m_findlow

Title: Night time hush
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 570 - Hush at slashthedrabble
Summary: There's something just so right about the quiet at the end of the day.

There's something wonderful about that moment when everybody finally goes home for the night. Torchwood is a busy place and it's never not buzzing with one noise or another.

Usually there's the sound of Owen crashing about in his medical bay, dropping his implements on the metal examination table or knocking them on the floor because the space down there is totally inadequate. Occasionally his deceased subjects give them more than they bargained for as they wait to be cut open. Apparently post mortem flatulence is a thing common across multiple species.

Then there's Gwen and Tosh, always busily working away on something at their desks. There's a constant clacking of computer keys, flapping of paper files and a litany of phone calls, sometimes work related, sometimes fending off nagging family and forced to answer that age old question "when are you coming round for tea? I haven't seen you in ages."

Jack can be heard no matter where he is in the hub, laughing and joking, or otherwise in his office giving a piece of his mind, and a good serve of his impressive vocal range, to whomever is on the other end of the phone. Every now and then one of them ends up on the receiving end of Jack's ire, but he generally reserves his loudest profanities for civil servants -somehow forgetting that technically Torchwood staff are civil servants.

Even without the team there, the hub continues to remind him that it too lives and breathes. The door klaxons are forever sounding and no one can remember why they were ever installed in the first place. It's not like they're expecting guests. There's the hum of the mainframe and the constant whir of the subetheric resonator, the trickle of water from the tower that dominates the hub and pierces all the way through to the ordinary world above them. By rights it shouldn't trickle but the council never do fix the plumbing no matter how many complaints Ianto lodges.

And then of course there's their resident pterodactyl Myfanwy. She's well behaved for the most part but every now and then she plays up, swooping them and squawking, either for attention or because someone is harboring a chocolate bar and not sharing it.

But once jackets are donned and handbags slung, everyone eventually leaves for the day and then it's just the two of them here, pets excluded. When the day is finally over, Ianto can switch the hub over to night mode, at which point the hum of computers fades, the rift machine goes idle and even the drip drip of water seems to melt away. A hush finally descends over the entire building and Ianto lets out a contented sigh. Peace at last.

'Ianto! You better have your stopwatch ready. You owe me a round of naked hide and sneak. Time to see if I can beat my personal best of twenty six wins in a row!'

Ianto sighs. So much for a quiet night in.