Torchwood: FanFic - Balls up

[m_findlow]

Title: Balls up
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 957 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "any, any, realising that they're stuck" at fic_promptly
Summary: The team have to extract Owen from a spot of bother

It was a little embarrassing to say the least.

They'd been chasing a weevil through a children's play centre. Fortunately Tosh, Ianto and Jack had managed to clear out all of the screaming kids and panicking parents before anyone got hurt, leaving Gwen and Owen in hot pursuit.

Owen and Gwen had managed to corral the weevil into part of the enclosed playground. It crawled desperately through several plastic tunnels, up a ladder, down a slide and finally landed into the giant ball pit where it had struggled until Owen had dived in after it and stunned it.

Now he had a bigger problem. Just as the weevil had scrambled and flailed amongst the balls, he too was now stuck. Clearly the pits were designed with children in mind, and their lighter bodies skipped over just the very top layer of the plastic balls. Owen's problem was one of size. Each time he tried to move, he found himself getting sucked further down as his weight drove his limbs more firmly down between the gaps, and the balls moved to accommodate his larger mass further surrounding him. Just how deep was the pit, he wondered, as the balls now surrounded him up to his chest. He tried not to panic. This was ridiculous, you couldn't really drown in a pit full of plastic balls, could you?

'A little help here!' He cried out to Gwen.

Gwen was struggling herself, just trying to crawl through the last tunnel to get to Owen. These things were definitely not built for adults, she thought. She knew Owen was skinny but how had he gotten through? Not to mention the weevil! She grunted again from the effort, vowing to stop eating pastries every time Ianto offered her one with her coffee. It probably didn't help either that she was wearing heeled boots which slipped helplessly against the plastic surface. Sneakers Gwen, she chastised, from now on stick to sneakers.

When she finally reached the tunnel entrance, or was it the exit, she was face first. No good, Gwen. She turned over onto her back, gripping the top of the tunnel edge and pulling herself out so that she could reach over to Owen. It was no use, he was too far away. She could feel her own legs getting sucked down into the pit from the force of trying to reach across, so quickly gripped the tunnel again and pulled herself free, perching on the edge before coming up with a better plan.

When Jack, Tosh and Ianto arrived, they watched Owen's plight from the other side of the high netted walls that surrounded the enclosure, keeping all of the colourful balls in place. Admittedly it was rather amusing, and adding a tranquilised weevil into the mix, well, that made it just another day at the office.

'Come on guys,' Owen moaned, 'just cut the netting and I'll be able to get out of here.'

'I'm not damaging perfectly good public property just because you're having a moment,' Jack replied.

Owen growled in frustration, 'Well, what about the weevil?'

'It's sedated and not going anywhere. '

'Neither is Owen, by the looks of things,' quipped Ianto.

'Shut up Teaboy!'

'Look,'  Jack said, 'there's an exit slide on the other side. All you have to do is get the weevil over there and push it down the slide. We'll handle it from there.'

'We'll if that's allI have to do, should be a piece of piss,' Owen snarled.

With a bit of coordinating, they manged to get both the weevil and Owen out of the pit. Tosh, being the smallest and lightest, had been sent into the playground to help Gwen.

Gwen held the tunnel entrance with one hand and extended herself as far as she could. Her other had gripped Tosh's, who was moving further out into the pit, much more easily than Owen had, until she could reach him with her other outstretched arm. With a bit of pulling, they were able to partially free Owen enough that he could start pushing the weevil towards the exit slide.  

Owen worked his his way across slowly and as lightly as possible, being careful in his movements not to send himself back under. At the exit was waiting Ianto, who had climbed up the exit slide, and was reaching across with his long limbs to grab the weevil from the other side and drag it the remaining distance.  

Jack of course, had claimed to be too broad shouldered to be able to fit through the tunnels at either end, so had offered to supervise the entire operation. His offer was met with several wan looks. There had to be some perks to being the leader, he thought.

The weevil had come tumbling out down the slide in an awkward unconscious heap, along with several of the hard plastic balls scattered about it. Owen followed, landing clumsily on his arse and groaning as one of the balls jabbed him hard in the back where he'd fallen on top of it. Ianto exited last. Jack reached out a hand to him as he dropped out of the bottom of the slide, pulling him easily up into a standing position so that he didn't suffer the same graceless fate as Owen.  

Bastard, Owen thought miserably.

Tosh and Gwen joined them shortly after, having climbed back out through the maze of tunnels and ladders from the other end.

'Good job team,' Jack declared. 'Another weevil safely apprehended. And as a plus, no one got hurt. Well, except for Owen's pride.'

'I would've got out, eventually,' Owen retorted.

'Yeah,' Jack conceded, 'but the rest of the team aren't immortal, and I would've gotten bored waiting.'

'Har, bloody har.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

Heehee! Owen definitely wasn't having a ball there! What a mess Torchwood agents can get in while doing their jobs!

I wonder if Gwen will remember the lesson she learned here about dressing appropriately for the job.

Thanks for the fill!