m_findlow: (Default)
[personal profile] m_findlow

Title: Homemade entertainment
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Gwen, Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 762 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for juliet316's prompt "Torchwood, author's choice, lack of activity makes the team bored" at fic_promptly
Summary: Owen will make his own entertainment.

As much as they hated things when they were absolutely mental, end of the world and it’s not even lunchtime yet, the worst part of the day was when nothing at all happened. It could almost be considered that the rift was perhaps lulling them into a false sense of security, or perhaps testing them, setting them a psychological battle of thinking things were perfectly okay, when in reality they were actually building up to something cataclysmic.

There’s a tension that hangs in the air when nothing is going on. It’s not the usual happy silence of five people who each have their own work to do; it’s the nervous energy of sitting there waiting for something to happen.

Owen is usually the first to go. Unlike the others, there’s no compulsion to go and find new things to amuse himself with. Instead he often ends up annoying whoever is closest, ultimately distracting them from whatever it was they were planning on doing to occupy their time. Today he'd taken to using the spare pages from his printer and folding them into various styles of paper plane, testing each one to see what design gives him the best distance and which can do the best loop the loop, and is there one that can fly around the water tower and come back to him like a paper boomerang. Little paper planes are now littering the floor and whilst Ianto hasn't said anything yet, the others can tell he's noticed and just barely holding back from starting a war of words that can only end one way. At least it will give them ten minutes of entertainment as the two of them go head to head. They're like siblings that are only happy when they're terrorising one another.

One of Owen's planes drifts along and slides across Tosh's desk, landing right in the middle of her keyboard where moments ago she'd been busy typing out algorithms to test for her new time lock project. She picks it up and studies it. 'This is never going to work, Owen,' she says.

'It got that far, didn't it?' he argues.

'There's not enough wingspan to give it lift, and there's no tail fin to stabilize it during flight.'

'So?'

'I think what Tosh is trying to say,' Gwen interjects, 'is that you might as well have just scrunched it up into a ball and chucked it.'

'That so?' Owen says, balling up a wad of paper and throwing it at her. 'How's that for aerodynamic, PC Cooper?'

Gwen scrunches up a ball of paper and flings one back herself, never mind that she'd started making notes on it.

Owen finches and throws an arm up to stop it from hitting him square in the face. 'Steady on! Alright, worst paper plane buys lunch, how's that? Teaboy, you in?'

Ianto looks begrudgingly up from the file in front of him. 'Do I get a choice?'

'Forfeit buys lunch,' Owen replies.

Ianto rolls his eyes. 'Fine,' he says, taking a clean sheet of paper and pulling a ruler and pencil out of his stationery caddy.

They begin folding in earnest. Gwen is doodling smiley faces all over hers, whilst Ianto is spending more time designing an accurate Red Baron logo than worrying about wing to fuselage ratios. So far, only Owen's looks anything like a traditional paper plane, and he's had the benefit of already having tried out several alternatives. Tosh's plane doesn't even look like a plane. It's got funny circular bits hanging off the wings and the tail. Tosh might be smart, Owen thinks, but she's completely missed the mark this time around.

Gwen's plane ends up hitting the woodwork and nosediving straight into that ground after that. Ianto's misses the same support beam by half an inch only and matches Owen's for distance to the point where they can't pick a clear winner.

'Looks like it's you or Gwen shouting lunch,' Owen calls out to Tosh, yet to cast her own.

'We'll see about that,' she says, standing up and releasing her creation.

Tosh's plane takes flight, sailing through the air like it's weightless, far surpassing the distance of all three of her competitors, before it finally glides to the ground. And right up against the toe of Jack's boot as he comes to stand at his office doorway.

Jack's gaze drops to his foot and then sees the mass of planes all over the hub. 'This is what happens when I don't leave enough crayons to go with all the paper, isn't it?'

Date: 2019-11-04 03:12 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] jo02

Ahahaha - best closing line ever in ages :)

Date: 2019-11-04 03:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] m-findlow.livejournal.com

I aim to please. :) Jack isn't the only one with occasionally childish tendencies.

Date: 2019-11-26 10:49 pm (UTC)
bk_forever: (Eye Roll)
From: [personal profile] bk_forever
*giggles* Brilliant! And I love Jack's last line.

I had a feeling Tosh's plane would be the best. But I bet Ianto's the one left with cleaning up the mess.

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