m_findlow

Title: Hazardous work
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Gwen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 658 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Torchwood, Ianto, Knocking himself out on one of the archive shelves" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto knew his job was a dangerous one

The first sign of trouble was the hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him. He was lying on the floor, feeling the cold concrete underneath him, only a dim light hovering overhead.

'Ianto, are you alright?' Gwen said, brushing a hand across his head in an unusually gentle way.

'Fine, I think,' he said, trying to sit up, but finding his head spinning in mad circles when he tired.

'Maybe lying back down might be a good idea,' Gwen suggested. 'I should probably call Owen.'

'No need,' Ianto said, waving her off whilst he let the visions settle back into their rightful places, no longer in triplicate and swaying from side to side.

'You're lucky I found you,' Gwen said, resting her hand back on his shoulder.

'Why are you here?' Ianto said, as his memories were slowly beginning to come back to him.

'I was looking for Jack. No one's seen him for ages. I though maybe, er, you know...' she finished awkwardly.

He knew exactly what was thinking. 'You though he might have come down here to avoid doing work,' Ianto supplied for her.

'Something like that,' she smiled, Ianto saving her blushes.

'No such luck, I'm afraid. I think I'm going to try sitting up again.'

Gwen slowly helped moved him into a sitting position, resting back against the shelving behind him.

'Any idea what happened? Did you accidentally activate something in the archives? I got quite a fright seeing you just lying there in the dark.'

'Sorry,' he apologised. 'And no, I suspect I'm responsible for my own condition,' he said, reaching behind him and feeling the large swollen welt on the back of his head, wincing as he applied a tiny amount of pressure. When he inspected his fingers though, they came back clean. Not bleeding then, he thought gratefully. Looking across the aisle, he could just make out the outline of the offending item. Lucky he hadn't killed himself. That would have been a spectacularly unimpressive way to go, assuming anyone ever figured
it out. Down here the CCTV camera angles were limited, and this particular patch wasn't covered. Maybe he needed to rethink that situation.

Gwen sat down next to him, tucking her knees to her chin. 'What did you do?'

He wanted to curse his own stupidity, or was it laziness? 'I was sorting out a box of old records. Owen wanted to check something out in some medical file from 1952. I signed off the custody label on the lid but when I took the lid off the pen rolled off the edge of the shelf and onto the floor. I meant to pick it up once I was done locating the file, but when I turned to look for it, it must've gotten caught under my heel.'

'You tripped on a pen?'

'Yeah. Must've hit the edge of the shelf on my way down and well, the rest as they say, is history. Never been knocked out cold by a shelf before.'

'Torchwood is a dangerous job,' Gwen mused, though thankfully she kept her amusement under wraps. He didn't need insult added to injury. He'd have to explain the new addition to his skull to Jack later when he discovered it for himself, but he could perhaps bend the truth slightly. No one needed to know just how hard he'd hit his head. Injured in the line of duty, trying to help out a colleague had a much better ring to it.

'It's always the one you don't expect that gets you,' he replied. 'Jack keeps telling me that the paperwork is a killer.'

Gwen nudged him playfully. 'Think you can stand up?'

'Yup,' he said, though taking it slow, just to be on the safe side. 'Still one problem, though.'

'What's that?'

'We still don't know where Jack is.'

Gwen shrugged. 'I'm sure he'll turn up eventually. At least he can't die if confronted by deadly stationery.'