Torchwood: Fanfic: Food for thought

[m_findlow]

Title: Food for thought
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 825 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, salad is not a sandwich filling" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack has issue with the day's lunch arrangements.

Jack stepped into the boardroom and spotted Ianto setting up for lunch. He clapped his hands together, spying the large silver platter in the centre of the table, piled high with sandwiches. 'Excellent timing, Ianto. I'm famished.'

'Which is why I always buy extra,' Ianto quipped.

Jack leaned over the table and picked up one of the sandwich halves, shoving it in his mouth with a ginormous bite which made half of it disappear in an instant. He chewed for a moment before swallowing, forcing the large mouthful past his adam's apple with some effort. 'What's this?' he asked, pulling apart the remaining half and examining it.

Ianto sighed. 'Now I know you're an intelligent man who just pretends to sometimes have absolutely no clue, but even you're not so thick as to not be able to recognise a plate of sandwiches.'

'I admire your absolute faith in me, Ianto Jones, but what I was referring to was the contents of said sandwiches.' He set down the half eaten one and reached over to pull up the edge of another slice of bread and peered inside, before setting it down and confirming it again by lifting up another neatly cut corner.

'I'm confused,' Ianto said, frowning at the platter he'd set on the table. Had he missed something obvious, or had his boss's brain been taken over by something alien whilst he'd been gone?

'Where's the real sandwiches?' Jack asked in response. He was still poking around them, checking them one by one.

'Are you sure you're okay, Jack?' Perhaps he should go and get Owen before Jack became agitated.

'There's no meat Ianto!' Jack finally declared. 'I haven't seen a single piece of chicken, ham, salami or even that weird processed stuff that could possibly be a combination of all three, or something from another planet. I'm not entirely sure on that one.'

Suddenly Jack's line of questioning made complete sense, as Ianto had suspected it might, provided enough time and patience was granted for them to reach an informed conclusion. 'Yes, there's no meat,' he confirmed.

'But, that's insane! Why?'

'You're the one that said we need to eat more vegetables, so I ordered all salad fillings. The closest you'll get to protein in those is the egg and lettuce.'

'No,' Jack countered, stepping closer to his teammate to emphasise his next sentence. 'I said youneed to eat more vegetables. I didn't think you'd try to sneak them into our lunch.' He looked genuinely horrified, as if Ianto had slipped arsenic into them, rather than slices of tomato and cucumber.

'What's wrong with salad sandwiches?'

Jack gave him a very serious look. 'Salad is not a sandwich filling.'

'Don't be stupid, of course it is.'

'No. Chicken schnitzel is a sandwich filling. Peanut butter is a sandwich filling. Hell, there's not even so much as a slice of cheese here!'

'You've had pizza three days running!' Ianto replied. If Jack ate any more pizza, he was going to start to look like one. 'Next you'll be telling me you want to stick a slice of meat feast between two pieces of bread and call that a sandwich.'

Jack didn't mind that as a concept, but he was beneath admitting it. 'I'm trying to maintain a high performance team, here. I can't sustain them on rabbit food. Do you want it on your conscience that the world ended because all we ate was lettuce?'

Ianto rolled his eyes. There was only so far he could take Jack's histrionics before he needed to put his foot down and bring Jack back down to earth. 'I take it then you won't want the fruit and custard tarts I bought for afterwards, then?' They weren't what he'd call healthy, since they were still technically sweets, but they did contain fruit. God forbid if he'd ordered a plain fruit salad.

Jack paused, looking torn. He got the distinct impression from the tone of Ianto's voice that rejection of the former would lead to the latter being taken away as well. There was also the chance of coffee going the same way. That would be even more disastrous. And he had said that Ianto needed more nutrition, though part of that was Owen's nagging at him, underscoring sections of his routine medical checkups and expecting Jack to enforce his recommendations.

'Just this once, okay?' Jack said. 'Next time you feel like putting the whole team on some regimented health kick, there'd better be some ham and cheese.'

'It shall be duly noted that the immortal has requested to be exempted from healthy eating on account of the fact that he can lose any excess pounds by getting blown up, shot, or mauled to death by an alien.'

Jack narrowed his eyes at Ianto's dry sense of humor. 'Tread carefully, Ianto Jones, or a lack of vegetables will be the least of things you aren't getting enough of.'

Comments

[jo02]

" Chicken schnitzel is a sandwich filling. "

Chicken schnitzel is food of the gods! Almost on a par with bacon!

Damn, it's 10.30pm and now I'm hungry ...

[bk_forever]

There's quite a battle of wills going on here, they could each withhold something the other wants, but I have a feeling Jack would cave first if it came to that. Maybe Ianto had better make sure there are a few sandwiches that meet Jack's specifications in future. Just to keep him happy.