Torchwood: Fanfic: Cooped up for the night

[m_findlow]

Title: Cooped up for the night
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Owen, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 776 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "any, any, "Trust me" he said, right before he got us arrested " at fic_promptly
Summary: Someone's not happy at having to bail out the team, again.

Ianto was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in an annoyed tempo. Outside and parked across the other side of the street he waited. It was freezing cold and he could see the snow starting to collect on the windscreen. He flicked the wipers to give himself something to do. It might have been warmer indoors, but he was sitting out here on principal. It didn't help that the heater was on the blink, and had been ever since that weird pollen had invaded the car park and gummed up just about everything under the hood. He'd have taken the SUV had it not been for the fact that it had been otherwise occupied, and now occupied a space at the Cardiff City impound.

That would be tomorrow's job, assuming the snow didn't shut down the roads.

For now he was content to sit here and warm himself with his own annoyance. He'd gone in there and done what he had to do, filling out the paperwork and writing out the cheque. He was not going to spend a single minute more in there waiting. Besides, it was a Friday night and it was bedlam in there. It would probably take them ages to process the paperwork at this rate.

He'd just about dropped off to sleep when his phone beeped, asking "done yet?". He was about to tap out the reply "still waiting" but abandoned it. He knew they were coming, he could hear their voices ringing loudly across the street as they approached. They sounded like they were laughing. That irked him even more.

The front car door opened and Ianto heard Jack's voice booming as he piled in, bringing a flurry of snow in with him. Owen did the same in the back seat.

'So then I offered him a tour of the back parlour.' Jack said, continuing his story.

'And what did he say?' Owen asked.

'He said, "Does it have curtains?".' Jack and Owen fell into another peal of laughter.

'Enjoying yourselves, are you?' Ianto seethed.

Jack was still wiping away the tear, or perhaps snow, from his eye as he replied, 'Oh, the Welsh have no sense of humour,' he chortled, still reliving whatever joke it was that he and Owen were sharing.

Ianto pulled out from the kerb, still irritated.

'Bloody hell it's cold in here,' Owen commented. 'Couldn't turn the heating on, could you?'

'It is on,' Ianto replied, sounding vexed.

'Take us home, driver,' Jack announced, like some silver spooned Earl.

'You know you've blown our budget for bail monies already, and it's only August,' he replied. 'Are either of you going to tell me what happened?'

'Oh, you know how it is. You go undercover, someone gets a little jumpy and tips off the police, next thing you know the place is swarming with blues and twos, and everyone's getting cosy in lock up.'

'I said, let's just tell them we're Torchwood, but Jack wanted to know if there was more than one of them. "Trust me" he said, right before he got us arrested.'

'I'm still not seeing the funny side.'

'Neither did we, until they tried to scan in the guy's fingerprints and he exploded all over them. Turns out he was hypersensitive to ultra violet light.'

'You should've seen the other guys,' Owen added, 'they had no idea he was alien, and when he went kaboom, they all thought they were next! I've never seen so many blokes crying out for their mummies!'

'I could spend all night laughing about that!'

It could have been the budget overrun, or the cold wait in the car, or just the fact that it had been hours since the last coffee, but Ianto failed to see the humour in two dozen men being unnecessarily terrified, when Jack and Owen could have smoothed things over. Ianto kept his silence.

As they pulled up outside Owen's apartment block, Ianto didn't even wish him goodnight. He sat there, idling the car, not driving off. Owen stood outside, wondering what was going on.

'Someone's moody tonight,' Jack observed. 'Are we going home or what?'

'Out,' Ianto commanded.

'What?'

'You want to spend all night laughing about it, you two can do it together.'

'Seriously?'

'This is me having no sense of humour.'

'Ianto,' Jack beseeched.

'Out!'

Begrudgingly, Jack stepped out of the car, looking glumly across at Owen, who was now laughing at him.

'Don't laugh. I'm not sleeping on that poor excuse you call a sofa, so I'll be sharing your bed.'

Suddenly neither of them were laughing as Ianto's car pulled away and disappeared into the night.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Hah! That told 'em! Poor Ianto should go home, make himself a nice cup of coffee, and drink it snuggled up in bed. Jack should learn not to poke the bear when it's already grumpy!

But snow in August? Over here, that's the best of summer weather. Usually. I guess Cardiff is entering an ice age ;)

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Lol, yeah that's me getting my seasons confused, but I'll take it as the usual crazy stuff that happens in Cardiff, like a cold snap in the middle of summer. Perhaps that's why Ianto's so grumpy already, bad enough that the rift is ruining summer, now he's stuck out in the cold waiting to bail out his coworkers.

[bk_forever]

And since his Birthday is mid-August, I bet that's getting spoiled too!