Torchwood: Fanfic: Digging yourself into trouble

[m_findlow]

Title: Digging yourself into trouble
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,060 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for samuraiter's prompt "Any, any, who threw the first snowball is less important than who threw the last" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto is having a hard time getting good help.

Ianto had thought himself very clever, at least initially. No one could prove that it was rift related and not just some freak occurrence in the Welsh weather, but this morning when he'd come into work it had taken him three times as long on account of the three feet of snow that had been dumped on the city overnight. Snow, right here in Cardiff was almost unheard of. Out in the beacons and the valleys most definitely, but the theory was that the city centre was way too close to the open water for snow to properly form. At least that had been the theory.

He'd gotten so fed up with the traffic jams on Bute Street that he'd pulled over and trudged the rest of the way to work on foot. That of course mean that by the time he arrived, his pants were saturated and his legs frozen numb. A hot shower and a clean set of clothes later, he made coffee, which for the moment was only for two. Everyone else had done the smart thing and called in late, preferring to stay inside their nice warm cars and out of the snow.

'We're gonna need the invisible lift later,' Jack commented over coffee. It was the indirect way of telling Ianto he'd have to go clear the snow from around the water tower. He wanted to argue why Jack had to insist on using the lift and why he couldn't use any of the other two dozen access points, but the point seemed moot. Jack gets what Jack wants.

'Get the rest of the team to help when they get here,' Jack said, as if that was a consolation.

Ianto had the shovels and buckets ready to go by the time they'd arrived, and had strategically withheld coffee until after the job was done. That of course was a mistake now, he realised. No one wanted to be out in the cold first thing, and to be shoveling snow even less. The girls had made a decent effort for about ten minutes but then even they lost interest. The water tower had never seemed so broad as when it was buried under a mountain of snow, and the more they dug, the more they realised they had no real good spot to move all the snow to.

In the distance they could hear the locals laughing and squealing as snowball fights broke out around the Plass. Ianto sighed, shoveling more snow. Everyone else was having fun and here they were, looking like a bunch of disenchanted council workers.

There was a grunt as he was hit from behind by a rogue snowball. He turned, looking mad. 'Alright, which of you did that?'

'Wasn't us, I swear,' Owen replied.

Ianto glared at him and didn't believe him for a second. 'Come on, we've got work to do.'

'You're such a bore, Teaboy.'

He huffed. 'Fine. Have your stupid snow fight, but leave me out of it. Can you at least use snow from around the water tower and be useful?'

It didn't take an engraved invitation before there were white missiles flying in every which direction, Gwen and Tosh squealing as they were attacked by Owen, but giving back just as good as they got. All the while Ianto remained grumpy, continuing to shovel the area clear.

'Oi!' he yelled, as a couple slammed into the tower, dumping their snow load back onto the space he'd just cleared. 'Other direction, thanks!'

It had worked for a while, as various members of the team gratefully stole the buckets of snow he'd filled, using it for ammo. He would have preferred however if they were making some kind of effort to help him clear the snow from the lift rather than just using it for their own purpose.

Things continued to get crazy and more and more snowballs were slamming in the tower, intentionally or unintentionally, spraying him with flecks of icy snow as he worked, or otherwise just adding snow to areas he'd already cleared. It was more than he could take after that, giving them all a piece of his mind.

No sooner than he’d chastised whoever had been throwing the offending snow, one snapped him right in the back of the head.

'Right, that’s it!' he said, throwing down the shovel. 'Which one of you guys did that?'

Three faces caught the furious look on Ianto’s face and stopped dead in their tracks. Another one whacked him from a different angle and he knew for certain that none of them could have done it whilst he’d had his eye firmly fixed on them. Two more came out of nowhere and belted Owen and Gwen, missing Tosh by inches. Ianto looked around at the crowds to see if someone else had decided to join their team. There was no one until suddenly a whole bucket of snow was dumped ungraciously on his head. He cried out and turned, realising he’d been stood just a foot in front of the invisible lift. The assailant was using its chameleon properties to hide himself.

'Jack!' Ianto roared. 'You’ll be on decaf forever if you don’t come out of hiding right this very instant!'

'Lighten up, Ianto,' he said stepping off the platform. 'I was just coming up to see how you were getting on clearing the lift. Looks like you’ve done a good job.'

'No thanks to this lot,' he grumbled.

'Well, you'd been up here forever. Thought I'd better come check on you.'

'You could’ve warned me,' he said. 'I could have stepped over a great big hole and fallen in.'

'Don’t dramaticise. You’d have seen it when you got that close. Besides, I would’ve caught you.'

'Been crushed, more like,' he complained.

'So, whose team can I join?' Jack asked. 'Looks like you’re all having fun when you should be working. Or better yet, why don’t we make it me against you guys? First to manage to hit me gets the rest of the day off.'

Before he could say anything further, a snowball smacked him right in the head. 'Hey! We hadn’t started yet.'

'That’s right,' Ianto said, dusting snow from his mittens. 'I just ended it. Now you lot can stay here and finish what I started. I've had more than enough of snow for today.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

Ianto definitely has the right idea. If Jack wants the lift cleared again he can do it himself.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if they'd all pulled a shift there'd have been time and energy left for them all to muck around and have a bit of a snowball fight. Ianto is the only one not enjoying the snow right now.