m_findlow

Title: Getting your hands dirty
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,094 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, it wasn't broken, but there was a certain joy about taking it apart and putting it back together again" at fic_promptly
Summary: Sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty.

There were probably other things he could have or should have been doing, but right now, all Jack really wanted was a few hours alone to himself. He trotted down the stairs and along the hall until he came to the small storage room. It was small only in comparison to some of the other areas down here, where they kept things that had come through the rift. He couldn't exactly call it part of the archives. It was more like a garage, or a used car lot, housing a series of spacecraft that ranged from the size of a golf buggy, all the way up to a semi trailer. Anything bigger than that would have bee too large to keep at the hub, and a hell of a job to get inside unnoticed even if they did have the space. Those that couldn't come down here, assuming they were still operational and had some kind of transmat technology, got parked up on the moon for safekeeping.

He wandered around, admiring them each in turn, like some odd car museum. He'd flown some of them hundreds of times, and some of them he could barely make out which controls did what, so foreign were they. In a pinch he could get them going, since all ships were basically the same in concept, but it was always nice to be behind the wheel something familiar.

He stepped over to the one he came down here for and brushed a hand over its underside. A Teslon Mark IV. One of the first ships he ever piloted as a probationary agent, and still his favourite, sturdy, reliable and fast.

He made his way over to a small workbench and pulled open the cupboard door underneath, pulling out a toolbox, before dragging it over to the Teslon and parking himself beneath its paneling. Taking out something that looked like a screwdriver but wasn't, he dislodged the panel and began undoing the clips that held the mechanics in place.

It wasn't broken, but there was a certain joy about taking it apart and putting it back together again. He'd had tinkered with a lot of engines in his life, often at times when he couldn't afford to have a ship that couldn't fly or at least jump into hyperspace. Mechanical know how was not part of his formal education with the Agency, but rather a skill learned first hand and out of necessity. He had a mind for things mechanical, and a natural understanding of how they fitted together to make it work. When he had downtime back at base command, he often found himself lurking around the docking bay, not just to catch up on the missions of his fellow agents as they came and went, but also to admire the many ships that arrived, some of them on their last legs, their agents lucky to be alive after a narrow escape.

He loitered around, watching the crews that were contracted to fix and maintain the ad-hoc fleet of vessels. He asked them questions, examined what they did and how they did it, and helped out on occasion, learning what he could about the various makes and models. He didn't ever want to be in a situation where he couldn't fix his own ship, so he spent time taking it apart and putting it back together. Rarely did he ever ask a tech crew to come and sort out a problem, preferring to get to the bottom of it himself. Sometimes the computer systems on board might glitch, some fundamental error in the programming that left him for dead, but anything to do with the actual physical workings of the ship he could handle.

He set to work, picking up several more tools and breaking down the engines into their constituent parts, checking each one over for signs of cracking or fatigue. It was a time consuming task, and one that many crews skipped or rushed, which often ended in disaster for the ship's crew. It only took one bolt to break and a whole ship could explode.

He picked up a cloth and worked it around some of the moving parts, the greasy rag slicking them up before being slotted back into place. That was one of his little secrets to getting things to work perfectly, he thought, wiping his hand across his itchy nose and leaving behind a little smudge of black.

Lubricant was such an old fashioned thing. Most ships needed no lubricant whatsoever, since most of their moving parts where made of highly advanced alloys that created no friction. The rest were powered by quantum reversers, star drives, solar induction converters and proton splitters. They didn't use conventional fuels, and even nuclear fission was considered old school. But Jack had discovered that even the best alloys in the universe could always do with a little grease. No one ever understood how his ship ran smoother than theirs and he was too proud at the time to reveal his trick.

He spent hours taking it all to pieces before finally reassembling it, bit by careful bit, losing himself in the task, mind drifting away from all of the other thoughts that weighed him down, focusing solely on the job at hand. Every piece had to go back just so, some tight as a drum, others slotted in so that they would be loose and free to move. It was a delicate balancing act, knowing first hand just how each component would respond to the controls on board, asked to go faster or slower, to stop and start on a dime, or to grind away for hours on end without respite. One day he might have need of a ship, and if he did, he wanted it to be ready, perfectly tuned, able to go at the drop of a hat.

By the time he'd snapped the final panel back in place, he felt happy and relaxed, the mere act of using his hands having eased the tension out of the rest of his body. His hands were black, the back of his shirt and his brow sweaty, but it was a satisfying kind of job. Perhaps later, after he'd showered and had coffee, he might convince Ianto to come down here and let him take them for a quick spin. He had to make sure it was all tuned to perfection, and what better way than to open up her engines and listen to his baby purr as she soared around the moon and back.