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Torchwood: Fanfic: Irreplaceable
Title: Irreplaceable
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Andy Davidson
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 856 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, Andy Davidson, unbelievably still on the payroll" at fic_promptly
Summary: Andy never thought he'd make it past the first few weeks.
After all, these years, Andy still can't quite belive that he's here, working for Torchwood. Not just working for them, but unbelievably, still alive to tell the tale.
In fairness, the rift isn't quite what it used to be in terms of spitting out deadly and dangerous things. Somewhere along the line - and he never really did get the full story - Jack and Ianto went on a so-called holiday and came back claiming to have learned something more about how the rift worked. There was some talk about something that had happened whilst they were away, though neither would give details if pressed for information, but something in that crazy ability to never die had been used to tweak the rift. That was his best guess anyway. Ianto laughed at him and told him to stop letting his imagination run away with him. It was nothing more than a little bit of expert tweaking of the rift machine, which those clever folk from their Torchwood London technology division had suggested. Andy knew this was bollocks, of course. There was a little glint in his boss's eye that said he was being fed a lie.
Still, he didn't complain. He was never going to be some SAS special forces hero. He'd come a long way from those early days, though, and he was proud of what he'd managed to achieve. Gwen was beside herself in having finally pushed Jack hard enough to recruit him in the first place, and even Ianto seemed quietly pleased at how he'd grown into the role. Jack was less effusive in handing out credit, and had his own backhanded way of passing off a compliment. Usually it began with whatever new recruit had just been brought on board, as he showed them around the place and started sentences with phrases like "now, don't do what Andy did on his first day...." He hadn't really done all those silly things on his first day, he'd at least managed to spread his untrained foolishness over the space of several months, but Jack liked live examples, and Andy had given him plenty.
He'd learnt from those mistakes, though and he'd become a better field agent for it. It had taken a long time, with a lot of patience from Gwen and Ianto, trying to show him the ropes and get him up to speed on things like firearms and hand to hand self defense. Back when he'd first started, if a weevil had come running at him, he'd have stood there like a deer caught in the headlights, and been mauled to death before he'd ever remembered he had a stun gun in his hand. These days it was the weevils that ran from him, and not all that well, if he was honest. Deadly fast they were, but hobbled the whole way like they all needed a good hip replacement.
He knew he'd come a long way when he looked down on the younger recruits coming in, being the one giving them a helping hand to navigate the perils of the unknown. It wasn't always easy knowing if something was alien, or was just a plain old bread bin. It took experience to be able to spot the subtle differences, and that only came with time. Who knew, he thought, the way things were going, he might even live long enough to retire properly from this gig, and take his very sizable retirement benefit with him. So what if he didn't get much in the way of weekend and holidays, and that he'd never been able to hang on to a steady girlfriend, because it was a hell of a job trying to explain what you did to someone who knew nothing about Torchwood?
'You need to date inside of Torchwood,' Jack had advised him one day. 'Works every time.'
He didn't think that was necessarily true, just because it had worked for Jack, but perhaps he should rethink the premise. He wasn't out of his prime yet, and there were a lot more options these days than when he'd first started. Back then there'd been just a handful of them, the original crew, him and Rhys, Johnson and their medic Jez. Not anymore. They had dozens of people now, and not all of them were crazy, gun wielding, alien hunting, nutters like him. He wasn't sure he wanted to be set up with someone by Jack, but perhaps he shouldn't discount the opportunity. After all, Torchwood was still crazy most days and he was never going to be as good at this as Gwen and Ianto. There was always the chance he might still go out in some completely embarrassing and inglorious way, probably tripping over his shoelaces or something. Just because he'd made it this far didn't mean tomorrow might not be the end.
That's it, he decided, stop wasting time and go get yourself out there. What good was it to qualify for long service leave if he had no one to share it with? He worked for Torchwood. That surely had to make him more appealing than the average Joe.
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I like this modern, less lethal to its employees version of Torchwood.
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