Torchwood: Fanfic: A small problem

[m_findlow]

Title: A small problem
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Rhys, Andy, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,085 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Torchwood, any, shrink" at fic_promptly
Summary: Rhys and Andy have to put aside their differences to help the team

Rhys knew he'd come to regret walking into the police station. It was in its usual state of bedlam, which was to say they were actually having a quiet day by all accounts. The chairs that lined the front mezzanine were full to the rafters with little old ladies with dogs, annoyed girlfriends popping gum, and some folks who looked not to know why they were even there. In amongst them were the usual handful of police officers, though most had retreated to the office behind the counter where they couldn't be assailed by the general public looking, for missing cats and wanting to complain about council park parking fines.

He rolled up to the counter, catching the eye of the bored looking young woman stuck on the uneviable job of reception duties.

'Reporting a crime, reporting a missing person, making a statement, or other?'

She had the options down to a fine art, and he wondered why they didn't just replace her with one of those automated telephone systems.

He wanted to say missing person, but he knew that they couldn't help him. Even now, he was here in desperation.

'Uh, I'm here to see PC Andy Davidson.'

'Does he know you're coming?'

'No. But it's important.'

She sighed in a way that made him feel like he'd somehow inconvenienced her.

'Well, you're lucky he hasn't left for his beat yet. Take a seat and I'll get someone to find him.'

He got the feeling she said that a lot, because there wasn't a spare seat to be found, so he stood awkwardly, trying not to look like a criminal.

After about ten minutes of waiting, he spied the tall lanky man coming down the stairs and along the hall, his bright yellow vest giving him away.

'Oh, it is you,' Andy noted unenthusiatically. 'I thought they were joking when they described you as a vaguely stupid looking Welshman.'

'Listen mate, I didn't have to come here, you know.'

'Well, thank you, you've absolutely made my day, then.' Andy quipped.

'You're the one who didn't turn up to the wedding,' Rhys bristled. 'Who does that?'

'Someone who doesn't want to see a perfectly intelligent person marry themselves off to a complete toss pot? he asked. 'I was working. Someone has to keep the city in line whilst the rest of you have the day off.'

'That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard. Why don't you just admit you can't stand Gwen marrying me.'

'I thought I just had.'

Rhys wanted to deck him one right there and then, but figured it wouldn't do well to assault a police officer, especially not inside a police station.

'Look, would you just stop being a twat for five minutes and help me?'

'I don't do flat pack furniture. It's really not that hard, you know. Insert panel A into slot B.'

'Har har. Listen, it's Gwen alright, so are you interested or not?'

'Doesn't look like I've got much choice, does it?' he said, folding his arms impatiently. 'What about Gwen?'

'She's gone missing.'

'Run away, more like.'

'No, I mean as in she's actually missing. All of them are. I tried Gwen's phone and got nothing, so then I called Ianto, then Jack, and the others. None of them are answering their phones and they've been gone for hours. I'm worried.'

'Probably just ignoring you.'

'I'm serious Andy! Something's happened to them and it's up to us to help them.'

Andy stared hard at him. 'You are serious, aren't you? You really think something bad has happened?'

'As a heart attack, mate. They in trouble, I just know it.'

'And what are we supposed to do?'

'I don't know. But hey, you and me are the only ones who know about Torchwood, so no one else is going to come after them, are they?'

'Suppose not. Pompous as he is, I don't really fancy not having Jack around to deal with the weird stuff.'

'So are we going, or not?'

Andy looked around like they were up to something shifty. 'I'm going to have to swap my shift, but yeah. Don't think this means I don't still think you're a twat, though. I'm doing this as a favour to Gwen.'

Rhys sighed dramatically. 'Finally, something we have in common.'

Andy began pulling his high visibility vest off before Rhys stopped him.

'Leave it on. We might need someone who looks like a police officer.'

'For the record, I am a police officer,' Andy huffed as they left the building, following a step behind Rhys.

'Right, so if they've gone missing, 'Andy said, 'how do we know where to start looking?'

'The hub of course. Whatever they're working on, it'll be in their files.'

'Yeah, we'll just walk in the front of door and check their phone messages. "Hi, you've reached Torchwood, we're currently in Splott chasing down an alien bent on sucking out our brains. If you need us, just follow the masses of screaming citizens".'

'Shut up and get in the car.'

Rhys drove them down to the plass and parked in the underground car park beneath the Millennium Centre. Ironically, he was parked only feet away from a secret access door to the hub, which was poised underneath a security camera, actually doubling as a retina scanner, but they both walked past it without a sideward glance. Rhys marched them across the plass and toward the bay, down the stairs to the quayside, and along the walkway until he came to the small door jutting out of the wall at the end of the quay.

'Why are we going here? It's just some potty little tourist bureau.'

'That's what you think,' Rhys said, beaming that he knew more than Andy about Torchwood's not so secret entrance. Had anyone told him there were about fourteen different secret entrances, he wouldn't have believe them. Rhys pushed through the door, finding it unlocked.

'Are you trying to tell me that the entrance to a secret organisation that fights aliens is actually passing itself off as a tourism office?'

Rhys slipped around the front counter, ignoring the neat containers of pamphlets about Cardiff Castle and Ninian Park tours, as well as the miniature snow globes with dragons in them, searching for the button on the underside of the counter that he'd seen the team occasionally use to open the side door. He gave himself a self satisfied smile when he pressed it, watching the wall slide open on the right.

'Great security,' Andy mumbled. 'Even an ape can get in without too much hassle.'

Rhys marched him down the blackened hallway until they reached the rusted old lift at the end of its length, pressing the button for the main level of the hub. When they exited the lift, the cog wheel door was already open, denying him the satisfaction of surprising Andy with the dramatic reveal.

'What do you think?' he asked Andy.

'Not exactly what I expected.' In all honesty he hadn't known what it would look like, even in his imagination, but it definitely wasn't this. It was less Star Trek and more Back to the Future. Overhead, Myfanwy flew by and squawked.

'I don't want to know,' Andy said, scrunching his eyes shut. 'I do not want to know what that was, because it definitely was not a flying dinosaur.'

'Right,' Rhys said wandering over to the computer console he liked to think of as Gwen's. It had a photo of him tacked to the screen so he didn't think it belonged to anyone else. 'All we have to do now is find out what they were working on.'

Rhys hit a key on the keyboard, hoping that the screen would come to life, with an open file left on it, telling him what to do next. Instead all he recieved was a big T shaped logo and a request for him to enter his password. Bollocks. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

'Don't suppose you know how to get in?' Andy asked.

'Er,' Rhys tried the first thing that came to mind, typing it in. Surprisingly the screen opened up.

'Eh, we'll done you. Rhys Williams. Master computer hacker.' Rhys couldn't tell if he was paying him a compliment, or a thinly veiled insult.

'Nothing to it really. She uses the same password as our Internet banking.'

He clicked a few icons, hoping to find something useful, ending up opening both her email account and the main rift monitor program.

'Hmm, nothing obvious in her emails,' he said, squinting at the screen and the voluminous list of items. 'Hey, tickets to Paris for my birthday. Nice one. Er, best not tell her I saw that.'

'She might be going without you,' Andy smirked. 'Maybe she and Jack are shacking up together.'

'He'd be a dead man if he ever tried it on. Besides, he's with Ianto.'

'Well, that does explain a few things,' he said, recalling the last time he'd had a run in with the team. 'What's that?' he said, pointing at the screen.

'Oh, this? This measures all that rifty stuff.'

'And a flat graph would mean?' Andy asked, consulting the graphical displays.

'Er, nothing happening.' Rhys clicked again. 'In fact, nothing for the past twenty four hours. That's a bit boring.'

'Since when is nothing alien coming through to take over the planet considered boring? As if we haven't got enough to deal with. Do you know how many kebabs I've had thrown at me this week already? Six. Six! I mean come on, who wastes a perfectly good kebab on a copper?'

Rhys held back from saying that if he was out with his mates, and a little bit pissed, he might have thrown a kebab at Andy. But that was less to do with being pissed and more because Andy had a habit of being an annoying git.

'Alright, so if nothing has come through the rift, then where do we go from here?'

'We could check the cameras,' Rhys suggested. 'They have them all over the hub. At least then we'll know if they left, and maybe where to.'

'Okay,' Andy said, sitting down in Gwen's chair in front of the computer, comandeering the mouse.

'What do you think you're doing?'

'I'm a police officer, Rhys,' he said, rolling his eyes. 'I rather think that when it comes to checking out CCTV footage, I'm more of an expert than you.'

A few fumbled attempts to access the relevant programs and finally they'd managed to pull up the feeds from a few hours ago.

'Okay, there's the team,' Andy said, watching them milling about, discussing something. 'Let's turn up the volume.'

Just as he was fiddling with the controls, the feed still running, the screen flashed white and then went blank.

'Did you break it?' Rhys asked.

'Of course not. I'm not an idiot,' he replied, still unsure if he hadn't just broken it.

'Where did the pictures go?'

Before Andy could answer, the image of the hub came back to life, but there was no team to be found.

'What the?'

'They just... disappeared,' Andy said, stunned. 'One second they're there, and then, gone.'

'Where did they go though? They can't have just vanished.'

'Maybe they got turned invisible,' Andy said, looking suspiciously over his shoulder, expecting a transparent Jack to suddenly tap him on the shoulder.

'I think they would have let us know by now if they were invisible.'

'So they're still here, but not visible?'

'That's makes absolutely no sense.' Rhys replied.

'Well, come on then, Inspector Morse. What's your explanation?'

'Oh.... oh, wait,' Rhys said, looking pale and nervous, clearing having a train of thoughts that were altogether unpleasant. 'What if they got shrinked by something? It'd just look like they'd disappeared.'

'Honey, I shrunk the Torchwood team?'

'Makes sense, doesn't it?'

Andy had to admit, the idea did have merit. He rolled back on his chair to look at Rhys properly, before Rhys suddenly shouted at him.

'Don't move!'

'What?'

'If they're shrunk, we might accidentally step on them. Oh God, we could've done already!'

'Oh,' Andy said, looking about, as if searching for miniature squished people.

'We both need to stay right where we are. Gwen!' Rhys shouted, 'if you can hear us, let us know.'

'You don't need to shout, you great ape,' Andy said.

'Why not?'

'Uh, little people, little ears,' he said, as if it was obvious. 'We'd be like giants booming even at normal volume.'

'Okay, sorry love,' he apologised to Gwen, assuming she could hear him.

'So now what?'

'Now we wait for them to get a message to us to tell us how to reverse the problem. They're smart, they'll think of some way to communicate.'

The pair of them stayed there for nearly three hours, waiting for the team to make contact, assured that they'd find a way. So far though, there'd been no word from any of them. Andy was getting a cramp in his leg, but didn't dare move his foot in case he should accidentally commit homicide. Rhys didn't even have the luxury of a chair, still standing where he'd been when the realisation had struck.

'How much longer?' Andy moaned.

'I don't know. But they'll figure something out. We just have to wait.'

Another hour rolled by and Rhys was about to fall over from standing in one spot, when suddenly a loud noise came from behind him.

'Rhys, what the hell are you doing in here?' Jack asked. Rhys spun and was faced with the entire team looking oddly surprised to find him and Andy in the hub.

'Hey, you fixed it! You're not shrunk anymore. I can't tell you what a relief it is to know we didn't squash any of you.'

'Huh?' Jack said,

'Shrunk?' Owen added.

'Yeah, you know. We've been waiting for a message to try and help.'

The team exchanged odd glances with one another, unsure if they hadn't just stepped into another dimension, or had some kind of weird shape shifters in the hub, masquerading as Rhys and Andy.

'Rhys!' Gwen hissed. 'What the hell are you doing here?'

'Saving you, of course.'

'Saving us?' she asked, skeptical.

'Uh, Rhys,' Jack said, 'where exactly is it you think we've been that we needed saving from?'

'I don't know. We couldn't see you because you were so small.'

Gwen was giving Rhys a look that said he really ought to shut his mouth.

'Rhys, we've been out at lunch.'

'Eh? But, we couldn't get hold of you, been calling your phones for ages with no response, so we came here and saw the CCTV and how you disappeared and all.' It all sounded mad and a little incoherent as it spilled from Rhys's mouth.

'Just for the record, I didn't believe him,' Andy interjected. 'You could've been sucked into another dimension for all we knew.'

Rhys turned on him. 'Why didn't you say that earlier?' he complained.

'You're the one that told me you're an honorary member of the team.'

'Yeah, well, I am.' He paused, catching the sets of raised eyebrows. 'Sort of,' he added. 'Besides, I saw the way you panicked when the chair squeaked. You thought you'd run over some tiny person and that was the sound of them screaming.'

'And if I had done, you wouldn't be laughing on the other side of your face now.'

'Guys, guys, enough,' Jack said, trying to break their argument apart before they came to blows. 'The hub got hit by a random electromagnetic pulse, knocking out all the computers and our phones. It was going to take six hours to reboot everything so we went for a long lunch.'

'A very long lunch,' Owen said. 'Not often the boss opens his wallet and lets the moths out.'

'Well, how were we supposed to know?' Rhys said, feeling slightly affronted.

'Rhys Williams, honestly,' Gwen said, trying hard not to be mad, 'how is it you always come up with the most impossibly implausible explanations for everything? We're fine. And more to the point, we can handle ourselves. We don't need you or Andy to come and try to save us from anything.'

Jack folded his arms looking perplexed. 'Exactly how is it that you came to this fantastic conclusion anyway?'

Rhys lead them over to Gwen's computer and showed them the footage from the CCTV of them seeming to disappear in a flash of light.

'Admittedly, perhaps not the most unusual conclusion to draw,' Ianto admitted. 'It has happened before.'

'See?' Rhys said, pointing at Andy, feeling fully justified. 'Even Ianto agrees with me.'

'Well, I wouldn't go that far,' Ianto qualified.

'How did you get access to the hub and our computer systems?' Tosh asked.

'Oh, er, just came in through the front door.'

'The tourist office?' Jack said, turning to Ianto. 'You left the door unlocked?'

'I must have forgotten,' Ianto said sheepishly. 'I blame you. You had your tongue in my ear if I recall correctly. It was very distracting. Plus, Rhys would be the only one who would know how to activate the door.'

'Honorary member of Torchwood,' Rhys said, standing a little taller and preening himself.

Gwen slapped him. 'Would you stop saying that! You are not one of the team!'

'Thank God,' Owen muttered.

'Sorry. I was just worried. I thought we were doing the right thing,' he said, feeling glum and a little foolish.

'Oh, come here you big idiot,' Gwen said, pulling him into a hug. 'You don't have to impress anyone.'

'Is that because I'm already very impressive?'

Owen made gagging noises.

'Right,' Andy said, standing up. 'As this has been a colossal waste of my day, since no one has been shrunk, zapped into another dimension or squished by giants, I think I'll be off then. Next time you lot get yourselves in a mess, please leave me out of it. I've decided I'd prefer not to know the world is ending. And as for you,' he said, pointing at Rhys, 'well,' he paused, 'I'm sorry I didn't go to the wedding. I'm sure it was lovely.'

'Gwen was pregnant with the alien baby of a homicidal shape shifting alien who passed herself off as Rhys's mum,' Jack said, grinning. 'It was a hoot.'

Andy just stood there and blinked.

'And you wonder why I steer clear of you lot.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

*Giggles* Poor Andy, dragged into a non-existent crisis by Rhys, wasting hours of his day, and he still has to work a full shift!

Glad that nobody was shrunk and squished, but naughty Ianto for not locking the door; that really isn't like him!

Thanks for the fill!

[jo02]

Lol, there can never be too much Rhys and Andy fic :)

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Correction: there can never be too much Andy and Rhys banter and insults. ;)