IT'S FINISHED.
Title: Team B: Marching Orders
Fandom: Torchwood
Word Count: 16,255
Rating: PG-13 for swearing and mild sex.
Pairing: None, really, not so much.
Warnings: I warned you before, I shan't be doing it again.
Disclaimer: All these characters belong to the BBC, whom I don't currently trust to do anything awesome with them.
Notes: In some way, this is Ande's fault. It is also Emma's fault, and Cat's fault. They are all better writers than me, but refused to do it and thus, thus … I had to. I actually broke the habit of a lifetime and did some research for this, but it is no doubt riddled with factual inaccuracies. My defence is: It's fucking Torchwood, how much research do you think the writers on the show do?
Because Mickey Smith was Mickey Smith, he showed up for his first actual day at Torchwood Three, Cardiff, wide-awake and carrying the BFG. Jake had painted "BFG" on its underside in black matte paint with tongue-biting concentration after an uncharacteristically stoned evening with Jackie (the night of the Opera - Rose went, Jackie didn't, Jake and Mickey hadn't been intending to stay, the usual story), and there really was no disputing that it was a fucking enormous piece of hardware. Mickey was very fond of the BFG, and in his heart of hearts he believed that whatever Torchwood had lurking under their pretentious sculpture, it wasn't going to be the same.
He'd just got through the ridiculously huge round door of Jack Harkness Doesn't Really Do Subtle Interior Decorating, Does He, shaking his head and half-chuckling at the overblown tech of it all, when he spotted Gwen. Mickey marched over to the nearest computer console and tried to look alert and together, which was somewhat undermined by him having no clue what he was meant to be doing, and no one paying any attention to him. They all appeared to be standing around drinking out of mugs.
"Who's this?" Gwen asked, when she finally noticed him lurking by the console - it had "Owen" scratched into the screen's casing - and looking uncertain. Jack was occupied with a mouthful of coffee, so Mickey took the initiative.
"Mickey Smith," he said, shaking her hand. The BFG bounced against his side, but he was used to that by now. Gwen looked a little non-plussed, and Mickey gave a relieved start as Martha appeared in a lab coat, cradling a cup of coffee as if it was manna from heaven.
There was a great deal of coffee-cradling going on, in fact, although Mickey noticed that no one was exactly falling over themselves to offer him one. Martha pointed at the BFG with her little finger, the rest of her digits still engaged in massaging her drink.
"You brought a gun?"
Mickey shrugged, trying not to feel too offended by her tone. "Thought it might be useful." What with the propensity of the earth to get attacked by random alien races every five minutes and all that he's known in his parallel world where there is no Doctor to save them, Mickey thinks that "just in case" is a pretty important consideration. There are so many more scars on him than when he first met Jack Harkness; Jack, of course, will have no new marks at all.
"One thing we're not short on at Torchwood," Gwen said with a sigh over the surface of her own coffee, "is weapons." Her hair was puffed up like a mane, and she had a gap between her teeth that Mickey hadn't really had the chance to register when he'd seen her before. She looked like a cartoon character, someone from the Beano or the Dandy.
"Just in case," Mickey shrugged again. The shoulder-strap was beginning to dig in, but he was used to that, too. Sometimes it'd be a couple of days before he got to take the BFG off, and it wasn't as if he minded.
"Over-compensating for something, are we?" Jack smirked, finally swallowing his mouthful and arching his eyebrows at Mickey in a manner that Mickey knew very well was welcoming, but which he still found ever so slightly irritating.
He rolled his eyes. "I thought I'd joined Torchwood, not the Innuendo Squad."
"Most of the time they're the same affair." A figure in a suit handed him a cup of coffee. It was a Cadbury's Crème Egg mug, one of the ones that had come free with the Easter eggs way back in the mid-nineties, and the contents smelled absolutely heavenly, like coffee ground by seraphim and brewed with … with unicorn tears or something. "Ianto Jones, by the way."
"I know, I remember you from the -" Mickey began.
"Most people don't," Ianto said, and his tone was so tart and so dry that it was like being addressed by a pint of cranberry juice. Mickey decided that he liked him, even if the guy did seem a bit too uptight. He - tidy tie and sweet suit, like James Bond from the Valleys - also had a cup of coffee in his hands, although he wasn't holding it with quite the same reverent adoration that the rest of the team were. "Welcome to Torchwood."
"So … when do I get the tour?" Mickey asked. The coffee was nice-smelling, but he'd given up caffeine on doctor's orders six months ago, and no amount of MMMing from the others was going to change the fact that he didn't want to die of an adrenalin-related arrhythmia.
"When I've finished my coffee," Jack said before anyone else could answer. "And you're going to have to put your comfort blanket down -"
"My what?"
"Your gun," Gwen said with a tight smile. "It's a little on the … large … side." She choked on a laugh at the same time as Martha stifled - not very well, either - a giggle, and Mickey began to get The Feeling, that one of having shown up in fancy dress to a party where everyone else was in black tie. It was the old familiar sense of being out of place and not quite up to speed, and he hadn't missed it in the slightest when he'd been running with Jake. Fuck Torchwood, if they thought he wasn't food enough.
"Fine," he muttered. He put the coffee down on the nearest flat surface, and Ianto scooped it up immediately; Mickey lifted the BFG's reinforced strap back over his head with a great surge of regret; the BFG was in an odd way the last link he had to Rose and Jackie and Jake, and, yeah, alright, maybe it was kind of a comfort blanket to him in that respect. It just also happened to fire energy beams, grenades, and ceramic shards depending on setting. In his opinion that made it pretty bloody comforting.
"Don't take it personally," Gwen said with a conspiratorial grin that made Mickey feel a little better almost at once, "it's just that you're making Jack's masculinity feel all threatened -"
"HEY."
" - with him in charge we've already got one gun-toting idiot around the place - "
"HEY!" Jack protested again, spraying coffee into the air in a mist of indignant java.
" - what we really need is a tech and systems guy," Gwen finished, ignoring Jack's exaggeratedly wounded look, ignoring Jack mouthing, Who is in charge here, me or you? at her. "I'm not sure there's room at Torchwood for two gun-waving macho men -"
"Three," said a new voice, and, "Oh, coffee? You're too kind."
The change in atmosphere was abrupt and total. Everyone jerked round as though tugged by wires, Jack - the bloody hypocrite - whipping out his silly little service revolver like lightning to point it at the voice with a look of acute and sudden anger. Mickey noticed - because he usually did notice things like this while everyone was busy not paying any attention to his advice or making him sit in the car - that Gwen and Jack were very tense, Martha looked as confused as he felt, and Ianto looked like he was about to burst an important vein in his forehead.
The owner of the voice was glowing slightly and looked disheveled, like he'd just fallen a long way unexpectedly - his hair stood on end as the glow faded. He was wearing the kind of get-up Mickey expected from an ageing Camden indie-kid, and something about him reminded Mickey powerfully of Jack, back when he'd first met him. It might have been the ridiculous boots, or the prominent gun-belt, or the swagger, or the sword resting over his shoulders -
To someone who hadn't spent as much time reading up on weapons as Mickey had in the last two years, it probably looked like a katana, but to Mickey's informed eye it was immediately obvious as a Geom, a Korean swords which was considerably less ubiquitous and favoured by a certain kind of fighter over the better-known Japanese weapon.
- It was probably, though, more to do with the way the short, cocky-looking guy took Mickey's coffee from Ianto's hand. "Hello again, Eye-Candy."
Ianto looked like he was about to explode from the sheer effort of not punching the guy in the face. Mickey knew the feeling very, very well; and that most of all was what reminded him of that earliest meeting with Jack.
The visitor raised his eyebrows at Jack's gun. "Oh dear," he said mockingly, "I thought we were past all this." And he sighed, and took a sip of the coffee. "Mmmm."
"So did I," Jack snapped, evidently not best pleased. "But oh, look, you're back here again. Take a fucking hint, John."
"Why are you people never pleased to see me?" John complained, addressing his grievance to the ceiling.
"Oh, I dunno," Gwen said with surprising aggression, "perhaps it's because you tried to kill us all? Twice."
"Right, right," John said, sipping his pilfered coffee with apparent unconcern and every sign of enjoyment, "and now I want to make that up to you." His smile wasn't the dazzling white thing that Jack liked to flash around like a bank card, but to Mickey's eyes it was definitely from the same school of insincerity and charisma: the annoying one. "I admit I was too late to join in the last big world-saving effort, but -"
"No," Jack said firmly, his gun still levelled like a starter's pistol at John's head.
"Come on, just let me come and play at heroes with your little gang," John whined. "I'm bored. Every time I try overthrowing something or stealing it I just end up thinking 'well, this is no good - this has been done already' - and it's no good accusing me of having no imagination either, you know that's not true -"
"Don't try and convince us you've had a change of heart," Ianto said extremely sharply, glaring at the coffee in John's hand with more ferocity than Gwen addressed to the sword on the man's opposite shoulder.
"Not heart," John leered, and Ianto's expression was indescribable in response.
"Excuse me," Martha interjected, "Stupid question, probably, but … who is this?"
"Ooh," John said, apparently noticing her for the first time, "newbies. A soldier, Jack? She's cute. But then you always did have excellent taste."
Martha cast a pointed glance at her lab coat, and at her engagement ring. "I'm a doctor," she said, the unspoken addendum of 'and you're an idiot' hanging loud in the air. "And I'm taken."
"You stand like a soldier," John retorted, finishing with a smirk, "and … really. Like that ever matters to Jack."
Mickey thought he heard the same phrase echoing but he couldn't work out where from. Even his own mouth was a possibility.
John, meanwhile, smirked all the more widely at Martha and said, "John Hart. Captain John Hart. Jack's partner."
"Former," Jack and Ianto said, near perfectly-matched in delivery and in vehemence.
"What … kind … of partner?" Mickey asked. He wasn't especially surprised when everyone ignored him as if he wasn't even in the room, and he only stared angrily at the floor out of habit, really. There was a large box down there, just under the desk where his gun was propped up. The dimensions of it were familiar, somehow, and it had several Special Delivery and Do Not Open stamps on it, the flaps sealed shut with black and yellow tape.
Mickey reached down for it surreptitiously, and tugged it closer to his feet, while around him the bickering continued.
"You can't. Even if you weren't a liability, there'd be too many people," Jack said, finally shoving his gun away out of sight again. Mickey wasn't really listening anymore; he slit the security seals with his penknife and picked up a sheet of paper from the underside of the top flap with a typed invoice on it. He put the paper on the desk and pulled the flaps all the way back.
"Oh, there isn't room in your little secret club?" John snorted. "How many people worked at the Agency when you signed up, Poster Boy?"
"What's this?" Ianto murmured, temporarily distracted as he picked up the sheet of paper. "'Compliments of Miss Smith'?"
Everyone ignored him, too. Mickey's hand encountered something cold and metallic and slightly rough. It was flat, and as his fingers moved cautiously along he came across an edge, and something raised and possibly-plastic.
"Right, because you've decided saving the world is so much more important than personal gain now, have you?" Jack growled. He didn't sound convinced. "I know what all this is about. Just go away."
"No I haven't," John said patiently, "But I'm bored, and you lot get all the excitement." He gave the stolen coffee a meditative slurp, "that and a basement full of things that go boom."
Mickey broke into a smile as he found the next angular outcropping of metal and knew just what Sarah-Jane Smith had sent them.
"K-9!" he shouted with glee swinging the pitch of his voice upwards.
The entire team and contested member turned to look at him as he folded down the cardboard sides, scattering a snowdrift of polystyrene chips over the pitted steel floor, to reveal the blocky shape of the robot dog.
"Who told you to open that?" Jack demanded. Mickey decided to ignore him and see how he liked it for once; he flipped the emergency restart on K-9's base.
"Good morning, Master," K-9 beeped.
"A-ha!" John sounded delighted. "A robot dog!"
"A … robot dog," Martha echoed uncertainly. "Great. Uh. Jack? Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Mickey noticed, as a sort of background to his joy at being reunited with the metal dog (and the only thing that travelled with the Doctor that didn't seem to think he was an idiot), that Gwen's jaw tightened at this; John and Ianto seemed far more interested in K-9 and exchanging a bewildering volley of emotionally-charged Looks to care much about Martha's pow-wow.
Ianto's expression was fairly easy to read as he looked a lot like he wanted to throttle John with his own belt and possibly shove him in a canal never to be found again. Mickey could probably have interpreted John's without much effort, but he thought that he really, really didn't want to get into whatever it was skulking around the short bloke's eyes.
"It's easily solved," Mickey heard Martha whisper as she disappeared with Jack.
"Why are you really here?" Ianto hissed at John. It was a proper hiss, a distrustful hiss to be aimed at Bond villains and complete bastards.
Mickey tried to catch Gwen's eye in the hope of getting the background, but he failed to - she had gone slightly pink in the cheeks.
"To get a little action," John smirked, and Ianto quite surprisingly didn't actually head-butt the man in the mouth, although it seemed to be a close-run thing - he even jerked forwards a little on his toes. Mickey thought perhaps he really had ended up in a soap opera by mistake.
Gwen seemed content to ameliorate her frustrations by making a fuss of K-9; Martha and Jack returned a minute or two later, both frowning a little but both determined and looking ready for action, although if Mickey remembered correctly Jack existed in a permanent state of ready for action, and Martha from what little he knew of her looked like the kind of woman who was ready to take on the entire universe at a moment's notice and without much complaining. Truth be told he was looking forwards to working with her - there was probably at least a little he could learn from someone who'd been UNIT-trained.
"We've figured it out," Jack said with an air of triumph, and Gwen's expression soured. Mickey thought he could probably guess what she was thinking - why wasn't I included in this "we"? Don’t my solutions count? - but this really wasn't a time for wounded egos. If it was he'd have been airing his as well. "John, you're not really adept at being a team member - "
"Neither are you," John remarked, "that's why we got partnered with each other, remember? 'Just stick Trouble and Strife together and maybe they'll get each other killed,' were I think the exact words." He drained the coffee cup and slammed it down on a desk.
" - let me finish. Mickey?"
"What?" Mickey frowned, not really expecting to be consulted in this discussion. He straightened up, giving a quick glance to the BFG to make sure nothing had happened to it.
"You're probably not in the habit of taking orders, am I right?" Jack sounded thoughtful.
Actually, Mickey was pretty good at taking orders, although he was used to taking them from someone who actually gave a toss if he lived or died, which he wasn't entirely sure that Jack would be. However, Jack was clearly leading up to something, so if he wanted to indulge in rhetoric Mickey might as well let him. "I suppose not. I don't mind working alone."
"Nor do I," John said hastily.
"Bullshit," Jack said pleasantly, flashing his Colegate-advert smile at his former partner with just a slight undercurrent of malice, "you can't keep your own shoes tied without someone to look up to."
"Oh, that's right, and who was in charge of the Crucible Reconnaissance?" John snorted. "I don't seem to recall it being man of the year, 5098. I seem to recall someone taking credit for things that someone else did, in face - "
"Shut up," Gwen suggested, "and let Jack explain."
"The Rift doesn't just affect Cardiff," Jack said, acknowledging her with the barest of nods. "Most of the time and space debris ends up here, but the nature of time-space disruption being what it is - "
"Oh I know you were asleep through that training session," John muttered.
"Things end up scattered all over the world. Torchwood's needed an away team for a long time, but I've been pretty short on personnel - since Torchwood Four vanished and as Torchwood Two had his nervous breakdown and isn't due for release for another six years we've been a bit stretched." Jack raised his eyebrows. "What we really need is a roving team, something suited to action and international travel."
"That'd be me," John said. "Alright, I know you're just trying to get rid of me, but really … those air hostesses will do absolutely anything to make your flight more comfortable. They're not exaggerating."
"I'd already considered that," Jack agreed, and he added with a slightly sour expression, "You don't have any problems with shooting to kill or lying to officials." He paused. "You never did mention how murder rehab went …"
"Brilliantly up to the point where I gutted Sister Beckinsale," John said, innocently swinging his geom from one shoulder to the other. "Things took a turn after that."
Martha covered her face with one hand. Gwen rolled her eyes.
"But you need someone to keep you in line, and I think Mickey is the man for the job," Jack said with a disarming smile. It was the kind of disarming smile that marched up behind you and poked you in the kidneys with a gun and shouted "DROP THAT WEAPON" - it was a barging in and taking no prisoners kind of smile. Mickey sighed.
"Are you sure he can - " Gwen began nervously. Mickey'd have been insulted, but he wasn't sure he could either. "It's just - no offence, Mickey, but John's a bit … well … um. He's John."
"Oh I've thought of that," Jack said airily. "Ianto's going to go with them too."
The only person in the room who didn't look shocked and unhappy with this was John, who looked shocked and very, very pleased. Gwen and Martha looked incredulous, to the point of Gwen mouthing, really? IANTO? at Martha and Martha mouthing back, so not my idea; Ianto was the very portrait of wounded anger.
"I'm what?" Ianto blurted, almost shaking with rage. "You want me to fuck off out of Cardiff with him - not you, Mickey - because … because … because why? What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing," Jack said soothingly. "You're just the best possible person to co-ordinate missions. You're organised, you're thorough, you're dependable. They need someone like you, and now we've got Martha here at Torchwood Three - "
Ianto's expression said that this was expressly not okay. Gwen and Martha exchanged a look that could only be described as "Erk", and Mickey wondered if he'd be a complete coward if he chose this particular moment to find out where the toilets were and stay there until the bad feeling had passed over.
"I don't think I should be replacing Ianto - " Martha began, but Jack waved her silent.
"You're not. You need more time back at the base to get to grips with our methods as opposed to UNIT's, John and Mickey are going to need someone familiar with all the Torchwood procedures and passkeys to keep them pointed in the right direction while they're out in the field," Jack addressed Martha, but he was looking at Ianto. Mickey wondered if the air was actually about to burst into flames or if it just felt like it was going to.
"I could go," Gwen suggested. She didn't sound like she wanted to in any way, and her smile was sickly.
"Not a chance. We need you here," Jack said, firm and not even bothering to look at her. "Compassion and people skills, Gwen. Also, you have all those Cardiff police contacts that are so useful. And your husband would never forgive me if I let you go running around, oh, Chernobyl or wherever."
Gwen's relief was palpable.
"So what you're saying is …" Ianto subjected his coffee to exceptionally close scrutiny, "I have to be the one who goes with Mickey and John because there's no one who'd miss me here?"
The atmosphere in the Hub at Torchwood Three was several shades of tense beyond "electric", and Mickey realised that for all the input he, John, Martha, Gwen and K-9 were likely to have on the upcoming conversation they might as well be in a Starbucks. He almost suggested it as an alternative, but no one else looked like they were going to go anywhere. John was all but eating popcorn, inappropriate glee suffusing his cruel features.
"… no," Jack said in a quieter voice, "but you're the best person for the job. Personal can't take first place. Not for people who understand the importance of what we do here."
The nod Ianto gave him in reply was curt, and involved no eye-contact. It looked more like "I can't be bothered to argue with you anymore because you've clearly made up your mind", than "I agree, and I understand the validity of what you're saying". Mickey exhaled very, very slowly.
"Cheer up, Eye-Candy," John said, grinning as though he'd just been presented with a trophy, "I taught Jack everything he knows - "
Mickey only just got hold of Ianto's arms in time to stop him from landing a punch that would probably have knocked John's teeth out. "Ianto … come on, man … calm down …" he planted himself directly between them, facing Ianto, and made the most conciliatory face he could. "C'mon, this isn't going to help."
Beetroot-red and burning with rage, for a moment it seemed like Ianto was just going to plough through Mickey regardless and try to tear John's smugly smiling head off with his bare hands, but after a worrying and tense handful of seconds that stretched on into an awkward eternity while Mickey squeezed Ianto's upper arms for dear life, his fingers digging deep into bunched biceps (and that was definitely going to bruise the poor bloke), Ianto deflated.
"Got a temper on him, that one," John said cheerfully. "Are you sure you want to hand him over to me?"
"Shut up," Jack snarled. "And give him your wristband."
John started. "No - not a chance. No. Absolutely not. No way."
"Do it," Jack said grimly, "or you're not on the team. I don't trust you with that thing, and if we can only keep in contact with one member of the Away Team, I want it to be Ianto. He's the only one of you - sorry, Mickey - who's capable of dealing calmly and non-violently with a serious situation."
This flew in the face of recent incidents somewhat, and Mickey wasn’t' at all surprised to hear John respond, "You what? He just tried to tear my bloody face off!"
"Ianto Jones," Jack said, rolling the name around his mouth like a cough sweet, "does not shoot first and ask questions later. Give him the wristband and let him take care of communications and coordination, John, or I'll shoot you myself, and there will be no Away Team."
Mickey couldn't see quite what John's reaction was to that, but he could take a pretty good guess. There was a pause, and Ianto said, "you'll have to let go of my arms, Mickey, I can't put it on with you doing that."
"One more thing," Mickey said as he stepped away. "Can we take K-9?"
Jack blinked. "What?"
"K-9," Mickey gestured to the robot dog. "He's … sort of a friend of mine. And you've got all this equipment here. We're going to need all the help we can get."
"We're going to need technical back-up," Gwen muttered to Jack, but he brushed her away.
"It's alright, I know a fourteen-year-old boy who can help us with that," he said with a weak smile. "Why not? Go on, Mickey. Take the metal dog. You're right … you do need all the help you can get."
"Uh," Martha said, staring into her coffee cup with a look of sudden alarm, "who's going to make the coffee now?"
FIRST MISSION
Fandom: Torchwood
Word Count: 16,255
Rating: PG-13 for swearing and mild sex.
Pairing: None, really, not so much.
Warnings: I warned you before, I shan't be doing it again.
Disclaimer: All these characters belong to the BBC, whom I don't currently trust to do anything awesome with them.
Notes: In some way, this is Ande's fault. It is also Emma's fault, and Cat's fault. They are all better writers than me, but refused to do it and thus, thus … I had to. I actually broke the habit of a lifetime and did some research for this, but it is no doubt riddled with factual inaccuracies. My defence is: It's fucking Torchwood, how much research do you think the writers on the show do?
Because Mickey Smith was Mickey Smith, he showed up for his first actual day at Torchwood Three, Cardiff, wide-awake and carrying the BFG. Jake had painted "BFG" on its underside in black matte paint with tongue-biting concentration after an uncharacteristically stoned evening with Jackie (the night of the Opera - Rose went, Jackie didn't, Jake and Mickey hadn't been intending to stay, the usual story), and there really was no disputing that it was a fucking enormous piece of hardware. Mickey was very fond of the BFG, and in his heart of hearts he believed that whatever Torchwood had lurking under their pretentious sculpture, it wasn't going to be the same.
He'd just got through the ridiculously huge round door of Jack Harkness Doesn't Really Do Subtle Interior Decorating, Does He, shaking his head and half-chuckling at the overblown tech of it all, when he spotted Gwen. Mickey marched over to the nearest computer console and tried to look alert and together, which was somewhat undermined by him having no clue what he was meant to be doing, and no one paying any attention to him. They all appeared to be standing around drinking out of mugs.
"Who's this?" Gwen asked, when she finally noticed him lurking by the console - it had "Owen" scratched into the screen's casing - and looking uncertain. Jack was occupied with a mouthful of coffee, so Mickey took the initiative.
"Mickey Smith," he said, shaking her hand. The BFG bounced against his side, but he was used to that by now. Gwen looked a little non-plussed, and Mickey gave a relieved start as Martha appeared in a lab coat, cradling a cup of coffee as if it was manna from heaven.
There was a great deal of coffee-cradling going on, in fact, although Mickey noticed that no one was exactly falling over themselves to offer him one. Martha pointed at the BFG with her little finger, the rest of her digits still engaged in massaging her drink.
"You brought a gun?"
Mickey shrugged, trying not to feel too offended by her tone. "Thought it might be useful." What with the propensity of the earth to get attacked by random alien races every five minutes and all that he's known in his parallel world where there is no Doctor to save them, Mickey thinks that "just in case" is a pretty important consideration. There are so many more scars on him than when he first met Jack Harkness; Jack, of course, will have no new marks at all.
"One thing we're not short on at Torchwood," Gwen said with a sigh over the surface of her own coffee, "is weapons." Her hair was puffed up like a mane, and she had a gap between her teeth that Mickey hadn't really had the chance to register when he'd seen her before. She looked like a cartoon character, someone from the Beano or the Dandy.
"Just in case," Mickey shrugged again. The shoulder-strap was beginning to dig in, but he was used to that, too. Sometimes it'd be a couple of days before he got to take the BFG off, and it wasn't as if he minded.
"Over-compensating for something, are we?" Jack smirked, finally swallowing his mouthful and arching his eyebrows at Mickey in a manner that Mickey knew very well was welcoming, but which he still found ever so slightly irritating.
He rolled his eyes. "I thought I'd joined Torchwood, not the Innuendo Squad."
"Most of the time they're the same affair." A figure in a suit handed him a cup of coffee. It was a Cadbury's Crème Egg mug, one of the ones that had come free with the Easter eggs way back in the mid-nineties, and the contents smelled absolutely heavenly, like coffee ground by seraphim and brewed with … with unicorn tears or something. "Ianto Jones, by the way."
"I know, I remember you from the -" Mickey began.
"Most people don't," Ianto said, and his tone was so tart and so dry that it was like being addressed by a pint of cranberry juice. Mickey decided that he liked him, even if the guy did seem a bit too uptight. He - tidy tie and sweet suit, like James Bond from the Valleys - also had a cup of coffee in his hands, although he wasn't holding it with quite the same reverent adoration that the rest of the team were. "Welcome to Torchwood."
"So … when do I get the tour?" Mickey asked. The coffee was nice-smelling, but he'd given up caffeine on doctor's orders six months ago, and no amount of MMMing from the others was going to change the fact that he didn't want to die of an adrenalin-related arrhythmia.
"When I've finished my coffee," Jack said before anyone else could answer. "And you're going to have to put your comfort blanket down -"
"My what?"
"Your gun," Gwen said with a tight smile. "It's a little on the … large … side." She choked on a laugh at the same time as Martha stifled - not very well, either - a giggle, and Mickey began to get The Feeling, that one of having shown up in fancy dress to a party where everyone else was in black tie. It was the old familiar sense of being out of place and not quite up to speed, and he hadn't missed it in the slightest when he'd been running with Jake. Fuck Torchwood, if they thought he wasn't food enough.
"Fine," he muttered. He put the coffee down on the nearest flat surface, and Ianto scooped it up immediately; Mickey lifted the BFG's reinforced strap back over his head with a great surge of regret; the BFG was in an odd way the last link he had to Rose and Jackie and Jake, and, yeah, alright, maybe it was kind of a comfort blanket to him in that respect. It just also happened to fire energy beams, grenades, and ceramic shards depending on setting. In his opinion that made it pretty bloody comforting.
"Don't take it personally," Gwen said with a conspiratorial grin that made Mickey feel a little better almost at once, "it's just that you're making Jack's masculinity feel all threatened -"
"HEY."
" - with him in charge we've already got one gun-toting idiot around the place - "
"HEY!" Jack protested again, spraying coffee into the air in a mist of indignant java.
" - what we really need is a tech and systems guy," Gwen finished, ignoring Jack's exaggeratedly wounded look, ignoring Jack mouthing, Who is in charge here, me or you? at her. "I'm not sure there's room at Torchwood for two gun-waving macho men -"
"Three," said a new voice, and, "Oh, coffee? You're too kind."
The change in atmosphere was abrupt and total. Everyone jerked round as though tugged by wires, Jack - the bloody hypocrite - whipping out his silly little service revolver like lightning to point it at the voice with a look of acute and sudden anger. Mickey noticed - because he usually did notice things like this while everyone was busy not paying any attention to his advice or making him sit in the car - that Gwen and Jack were very tense, Martha looked as confused as he felt, and Ianto looked like he was about to burst an important vein in his forehead.
The owner of the voice was glowing slightly and looked disheveled, like he'd just fallen a long way unexpectedly - his hair stood on end as the glow faded. He was wearing the kind of get-up Mickey expected from an ageing Camden indie-kid, and something about him reminded Mickey powerfully of Jack, back when he'd first met him. It might have been the ridiculous boots, or the prominent gun-belt, or the swagger, or the sword resting over his shoulders -
To someone who hadn't spent as much time reading up on weapons as Mickey had in the last two years, it probably looked like a katana, but to Mickey's informed eye it was immediately obvious as a Geom, a Korean swords which was considerably less ubiquitous and favoured by a certain kind of fighter over the better-known Japanese weapon.
- It was probably, though, more to do with the way the short, cocky-looking guy took Mickey's coffee from Ianto's hand. "Hello again, Eye-Candy."
Ianto looked like he was about to explode from the sheer effort of not punching the guy in the face. Mickey knew the feeling very, very well; and that most of all was what reminded him of that earliest meeting with Jack.
The visitor raised his eyebrows at Jack's gun. "Oh dear," he said mockingly, "I thought we were past all this." And he sighed, and took a sip of the coffee. "Mmmm."
"So did I," Jack snapped, evidently not best pleased. "But oh, look, you're back here again. Take a fucking hint, John."
"Why are you people never pleased to see me?" John complained, addressing his grievance to the ceiling.
"Oh, I dunno," Gwen said with surprising aggression, "perhaps it's because you tried to kill us all? Twice."
"Right, right," John said, sipping his pilfered coffee with apparent unconcern and every sign of enjoyment, "and now I want to make that up to you." His smile wasn't the dazzling white thing that Jack liked to flash around like a bank card, but to Mickey's eyes it was definitely from the same school of insincerity and charisma: the annoying one. "I admit I was too late to join in the last big world-saving effort, but -"
"No," Jack said firmly, his gun still levelled like a starter's pistol at John's head.
"Come on, just let me come and play at heroes with your little gang," John whined. "I'm bored. Every time I try overthrowing something or stealing it I just end up thinking 'well, this is no good - this has been done already' - and it's no good accusing me of having no imagination either, you know that's not true -"
"Don't try and convince us you've had a change of heart," Ianto said extremely sharply, glaring at the coffee in John's hand with more ferocity than Gwen addressed to the sword on the man's opposite shoulder.
"Not heart," John leered, and Ianto's expression was indescribable in response.
"Excuse me," Martha interjected, "Stupid question, probably, but … who is this?"
"Ooh," John said, apparently noticing her for the first time, "newbies. A soldier, Jack? She's cute. But then you always did have excellent taste."
Martha cast a pointed glance at her lab coat, and at her engagement ring. "I'm a doctor," she said, the unspoken addendum of 'and you're an idiot' hanging loud in the air. "And I'm taken."
"You stand like a soldier," John retorted, finishing with a smirk, "and … really. Like that ever matters to Jack."
Mickey thought he heard the same phrase echoing but he couldn't work out where from. Even his own mouth was a possibility.
John, meanwhile, smirked all the more widely at Martha and said, "John Hart. Captain John Hart. Jack's partner."
"Former," Jack and Ianto said, near perfectly-matched in delivery and in vehemence.
"What … kind … of partner?" Mickey asked. He wasn't especially surprised when everyone ignored him as if he wasn't even in the room, and he only stared angrily at the floor out of habit, really. There was a large box down there, just under the desk where his gun was propped up. The dimensions of it were familiar, somehow, and it had several Special Delivery and Do Not Open stamps on it, the flaps sealed shut with black and yellow tape.
Mickey reached down for it surreptitiously, and tugged it closer to his feet, while around him the bickering continued.
"You can't. Even if you weren't a liability, there'd be too many people," Jack said, finally shoving his gun away out of sight again. Mickey wasn't really listening anymore; he slit the security seals with his penknife and picked up a sheet of paper from the underside of the top flap with a typed invoice on it. He put the paper on the desk and pulled the flaps all the way back.
"Oh, there isn't room in your little secret club?" John snorted. "How many people worked at the Agency when you signed up, Poster Boy?"
"What's this?" Ianto murmured, temporarily distracted as he picked up the sheet of paper. "'Compliments of Miss Smith'?"
Everyone ignored him, too. Mickey's hand encountered something cold and metallic and slightly rough. It was flat, and as his fingers moved cautiously along he came across an edge, and something raised and possibly-plastic.
"Right, because you've decided saving the world is so much more important than personal gain now, have you?" Jack growled. He didn't sound convinced. "I know what all this is about. Just go away."
"No I haven't," John said patiently, "But I'm bored, and you lot get all the excitement." He gave the stolen coffee a meditative slurp, "that and a basement full of things that go boom."
Mickey broke into a smile as he found the next angular outcropping of metal and knew just what Sarah-Jane Smith had sent them.
"K-9!" he shouted with glee swinging the pitch of his voice upwards.
The entire team and contested member turned to look at him as he folded down the cardboard sides, scattering a snowdrift of polystyrene chips over the pitted steel floor, to reveal the blocky shape of the robot dog.
"Who told you to open that?" Jack demanded. Mickey decided to ignore him and see how he liked it for once; he flipped the emergency restart on K-9's base.
"Good morning, Master," K-9 beeped.
"A-ha!" John sounded delighted. "A robot dog!"
"A … robot dog," Martha echoed uncertainly. "Great. Uh. Jack? Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Mickey noticed, as a sort of background to his joy at being reunited with the metal dog (and the only thing that travelled with the Doctor that didn't seem to think he was an idiot), that Gwen's jaw tightened at this; John and Ianto seemed far more interested in K-9 and exchanging a bewildering volley of emotionally-charged Looks to care much about Martha's pow-wow.
Ianto's expression was fairly easy to read as he looked a lot like he wanted to throttle John with his own belt and possibly shove him in a canal never to be found again. Mickey could probably have interpreted John's without much effort, but he thought that he really, really didn't want to get into whatever it was skulking around the short bloke's eyes.
"It's easily solved," Mickey heard Martha whisper as she disappeared with Jack.
"Why are you really here?" Ianto hissed at John. It was a proper hiss, a distrustful hiss to be aimed at Bond villains and complete bastards.
Mickey tried to catch Gwen's eye in the hope of getting the background, but he failed to - she had gone slightly pink in the cheeks.
"To get a little action," John smirked, and Ianto quite surprisingly didn't actually head-butt the man in the mouth, although it seemed to be a close-run thing - he even jerked forwards a little on his toes. Mickey thought perhaps he really had ended up in a soap opera by mistake.
Gwen seemed content to ameliorate her frustrations by making a fuss of K-9; Martha and Jack returned a minute or two later, both frowning a little but both determined and looking ready for action, although if Mickey remembered correctly Jack existed in a permanent state of ready for action, and Martha from what little he knew of her looked like the kind of woman who was ready to take on the entire universe at a moment's notice and without much complaining. Truth be told he was looking forwards to working with her - there was probably at least a little he could learn from someone who'd been UNIT-trained.
"We've figured it out," Jack said with an air of triumph, and Gwen's expression soured. Mickey thought he could probably guess what she was thinking - why wasn't I included in this "we"? Don’t my solutions count? - but this really wasn't a time for wounded egos. If it was he'd have been airing his as well. "John, you're not really adept at being a team member - "
"Neither are you," John remarked, "that's why we got partnered with each other, remember? 'Just stick Trouble and Strife together and maybe they'll get each other killed,' were I think the exact words." He drained the coffee cup and slammed it down on a desk.
" - let me finish. Mickey?"
"What?" Mickey frowned, not really expecting to be consulted in this discussion. He straightened up, giving a quick glance to the BFG to make sure nothing had happened to it.
"You're probably not in the habit of taking orders, am I right?" Jack sounded thoughtful.
Actually, Mickey was pretty good at taking orders, although he was used to taking them from someone who actually gave a toss if he lived or died, which he wasn't entirely sure that Jack would be. However, Jack was clearly leading up to something, so if he wanted to indulge in rhetoric Mickey might as well let him. "I suppose not. I don't mind working alone."
"Nor do I," John said hastily.
"Bullshit," Jack said pleasantly, flashing his Colegate-advert smile at his former partner with just a slight undercurrent of malice, "you can't keep your own shoes tied without someone to look up to."
"Oh, that's right, and who was in charge of the Crucible Reconnaissance?" John snorted. "I don't seem to recall it being man of the year, 5098. I seem to recall someone taking credit for things that someone else did, in face - "
"Shut up," Gwen suggested, "and let Jack explain."
"The Rift doesn't just affect Cardiff," Jack said, acknowledging her with the barest of nods. "Most of the time and space debris ends up here, but the nature of time-space disruption being what it is - "
"Oh I know you were asleep through that training session," John muttered.
"Things end up scattered all over the world. Torchwood's needed an away team for a long time, but I've been pretty short on personnel - since Torchwood Four vanished and as Torchwood Two had his nervous breakdown and isn't due for release for another six years we've been a bit stretched." Jack raised his eyebrows. "What we really need is a roving team, something suited to action and international travel."
"That'd be me," John said. "Alright, I know you're just trying to get rid of me, but really … those air hostesses will do absolutely anything to make your flight more comfortable. They're not exaggerating."
"I'd already considered that," Jack agreed, and he added with a slightly sour expression, "You don't have any problems with shooting to kill or lying to officials." He paused. "You never did mention how murder rehab went …"
"Brilliantly up to the point where I gutted Sister Beckinsale," John said, innocently swinging his geom from one shoulder to the other. "Things took a turn after that."
Martha covered her face with one hand. Gwen rolled her eyes.
"But you need someone to keep you in line, and I think Mickey is the man for the job," Jack said with a disarming smile. It was the kind of disarming smile that marched up behind you and poked you in the kidneys with a gun and shouted "DROP THAT WEAPON" - it was a barging in and taking no prisoners kind of smile. Mickey sighed.
"Are you sure he can - " Gwen began nervously. Mickey'd have been insulted, but he wasn't sure he could either. "It's just - no offence, Mickey, but John's a bit … well … um. He's John."
"Oh I've thought of that," Jack said airily. "Ianto's going to go with them too."
The only person in the room who didn't look shocked and unhappy with this was John, who looked shocked and very, very pleased. Gwen and Martha looked incredulous, to the point of Gwen mouthing, really? IANTO? at Martha and Martha mouthing back, so not my idea; Ianto was the very portrait of wounded anger.
"I'm what?" Ianto blurted, almost shaking with rage. "You want me to fuck off out of Cardiff with him - not you, Mickey - because … because … because why? What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing," Jack said soothingly. "You're just the best possible person to co-ordinate missions. You're organised, you're thorough, you're dependable. They need someone like you, and now we've got Martha here at Torchwood Three - "
Ianto's expression said that this was expressly not okay. Gwen and Martha exchanged a look that could only be described as "Erk", and Mickey wondered if he'd be a complete coward if he chose this particular moment to find out where the toilets were and stay there until the bad feeling had passed over.
"I don't think I should be replacing Ianto - " Martha began, but Jack waved her silent.
"You're not. You need more time back at the base to get to grips with our methods as opposed to UNIT's, John and Mickey are going to need someone familiar with all the Torchwood procedures and passkeys to keep them pointed in the right direction while they're out in the field," Jack addressed Martha, but he was looking at Ianto. Mickey wondered if the air was actually about to burst into flames or if it just felt like it was going to.
"I could go," Gwen suggested. She didn't sound like she wanted to in any way, and her smile was sickly.
"Not a chance. We need you here," Jack said, firm and not even bothering to look at her. "Compassion and people skills, Gwen. Also, you have all those Cardiff police contacts that are so useful. And your husband would never forgive me if I let you go running around, oh, Chernobyl or wherever."
Gwen's relief was palpable.
"So what you're saying is …" Ianto subjected his coffee to exceptionally close scrutiny, "I have to be the one who goes with Mickey and John because there's no one who'd miss me here?"
The atmosphere in the Hub at Torchwood Three was several shades of tense beyond "electric", and Mickey realised that for all the input he, John, Martha, Gwen and K-9 were likely to have on the upcoming conversation they might as well be in a Starbucks. He almost suggested it as an alternative, but no one else looked like they were going to go anywhere. John was all but eating popcorn, inappropriate glee suffusing his cruel features.
"… no," Jack said in a quieter voice, "but you're the best person for the job. Personal can't take first place. Not for people who understand the importance of what we do here."
The nod Ianto gave him in reply was curt, and involved no eye-contact. It looked more like "I can't be bothered to argue with you anymore because you've clearly made up your mind", than "I agree, and I understand the validity of what you're saying". Mickey exhaled very, very slowly.
"Cheer up, Eye-Candy," John said, grinning as though he'd just been presented with a trophy, "I taught Jack everything he knows - "
Mickey only just got hold of Ianto's arms in time to stop him from landing a punch that would probably have knocked John's teeth out. "Ianto … come on, man … calm down …" he planted himself directly between them, facing Ianto, and made the most conciliatory face he could. "C'mon, this isn't going to help."
Beetroot-red and burning with rage, for a moment it seemed like Ianto was just going to plough through Mickey regardless and try to tear John's smugly smiling head off with his bare hands, but after a worrying and tense handful of seconds that stretched on into an awkward eternity while Mickey squeezed Ianto's upper arms for dear life, his fingers digging deep into bunched biceps (and that was definitely going to bruise the poor bloke), Ianto deflated.
"Got a temper on him, that one," John said cheerfully. "Are you sure you want to hand him over to me?"
"Shut up," Jack snarled. "And give him your wristband."
John started. "No - not a chance. No. Absolutely not. No way."
"Do it," Jack said grimly, "or you're not on the team. I don't trust you with that thing, and if we can only keep in contact with one member of the Away Team, I want it to be Ianto. He's the only one of you - sorry, Mickey - who's capable of dealing calmly and non-violently with a serious situation."
This flew in the face of recent incidents somewhat, and Mickey wasn’t' at all surprised to hear John respond, "You what? He just tried to tear my bloody face off!"
"Ianto Jones," Jack said, rolling the name around his mouth like a cough sweet, "does not shoot first and ask questions later. Give him the wristband and let him take care of communications and coordination, John, or I'll shoot you myself, and there will be no Away Team."
Mickey couldn't see quite what John's reaction was to that, but he could take a pretty good guess. There was a pause, and Ianto said, "you'll have to let go of my arms, Mickey, I can't put it on with you doing that."
"One more thing," Mickey said as he stepped away. "Can we take K-9?"
Jack blinked. "What?"
"K-9," Mickey gestured to the robot dog. "He's … sort of a friend of mine. And you've got all this equipment here. We're going to need all the help we can get."
"We're going to need technical back-up," Gwen muttered to Jack, but he brushed her away.
"It's alright, I know a fourteen-year-old boy who can help us with that," he said with a weak smile. "Why not? Go on, Mickey. Take the metal dog. You're right … you do need all the help you can get."
"Uh," Martha said, staring into her coffee cup with a look of sudden alarm, "who's going to make the coffee now?"
FIRST MISSION