Torchwood Advent Challenge - 6th December

[m_findlow]

Title: Dancing through life
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,630 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "This is not the time to break out in a rousing song-and-dance routine! Get back to work!"
Summary: Ianto should have known Jack would throw a spanner in the works

The rift was going to be completely inactive for four whole days. Once upon a time Ianto wouldn't have believed their predictor program, but it had been heavily refined since the old days and was now considered quite reliable. In fact, you could pretty much work your calendar around it, which was a big help these days with everything else that was going on.

Despite that, quiet periods like this only came along once in a blue moon, so Ianto was determined to take the opportunity by the horns. He had the team gathered around the boardroom table, ready to make his big announcement.

'Right, so failing some crisis with alien tech that's already here in the hub, or some terrible alien upheaval in London, we've got four days to get this place ship shape and up to date,' he said as they all sat there, enjoying the first coffee of the morning. He'd bought donuts as well, knowing he was going to have to sweeten the deal he was about to put on the table.

'Now, I would say everyone should have a day off, since quiet periods like these don't last, and are usually followed by periods of utter chaos, however...'

He heard Jack give a little groan next to him. He, unlike the others, already knew what was coming next, and it wasn't any more palatable now than when Ianto had first told him the idea.

'Given the backlog of unfinished projects and reports, I think we should use this downtime to make a concerted effort in clearing all of those things off our desks. A general tidy up of stuff wouldn't go astray either.'

As expected, most of the people around the table looked disappointed. Johnson stoically nodded in agreement, whilst Adelaide looked like she might snap the pencil in her hand completely in half. A day or two off was hardly out of the norm, but whatever days you got off, usually made up for the nights and the overtime that effectively cancelled them out.

'Look,' Ianto said, leaning forward, hands clasped. 'I know none of us like admin, but if we keep dropping things and never finishing them, the only people we disadvantage are ourselves. I'm sure there's plenty of things we all want to get off our desks and into action, or filed away so we don't have to worry about them.'

If anyone should be put out by having to face the mountain of unfinished work, it should be him. For all his organisation, diligence, and long hours, his to-do pile was larger than anyone's. Not only did he have all his own reports, plus a handful of side projects, but he then had piles of everyone's else's projects awaiting final review and approval. If there was a bottleneck around here, it was him. How he'd ever managed to keep on top of it when he'd been doing it all for Jack was anyone's guess. Since then it seemed to have doubled overnight.

It certainly didn't help that every time he finally got a chance to sit down and tackle some of them, the phone would inevitably ring, or an urgent email would come through, or a rift flare would end up bringing more trouble than anticipated, leaving him to help Jack coordinate the team and prevent some catastrophe. It wasn't going to necessarily be fun locking himself away to do nothing but admin for days, but he would feel a great sense of accomplishment at crossing a whole raft of things off his list.

'A few ground rules before we start,' he began. 'Under no circumstances is anyone to start anything new. That would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. Second, I want you to make a list and stick to it. Things that are most overdue or critical go at the top, followed by things that will take the least time to finish. The idea is to get through as much of our backlog as possible. After that, do everything else, and then if you run out of things, go and help someone else.'

He knew it would be a long couple of days, so he'd already scheduled in some team bonding time in between; they just didn't know it yet, not even Jack. A half hour here for some Torchwood-style basketball, an hour there for pizza and beers. He had to reward them for their hard work somehow. He didn't want to be remembered as Torchwood's toughest taskmaster.

'Okay, I think that's all I wanted to say. Any questions?'

Adelaide kicked Jez under the table and he sat up in his chair, having fallen half asleep during the briefing. Ianto wanted to laugh. There was definitely something developing between those two, whether they were aware of it or not.

'What?' Jez said, rubbing his shin. Johnson just rolled her eyes.

Jack smirked. 'I don't think that's what he meant by "any questions". I think we're all good, so why don't we get cracking?' Jack said, pushing himself up from his chair.

 

Following Ianto back to his office, Jack leant in conspiratorially. 'So, four whole days, huh? I was thinking maybe we could start with the storage area on sublevel four?'

'I can't think of anything down there that requires attention,' Ianto replied.

'Oh, well I could think of at least one,' Jack replied.

'I meant what I said, Jack,' he replied, walking into Jack's office, on his way to his own, knowing exactly what Jack meant. 'Pain first, pleasure later. You and I have enough things to keep us busy for four weeks let alone four days.'

'You're no fun anymore,' Jack whined, sitting on the edge of his desk, picking up the small conical device he'd picked up yesterday. It had been dumped by the rift just outside their front door, and he'd nearly tripped over it in his haste to fetch the newspaper.

'Everything in moderation,' Ianto replied. 'And put that away,' he said, eyeing the device in Jack's hand. 'Nothing new until we finish everything else. That applies to you, too.'

'But what if it's dangerous?'

'I know for a fact that we've already run a preliminary scan on it to confirm it's not.'

'But we still don't know what it is,' Jack said, sounding excited.

'So, it can remain a mystery for a few more days.'

'Oh, come on, Ianto. Just let me borrow Penny for an hour. She can cross reference this baby against our archive database and find out.'

'No means no, Jack.'

'But, don't you want to know? It could be a sex toy,' he added, grinning lasciviously.

'In which case it won't matter because we won't be having any until all your work is up to date.'

Jack groaned. 'Slave driver.'

'That's what you get for promoting me,' Ianto said, but leaning up to give him a quick kiss before disappearing.

 

Jack tried his hardest to stay focused on the task at hand. It didn't help that from where he was sitting, he could see straight through the doorway at the other end of his office and directly into Ianto's own office, watching his lover pouring over a large pile of reports, oblivious to everything else. Outside in the rest of the hub, he could see the team working away on computers, shifting boxes of equipment and files, all working with a purpose. Why was he the only one who couldn't get into a rhythm?

He stared at the silver cone lying on its side on his desk, effectively acting as a paperweight against all of the files he should have been reviewing. He really wanted to know what it was. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, spotting a small series of buttons on the base, each no bigger than a pinhead. Buttons. Why, sweet goddesses, did it have to have buttons? All he wanted to do now was press them. Ianto might not let him borrow their archivist, but he could always discern its function the old fashioned way. Deciding to throw caution to the wind, he randomly pressed a couple of the tiny buttons.

At first he didn't think anything had happened, then he began to hear music. He held it up to his ear, but came to the realisation that the sound wasn't coming from the device, but from inside his head, and getting louder. Ah, telepathic radio, he surmised. He'd had one of these when he'd worked with the Agency, albeit his own had been much smaller. It was one of a small handful of essential items he took with him everywhere. When you were likely to be travelling long distances with nothing but yourself for company, a little bit of music went a long way to quell the ever present risk of losing your mind to boredom, and other vices.

Jack leaned back in his chair, enjoying the sound filtering around his head. That was the nice thing about these telepathic devices - they knew what kind of music you liked. No skipping songs that didn't tickle your fancy. This was what he'd been missing, he realised. Now that he had a funky tune playing in the background, he could finally concentrate on the task at hand.

He manged to plough through the first two files in half the time he thought it'd take him, oddly tapping the desk with his pen in time to the beat, and then adding a little foot tapping as well. It had been ages since he'd heard some of these songs, and he couldn't remember why it had been so long. As he continued to work away, the music got better, and soon he found he was bopping his head along as well, feeling good. The longer he listened, the better the music got, rocking out to it in his chair. This was honestly like going to the best party ever. One song ended and another one started up, and soon he couldn't help himself. He pushed back his chair and stood up, dancing along to it properly. He couldn't help it, it was just so good that dancing was the only thing that made sense. Paperwork could wait.

 

Ianto had been completely tunnel-visioned in ploughing through his own mountain of work. It wasn't until movement from Jack's office doorway caught in the edge of his vision. What was Jack... was he dancing? Pushing back his chair, he went to go and check on him.

'Jack, what are you doing?'

Jack spun around in a way that was very distinctly too effeminate and pointed a hand at him.

'I'd rather stay and dance with you to the funky music playing on your stereo,' he sung, before continuing his little cavorting around the office.

Ianto held his annoyed breath. 'Jack...'

Jack twirled around again, and this time grabbed Ianto around the waist, spinning him in a circle. 'Things don't get no better, than baby you and me...'

Ianto pushed Jack away from him, doubly annoyed. 'This is not the time to break out in a rousing song-and-dance routine! Get back to work!' His raised voice, which was so rare, brought the others to his office doorway, forcing them to halt as the spectacle unfolded before their eyes.

Adelaide pulled a face. 'What's he doing?'

'I think it's dancing,' Johnson replied, trying to hold back the smirk from her face.

'It's called avoiding work,' Ianto seethed. And now he'd disrupted the entire team. Thank you very much, Jack!

'I just wanna dance with somebody! I wanna feel the heat with somebody!' Jack sung.

Ianto was fuming. A few days of hard work, was that too much to ask? 'Just ignore him,' he instructed. 'Once he's decided he's not getting any more attention, he'll stop.'

'You're just to good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you...'

No one liked to argue with Ianto when it came to the subject of Jack, and his sometimes peculiar decisions and behaviour, but this had several of them feeling very much ill at ease. Would Jack really do something so outlandish, seeing how irate it was making their boss?

'I'm not sure he's completely in control of what he's doing,' Jez said, voicing the thought.

'Of course he is,' Ianto retorted. 'This is Jack all over.' He let out another vexed sound.

'No, I really think maybe something's wrong with him.'

'Everybody, needs somebody to love... Sweetheart to miss, sugar to kiss...'

Jez tried to approach Jack, but got swept up in his arms, which only annoyed Ianto even more. 

'Jack,' Jez began, nearly tripping over his own feet as Jack dragged him around the office. 'Are you under the influence?'

'Push me, and then just touch me, til I can get my satisfaction...'

'Jack, can you stop dancing?'

'She loves me for me, not because I sing like Pavarotti or because I'm such a hottie...'

'Okay,' Jez said, clinging to Jack to stop himself from being thrown to the ground by the over enthusiastic dancing, 'if you're in there just try yes and no. Can you stop?'

'No, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, there's no limit...'

'Boss, I really don't think he's play acting,' Jez said, as Jack spun him around the room again, forcing him to hang on for dear life.

'Okay,' Ianto said, suddenly turning serious and worried. 'So, how do we stop it?'

Before anyone else could make a suggestion, Adelaide snuck up from behind, and with lightning fast reaction, clubbed Jack over the back of his head with a hockey stick, sending him crumpling unconscious to the ground.

'Right,' Ianto said, a little stunned. 'Wasn't quite what I had in mind, but effective nonetheless.'

'Any time, boss,' she said, smiling with satisfaction.  

'Has anyone ever told you that you have anger management issues, Del?' Johnson said.

Adelaide shrugged. 'My parole officer might have mentioned it once or twice.'

'Okay,' Ianto said, pinching the bridge of his nose. 'Can we just get him down to the medical bay and figure out what the hell just happened?'

Ianto grabbed Jack's shoulders whilst Jez grabbed his feet, slowly dragging him down and setting him on the examination table.

'He was normal this morning?' Jez asked.

'Perfectly,' Ianto replied. Well, as normal as Jack ever got.

'And last night?' Jez left the question open-ended.

'If you mean, did we do anything out of the ordinary, then no. We ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed.'

'You really have got him house trained, haven't you?' Johnson quipped.

Ianto couldn't suppress a small smirk. 'I like to think so.'

'Anything he might have touched since this morning?' Jez, said, beginning a physical exam.

'Nothing I can remember. He's been in there catching up on paperwork all day, even though he hates it and would rather be doing anything el-' He stopped mid sentence.

'What is it, boss?' Adelaide said, knowing that look of sudden realisation.

'Wait here,' he said, returning to Jack's office and rifling through the mess on his desk. Under a stack of papers, he found the silver cone device. He took one look at it and just knew Jack couldn't resist, taking it back outside.

'I suspect maybe this thing has something to do with his current, er, affliction.'

'What is it?' Johnson asked, taking it from him and examining it from all sides.

'No idea yet. But I suggest we find out.'

'Do you want me to keep going?' Jez asked.

'Do what you need to,' Ianto replied. 'Just keep him sedated for now.'

Jez raised an eyebrow at him. 'You sure that's wise?'

'He hasn't broken out into his repertoire of show tunes yet. Trust me, you'll thank me for that later.'

 

It didn't take long for them to cross reference the item against all of the historical archive records and find a potential match.

'I'm not one hundred percent,' Penny said, pushing her glasses back up onto the top of her nose, 'but it looks a lot like a neural audio transmitter.'

'I think you're right,' Ianto said, checking the search parameters himself. Once upon a time, this had been his domain.

'English, please,' Adelaide sighed, standing behind the pair of them, arms folded.

'A telepathic Mp3 player,' Ianto said.

'So, what's with all the John Travolta, then? Urgh, I always hated that movie.'

Ianto did too. Trust Jack to have a penchant for it, though. Damn the seventies. 'I'm guessing maybe it's gotten a bit scrambled when it's dropped through the rift. According to this, it's meant to use a person's own cognitive databanks to generate the neural interface and project the sensory equivalent of audible sound. There are different levels of sensory perception, ranging from quiet background sound to full on rock concert.'

'Still, doesn't explain the dancing, or why he wouldn't stop,' Adelaide said.

'It seems that the more you give into the perception, the more it takes over everything else,' Penny replied. 'If it was damaged, it might be taking over more than just his auditory functions.'

'A slave to the music?' she said, sounding skeptical.

'We need to turn it off before it takes over all of his neural activity,' Penny said.

Ianto nodded. 'Agreed.'

 

They rushed back upstairs where Johnson and Jez were keeping an eye on a sedated Jack.

'How is he?' Ianto asked, slipping a hand gently into Jack's own limp one.

'Same,' Johnson replied. 'We know what it is now?'

'Yep. Question is whether we can switch it off.' He headed back up the spiral stairs and across to the row of desks, tugging open a drawer and began shuffling through it, looking for a couple of small tools amongst the dozens in there. This was exactly why they'd needed to clean up around here, he thought. In a crisis there was no time for searching for things.

He finally found what he was looking for and slapped the two tools on the bench top along with the device. He pulled a scanner over the top and hit a button on the keyboard, bringing up the internal schematics for the device on screen.

'Does any of that make sense to you?' Johnson asked, peering over his shoulder.

He frowned. 'I wish Tosh were here. This is much more her field of expertise than mine.'

'But you can fix it, right?'

'Hope so. Not trying to fix it permanently; just enough to reverse what it's done so we can turn it off altogether.'

He carefully pressed the first tool against one of the buttons, releasing what had been an invisible seam at the base, flipping it open to get to the mechanics inside. He spared a glance at Jack's body, lying on the cold metal gurney down in the medical bay. Concentrate, Jones, he told himself, as he twisted the second tool inside, inspecting the neural chip. There, he spotted the tiny crack. If he could just fix that... Need to hire a new technological genius, he decided. He'd get Gwen onto the task just as soon as this was over.

'Pass me that soldering iron,' he said, never taking his eye off the miniscule damage. Someone next to him carefully slipped it into his outreached hand. Watching the tiny point of silver solder slide into the gap, he gently pulled the tool away, clipping the base of the device back in place. He consulted the tiny rows of buttons. 'Which ones, Penny?' he asked, knowing she'd have memorised everything from the archive entry for the device.

'Third from the left top row, and second from the right fourth row. I think.'

'You think?' Adelaide said.

As far as Ianto was concerned, they couldn't make things worse at this point. He did what she said and pointed it at Jack.

'That's it?' Jez asked.

'That's it,' he replied. 'We won't know anything until he wakes up, now.'

 

Jack was confused when he woke up. He didn't remember falling asleep. Hadn't he been in his office? Ianto's face was hovering over him.

'Hey you,' he said, stroking Jack's face.

'Hey.' He tried to sit up but flopped back down, grabbing the back of his head. 'Oh, man. I feel like someone whacked me out cold with a brick.'

'It was a hockey stick, actually.'

'Huh?'

'Doesn't matter.' He readjusted his spot on the stool, relieving the cramp in his leg. 'What's the last thing you remember?'

Jack thought for a second. 'I was finishing up reports.'

'And?'

'And, that's it.'

'Nothing, uh, musical, about it? You didn't by any chance start fiddling with something alien that I specifically told you not to?'

'Oh, that thing? Totally harmless,' he said, then he paused. 'Wasn't it?'

'Until you started dancing around the room, singing your heart out. It was broken. Luckily we identified what it was and managed to fix it.

'Oh, oops.'

Ianto sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. 'What am I supposed to do with you, Jack? If you won't do what you're told, how is anyone else expected to?'

'I'm just a rebel without a cause. It's one of the things you love about me.'

'Don't push your luck,' Ianto warned, 'or next time I might let Adelaide club you out permenantly.' He sighed again. 'So much for a few productive days. You go and hijack them before we've even begun.'

'I'm sorry,' Jack apologised. 'I was trying, I swear.'

'You're very trying,' Ianto agreed, this time helping him slowly sit up. 'Now, do you think maybe you can sit quietly in your office and do some work without getting distracted?'

'Anything for you,' Jack promised.

'Well, from now on, maybe just stick to whistling while you work. It'll be a whole lot safer.'

Comments

[jo02]

I am really loving the new team. Maybe one day, when you've recovered from the mad writing overload, you could do an introductory post for all the new team members.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I've got fics in minds for all of them and how they end up part of the team, plus a future character who's not yet in the picture. I've fallen in love with all my new characters, flawed as they are. ;)
Me recover from writing overload??? Ha! I just need to stop taking on new projects with crazy deadlines!

[bk_forever]

Oh Jack! He really can't help himself, can he? Ianto will b going grey before much longer!