m_findlow

Title: A craving for coffee
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Tosh
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,703 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Which button wasn't I supposed to hit, again? I think I just hit it..."
Summary: Jack thought he'd mastered the coffee machine

'What do you think you're up to?' Tosh asked.

Jack nearly jumped right out of his skin at the tiny voice behind him. It was still early and he hadn't expected anyone in for at least another hour, not even their resident genius. He spun to face her, caught out in the act. 'Nothing,' he lied.

'That didn't look like nothing,' Tosh said. 'That looked very much like you tinkering with Ianto's coffee machine.'

He slipped his hands behind him, trying to look innocent. 'Who me?'

She gave him another look and he knew he was busted. 'I can't, take it anymore, Tosh!'

'It's only two more days.'

It had only been two days so far. The thought that he was only halfway there was more than he could stand.

'I'll go pick us up some coffee from Libertines,' Tosh offered. 'Ianto recommend them as the best in the area.'

'It's not the same,' Jack complained. He'd been haunting the small cafe's doorstep at all hours of the day, having already redeemed two sets of loyalty stamps, but it just wasn't anywhere near as good as the heavenly brew that Ianto usually made. Why on earth had he ever let him go to that stupid UNIT conference in the first place? Having to go without Ianto's coffee was even worse than having to go to the conference himself.

'It's fine, Tosh. I know what I'm doing,' he said, turning back to tinker with it further. How many times had he stood just here, wrapped around Ianto's waist, chin leaning on Ianto's shoulder as he watched his lover concoct the best drink in the world. How hard could it be to replicate a little but of that coffee magic? There was one nozzle where the coffee came out and another to steam the milk. He'd repaired a sixth generation Alpha Star Cruiser with half the spare parts missing. There was nothing scary about a coffee machine.

He caught the look of concern on her face. 'Tosh, I promise it won't be as good as the real thing, but it'll be a whole lot better than that store bought muck.' It was the same coffee beans, so how different could it taste compared to when Ianto made it? 'Just yours and mine, Tosh. Our little secret.'

Before she could put forth further arguments, he pressed a button, hearing a grinding sound. Onto a small handle, there were brown coffee grinds spilling into the spoon. At least there were enough beans left in the machine, he thought. He pulled out the spoon, seeing the grounds, smelling their delicious scent. There was something so good about the smell of freshly ground coffee beans. He pulled out a drawer and spotted that funny metal thing that Ianto used to press the coffee grounds firmly into that handle. Yes, that was the next step. Then the handle had to go back in another part of that machine so that the water could filter through the grinds, spilling out delicious coffee.

Tosh watched Jack carefully. He did seem to know what he was doing, even if Ianto had given strict orders to never touch his beloved machine. 'Well, alright,' she said, missing Ianto's coffee almost as much as Jack. 'I'm going to go and check the overnight rift reports.'

'White with one, right?' Jack asked.

She smiled, touched that Jack remembered. Before Ianto had been on the scene, it had always been Tosh who'd gone out and fetched them coffee in the morning, something they'd done practically since she'd first started working with Jack. 'Yeah.'

Jack shoved the handle back into the machine and turned it forty-five degrees, hearing it click into place. Ha, nothing to it, he thought, slotting the cup underneath. Now, somewhere here was the button for heating up the water. He surveyed the machine, looking for it, only to find a whole row of buttons, none of them labeled. Had there always been that many buttons? He wasn't sure he knew what half of them did. The guy in the shop that had demonstrated them to him years ago when he'd originally bought the machine, but he couldn't recall any of it now. That was the whole reason it had sat idle for years, just waiting for a Ianto Jones to come along and make it work its magic.

Oh, well. Logic said to start from the beginning, so he pressed the first button. The machine began to churn and rumble, but nothing else seemed to be happening. Hmm, maybe the second button, then. That one did nothing at all, so he pressed the next three in succession. Surely one of them was the right one.

Hitting all the buttons certainly worked. The machine rumbled and growled with a renewed fervor, and now Jack could see and smell the heavenly black brew dripping down into the waiting mug underneath.

Yes! Success! Libertines, eat your heart out, he thought as his mug quickly filled. Whilst he waited, he poured milk into a second jug and sat it underneath the frother nozzle, pressing a few more buttons, until one of them began spitting steam into the jug.

This wasn't so hard. Ianto had them all fooled into thinking this was some kind of art form. Turned out any bunny could do this.

He pressed the buttons again to stop the flow of coffee into his mug, but when he did, nothing happened, and the steady stream of coffee continued. Whilst he was trying to remember which one had started the percolating, the coffee began spilling over the edge of the mug, spattering onto the floor. Bugger. Okay, not that one. He tried another, then a few more, but it wouldn't stop. Whilst he was busy fiddling with the unstoppable flow of coffee, the milk steamer was getting antsy, and some of the button pressing seemed to have upset it, forcing steam out in a loud whistle.

'Jack, is everything okay in there?' Tosh called out.

'Ah...' the feeling of coffee spilling over the edge and onto his boot distracted him temporarily. 'You don't know where Ianto keeps the instruction manual for this, do you?'

Tosh rushed over, seeing the unfolding chaos for herself. 'What the hell did you do?'

'I don't know. It just wouldn't stop.'

'Um, okay, we can fix this,' Tosh said, scrutinising the machine for an obvious off switch and finding none. 'Okay, which buttons did you press?'

'Er, all of them? Several times.'

Tosh experimented pressing buttons, whilst Jack pulled away the jug of bubbling milk. The steamer was going nuts, and he tried twisting the nozzle away from their general direction, burning his hand in the process as it shot scalding steam out at him.

'I seem to remember Ianto mentioning that one of these didn't work properly anymore,' she said, frowning. 'Something he reckoned that happened when the rift machine surged one day and blew up half the kitchen.'

'Oh man, I remember that. What a mess.'

'Hang on, let me go check the reports. Knowing Ianto, he might have made mention of it.'

'Okay, but hurry,' Jack said, setting a fifth mug under the coffee dispenser. Once that one was full, he was going to be out of mugs. Jack pressed all the buttons again. At this point, how he it possibly make things any worse?

'Found it!' Tosh yelled over the sound of the rebelling coffee machine.

Jack's mad pressing caused another surging wave of compliance from the machine, and now the grinder section was spitting out more coffee grinds all over the place.

'Tosh? Which button wasn't I supposed to hit again? I think I just hit it.'

'Fourth one in the second row.'

'I thought so,' he said, cringing

Coffee was spilling over the edge of the mug and into the floor, though growing weaker by the minute as more hot water poured through the overused grinds. The milk frother was going ballistic, issuing steam in angry jets, creating clouds of white throughout the kitchen. The whole thing was buzzing and shaking, sending the now full cups resting on top of it rattling violently against one another, threatening to topple off, spilling more coffee everywhere. If it kept going at this rate, the thing looked like it might explode.

'Do something!' Jack cried. 'There must be a button on here to stop it.'

'Pushing buttons is what got you in this mess in the first place!' She left him there, moving across the narrow kitchen and pulling open one of the cupboards, practically crawling inside. Jack decide if the machine was about to blow up, that probably wasn't a bad idea for shelter. Then, just as suddenly, the whole machine shuddered to a halt, like a beast out of puff.

'What did you do?' Jack asked, looking frazzled but relieved.

'Pulled the plug out from the wall.'

Jack let our a relieved sigh. 'Good work. Only question is, what will happen when we plug it back in?'

'I already did.'

'Oh. Well, that's good. I suppose.' Seeing the absolute mess and chaos in the kitchen, it was almost an anticlimactic end to events.

'Who'd have thought a coffee machine could make so much mess,' Tosh said, surveying the damage for herself.

'You know, he really should have put a warning on that button,' Jack said.

'Well, he was very firm about no one touching the machine. We can't really argue that we weren't warned.'

Jack sighed again. It was going to take half the morning to clean this mess up. No coffee and no Ianto only served to make matters worse. There was no guarantee that Ianto wouldn't know his precious machine had been tampered with in any case. It'd be grossly unfair after four days of no coffee to be further punished by being put on decaf.

'Tosh?'

'Mmm?'

'Fancy taking a trip down to Libertines to pick us up some drinks? I'll stay here and start cleaning up.'

She nodded, knowing better than to volunteer to help when Jack so willingly offered to undertake the task himself. 'Double shot black with four?' she said, repeating his own preference.

'Not today, Tosh. Think I'll stick to hot chocolate.'