actually pretty proud of himself. Once again, Ianto and Sulu found themselves standing in front of the plant, this time armed with spray guns, breathing masks, and gloves.
"...are you sure that we aren't being a little extreme?" Ianto asked. Sulu shook his head. "Did you see how fast this worked on the sample I took? I really don't want to take any chances getting it in our lungs or on our skin or anything like that. It is an herbicide, after all, and we are in a pretty enclosed space."
Ianto nodded and turned to face the plant. He really hoped that this worked on a larger scale. Jack being out of town, he hadn't wanted to call him and tell him that he'd been bested by an alien crawler of all things. He wanted to prove he could handle his own, and that maybe after that Jack might start putting him back on field work again.
"It's kind of a shame, really, that I can't take more of a sample of it back," Sulu said, gazing at the vine. He had one of a similar size to the original to study, but that wasn't enough to have it grow into anything bigger or anything like that. "It's a really fascinating breed. I mean, look what it's doing here. If I could just take a length of it..."
"Then it'll take over the Enterprise," Ianto countered. "Absolutely not. Don't even think about doing it. I'm not sure what made it stop, and we're lucky that there was no one around in that room."
Sulu turned to Ianto for a moment, before looking back at the vine. "...yeah," he said. "You're probably right. Better safe than sorry, with this one." He turned and checked the spray gun he had in his hand, and then the one in Ianto's, deeming that they were fit for use. "You ready for this?" he asked. Ianto nodded, and then, on the count of three, they stepped forward and starting squirting the potent liquid at the plant.
It was by far nowhere close to the most heroic moment of either of their careers, but it was definitely interesting to see how fast the spray worked. Within moments, the vines near them started to turn brown and brittle, and could be easily broken and moved aside to get to more vines to spray. The same process was done over and over and over, the pair of them branching out to cover every square foot of the Hub, until finally all the vines were dealt with. Sulu stood back and looked at the scene, grinning at a job well done. Ianto stood back and groaned. Because he knew what the next step was. ...cleanup. Putting down the spray guns and the breathing masks and their gloves, they got to work.
It had taken them hours to get it all taken care of, piled in a wheelbarrow that Ianto had found in the lower levels and taking it down to be incinerated as well. Just as they were loading the last barrow of the stuff into the incinerator, Sulu's alarm started going off. It took him a moment to figure out what the noise was and what it was coming from, but when he did, he groaned as he shut it off. "Shit." He was beyond exhausted, having served a full shift and then stayed up all night battling plants and cleaning up with Ianto. He had no idea how he was going to stay awake for the next hour, let alone the whole shift.
Ianto stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, smiling casually at him. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I took the liberty of phoning Scotty. He's told the Captain that you've come down with something and that you've been sentenced to bed rest for the day. He's got Lieutenant Uhura to back him up on it, as well, he should be fine." He smiled a bit wider. "You did a good job today, and we're both knackered. You could use the time off."
Sulu smiled at Ianto tiredly, shaking his head at the other man. "What am I going to do with you, phoning up my superior officers and having them lie to each other for me?" He chuckled, shaking his head. "Thank you, though. I don't know that I could've done an actual shift after this. I guess I just sort of lost track of time."
Ianto put a hand on his lower back and started leading Sulu out and up to the main level of the Hub. "Don't worry about it. Why don't we just go and lie down, yeah? Jack's fixed up his room a lot nicer than it used to be, we can just kip there."
Sulu didn't know how he felt about staying in Jack's room, and it seemed to show on his face, because Ianto spoke up again. "The amount of times he's stayed over at mine, we've got nothing to worry about. I could phone him too, though, if you'd prefer." Sulu gave him a sheepish smile, but nodded. "If you wouldn't mind," he said. He saw Jack as his Captain too, after all, and there was something about doing things without Jack's permission, something about wanting to inform him about everything that was going on, letting him know it all as his brother in arms, that would make Sulu feel a lot better about things.
Ianto sent Sulu down into Jack's room ahead of him, making the necessary call, and alright, the necessary conversation afterward, both to appease Sulu and now Jack, since he had to explain everything that had gone on and how he'd taken care of it and that they were fine, really, he didn't have to come home early just because some plant had decided to make itself at home. By the time he got down the ladder, Sulu was already mostly undressed and crawling into bed.
He smiled at Ianto, shrugging slightly. "I hope you don't mind. I'm about ready to fall asleep on my feet, honestly, and I needed to get ready while I still could." Ianto shook his head, starting to remove his clothes as well before he climbed in, wrapping his arms around the other man from behind.
"Go on to sleep," he said, even though he knew Sulu was mostly there anyway. "I'll make you some coffee, once we're both up again." Shortly thereafter, Ianto was falling asleep as well, tucked safely and contentedly against Sulu's back.
Ianto was normally a deep sleeper, but there were two things that woke him up. One was the inherently uncomfortable feeling that he had just about everywhere, as if shifting just wasn't going to work, as if there was an itch that was coming directly from his bones. The second was that Sulu seemed to be shifting beside him, a lot more restlessly than he normally did, that something must be bothering him as well. Not that Sulu normally didn't shift and sprawl and take up the whole bed and generally end up on top of him, but never in such a way as this. He reached out, shaking the other man awake, unsurprised that it didn't take much effort to do so, considering how restlessly he'd been sleeping before. Sulu let out a little groan, and then shifted uncomfortably again. Ianto had to resist the urge to do the same.
"Jeeze," Sulu said, "sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just... It feels like my skin's crawling." He moved to sit up, and Ianto did the same, a horrible thought came to his head. He turned to the bedside table to flick on the lamp. He didn't even need to turn or look around to know that his suspicion was confirmed, however, from the expletive that arose from Sulu immediately thereafter. Yet he turned and looked anyway.
The pair of them were covered in basically what was, as far as Ianto could tell, some sort of rash. It didn't itch in the normal way that a rash should, but who knows, it could just be some sort of matter of time before that started. Ianto groaned, wanting to put his head in his hands but not wanting to risk it. They should have showered before they went to bed. They should have showered and gotten all of the plant residue off of them, and made sure of it and now it was too late and...
"We're going to have to pay a visit to the med bay," Sulu said, groaning. He didn't really have a problem with being there, but he had a problem with the fact that he needed to be there in the first place. As a botanist, it was pretty embarrassing to once again have had his plants get the better of him. "Sorry. I know that you don't particularly like it there, but. We'll pass you off as an ensign from the lab, McCoy's not going to ask too many questions."
Ianto let out a noise of frustration, but nodded. "Tell you what," Sulu said, trying hard not to do all of the twitching and shifting that he wanted to. "I'll let Scotty know, to get ready to beam us back. Why don't... Why don't you go call Jack. Make us some coffee. It's going to be another long day, I'm afraid. But hey," he said, as an afterthought. "At least I've got that other sample, right? McCoy should be able to give us some antihistamines and some salve, and we should be good as new, alright? Too bad that it's both of us effected, though. I wouldn't mind playing nursemaid to you, rubbing creams and salves on you all day," Sulu said, trying to lighten the situation.
Ianto threw a pillow at his head. "You're lucky I like you, you git," he said, as fondly as he could, considering the circumstances.