Torchwood: Fanfic: The shaggy hub

[m_findlow]

Title: The shaggy hub
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,146 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, It's gone all fuzzy" at fic_promptly
Summary: The new decor is not appealing

Oh no, Ianto thought, waking across the plass in the pale morning light. It was only just after sunrise, so no one else was like to have spotted it yet, but even from a distance he could tell something was amiss.

Approaching closer, he came to stand right on top of the flagstones that surrounded the water tower. He peered carefully at the tower itself, not wanting to touch it until he was more certain exactly what it was. Satisfied that it seemed harmless, he reached out a hand, touching it. Oh yes, this was going to be a problem. He pulled his phone out and dialled Jack.

'Morning,' came the muffled response. 'You're up early.'

'I'm up this time every day,' Ianto replied, sensing the falsity in Jack's sudden interest in what time he turned up to work.

'Yes, I suppose so, 'Jack said, sounding distracted. 'What's up?'

'We've got a problem. The water tower. It's gone all fuzzy,' he said, fingering the short orange fur that covered it from base to tip.

'Oh,' Jack responded, sounding not at all surprised.

'Why do I get the feeling that you knew about this?' Ianto asked, narrowing his eyes at his phone even though Jack couldn't see him.

'Um, well, it might be a case of it not being restricted to the tower?' he replied, waiting for Ianto to go ballistic at him.

'What have you done?'

'My intentions were honorable, I swear.'

Ianto sighed, looking up at the tower which now resembled an overgrown cat scratching post.

'Okay. I'm coming,' he said. 'Just you and your honorable intentions stay put.'

Coming through the cog wheel door, Ianto got the full effect of Jack's efforts. Every surface of the hub was covered in the same marigold coloured fur, the floors, the walls, their desks and computers, the stairs and the walkways. The water tower was similarly coated, rising all the way up to the roof and then beyond and skyward over the plass. Even the sofa looked out of place, covered in such an electric orange fuzz.

'Please tell me you're not directly responsible for this,' he said, eyeing Jack in a knowing way.

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets, staring at his feet. 'That really depends on your definition of directly responsible.'

Ianto sighed again. 'What did you do?'

'I was trying to clean the place for you. I ordered these super-duper alien spores that eat dirt from a contact of mine that still does some trade with Arcana Five. All you do is let them loose and they go to work. I figured I'd try them last night, so that when you got in this morning, you're be really impressed at how clean the hub was.'

'Are you trying to put me out of a job?' Ianto asked, knowing that so long as Jack was around, the concept of him being out of a job was nigh on impossible.

'No, I just wanted to free up your time for more important things.'

Ianto knew that they had very different definitions of what constituted more important, and what Jack's idea of important was likely to entail.

Ianto looked around again. Orange really wasn't the colour he'd pick if he had a say in the matter. He could live with magenta or violet, even a few shades of green, but not this.

'Well, if the aim was to make the dirt invisible, you certainly ticked that box. I've never seen so much orange all my life. So tell me then, what went wrong?'

Jack looked sheepish, which never boded well. 'It was going great,' he said. 'I left them out last night just before bed and they went to work. Then I got up this morning, turned all the lights on to see how well it worked and poof, instant fuzzy hub.'

'So you're saying the spores did this?'

'Must have.'

'And this wasn't mentioned as a side effect of their magic cleaning capabilities?'

Jack shifted awkwardly again. 'Okay, so maybe I didn't read all the instructions.'

'Which is to say you didn't read any of the instructions,' Ianto countered.

'Okay, so I didn't. I figured how complicated could it be? Open the box and let them loose to do their thing.'

Ianto rolled his eyes again, headed across the hub to Jack's fur-lined office, reaching into the fuzzy waste paper basket and pulling out the booklet, knowing that Jack would have thrown it out automatically. He flipped past the first page which was dedicated to espousing the wondrous benefits, and skipped straight to the actual instructions.

'It says here that you should only use a small quantity of the spores, and restrict them to a single room at a time. Kind of hard in the hub, since it's one really big room. How many did you use?'

'Um, the whole container.'

'Great. Good start. Now let's see, hmm,' he read on, leaving Jack standing there awkwardly, feeling like a naughty child.

'It says here, under no circumstances expose the spores to high intensity light. It causes them to go into a state of sexual frenzy producing... oh, that's just gross.'

'What?'

'It's not fur.'

'Oh,' Jack said, realising what Ianto meant. 'That is gross,' he said, pulling up his boot out of the layer of orange fur and looking down at it disdainfully. 'I've heard of being punked, but never being spunked. Surely we're not the first to have made that mistake. Does it say anything about what to do when they, you know, explode?'

Ianto consulted the guide further. 'Apparently after a few days, the fur,' he used quotation fingers around the word, 'will detach and can be swept up.'

'So the hub is going to shed?'

'Basically.'

'And what about the spores?'

'Gone,' Ianto replied. 'They sacrificed themselves in the name of pleasure.'

Jack chuckled. 'I suppose if you're going to go, that's not a bad way to end things. Putting it at the top of my own list.'

'Well,' Ianto said, flipping the booklet shut. 'Looks like we're stuck with it like this for a while. I'll let you explain to the rest of the team why the hub looks like a seventies shag pad.' He turned and left Jack to face his fuzzy office and the fuzzy pile of paperwork that needed doing.

'Wait, where are you going?' he asked.

'The archives. At least down there I don't have to think about all the salacious goings on that happened up here last night. They'll have been so dark that there's no risk at all of them being overrun by this mess, thankfully.'

'Hey it's not like the hub hasn't seen its share of pornographic activities, most of which featured us as the main event.'

'At least we didn't make that much mess,' Ianto replied.

'Not for want of trying,' Jack grinned.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Oh dear, Jack has really outdone himself this time! And so have the spores. I wonder how difficult it is to do a pile of fuzzy paperwork...

I just hope Myf and the other residents aren't all fuzzy too...

For the duration, I think the team will be buying coffee, because fuzzy coffee from a fuzzy coffee machine probably wouldn't be up to Ianto's usual standards. *grins*

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

And no one wants to be drinking coffee that has alien sex "stuff" in it. Ew!

[bk_forever]

Good point o_O