Torchwood: Fanfic: Essential maintenance

[m_findlow]

Title: Essential maintenance
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,301 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for juliet316's prompt "Any, any, behind the scenes" at fic_promptly
Summary: Working for Torchwood isn't always glamorous.

Ianto watched as the SUV pulled away from the curb. It only paused for the briefest of moments to let the white minivan pass, Jack tipping a finger at the driver. The driver of course was him, here to finish up what the team had started.

He parked a little further up, away from the double yellow lines that the SUV had so openly ignored, before getting out and sliding open the side door to retrieve his equipment. Taking the heavy case and tarpaulin, he went back to the scene. With the departure of the big black car, with its blue flashing lights and name emblazoned brightly on its roof, any onlookers had decided it was also time to move on. Little did they know that Torchwood's work here was far from over, but he didn't mind that so much. Hangers on were the last thing he needed when he just wanted to get on with the job.

This was just as much a part of the job as what the team were doing back at the hub, or when their roles were reversed, with him at the hub and the team out in the field. This was just the work that happened behind the scenes, that most people never gave a second though to, the team included.

Tonight they'd come out to investigate the latest rift alert, which had occurred in a sleepy little inner city street of tightly packed terrace houses, which backed onto the commercial district. The thing looked a bit like an upended shopping trolley, though its sides were closed. A Microva unmanned cargo ship, so Jack had reported over their comms. Once they'd come to inspect it, determining that there was nothing dangerous in the cargo hold itself, they'd left it to their auxiliary team for collection and transport to the hub. AKA, Ianto Jones.

It was damn lucky it hadn't hit anyone on the way through the rift, he thought, inspecting the thing for himself. He often wondered if things that came through the rift dropped from the sky, or whether they simply just appeared in situ, where beforehand there'd been nothing. He suspected it was the latter, having once had to help extract a freestanding hammock from a cinder block wall, half sticking out either side, before they finally gave up and worked up a story that it was a new community art installation. It was probably fortunate that sort of thing didn't occur more often.

He began by setting the thing right way up, or at least what he took to be right way up, still fascinated that something so small could actually be considered enormous by some other alien species. There were little green men, and really little green men, it turned out. Or perhaps they weren't green at all. He might have to ask Jack about that one day.

The small ship was leaking fuel onto the pavement underneath it. That was more important than the ship itself, since the fuel was slightly radioactive. Once he got the ship into the van, he could begin cleaning up the worst of it, to at least make the street safe for passers-by and curious dogs who would no doubt pick up the unusual scent immediately.

He tested the weight of the ship, coming to the conclusion that it was too heavy to carry or push, and too awkward to get on his trolley to wheel it back. He'd have to bring the van back down the street and haul it in.

It didn't take long to reverse the van back down the street, the tiny little beeping piercing the otherwise quiet night. It was late and if anyone was awake in the neighbouring houses, they were keeping their curtain twitching subtle. Not that he was worried. The morning milk run for the street would be a special delivery, laced with just a hint of retcon. It never paid to be too careful.

He tugged opened the sliding door, setting down one layer of tarpaulin, ready to take the ship and its leaky fuel tanks. The last thing they needed was a radioactive van, thought he had to admit, having the inside glow in the dark would be an advantage for night retrievals like this one.

Suitably gloved, he managed to haul it into the van, though having a spare pair of hands would have made it easier. At least the team could have hung around to help him out with that much, he thought. They must just assume he had superhuman strength, or some magic levitating technology that made this kind of work a breeze.

Once the ship was loaded, he opened up his box of equipment, taking out a canister of yellow powder. According to Jack, it was laced with a bacteria that absorbed radium and about fifty other kinds of unpleasantly dangerous compounds. He sprinkled it over the fuel leak spread over the road and the gutter, glad there hadn't been a drain nearby, nor any rain. Radioactive material getting into the city's sewers would not be good, and God only knew what effect it might have on weevils.

He let the powder go to work whilst he finished securing the ship into the back of the van, so that it wouldn't roll around once he drove off. Then he took out a PDA and began making notes on it. Torchwood logged everything, including when things got picked up for transport, original locations, times, what procedures were conducted at the scene, etcetera, etcetera. Most of it was probably useless detail, but just on the off chance something happened later, it was good to know what they'd done. Unfortunately most of that record keeping fell to him. The others would write their reports, type up interviews they'd conducted, and any testing or analysis done on the things they'd retrieved after they made their way back to the hub, but all of this in between stuff didn't interest them. This was Ianto's bread and butter, what he was good at, and what nobody else wanted to do.

Ianto grabbed a thick, bristled broom and a dustpan, sweeping up the yellow powder now forming clumps on the road. It was carefully loaded back into its original canister. The bacteria would be done converting the hazardous material in a few days and then it would be good to use again, which was lucky since they only had a small amount. A larger spill would simply have to be cordoned off from the public until they could work through it in a grid pattern, taking each bit at a time.

He took out the equivalent of an alien geiger counter and checked the area to make sure he hadn't missed any spots, before putting it away and making a note of the time the area was finally clear. With one last look behind him, he quietly slid the van door shut and slipped into the driver's seat, pulling away into the night. Back at the hub Tosh and Jack would be eagerly awaiting him to start extracting the cargo from the ship and doing the fun part of cataloging their booty and the ship itself, hoping to get it back in working order. Gwen would be publishing fake news in social media about a meteor that burned up on entry but which was spotted by several Cardiff locals, and Owen was probably asleep on the sofa, having already mixed up a batch of low level retcon and having nothing else of any import to do.

For Ianto it would be two hours sleep, and then he'd be up again at five to deliver the milk to the residents of the street. It wasn't fun and it wasn't glamorous, but it was all part of the job.