Fffc Bingo Card - Staying tuned

[m_findlow]

Title: Staying tuned 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Owen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 63 - Music at fffc
Summary: Owen has an issue with Ianto's choice of radio stations. 

Owen drummed the edge of the window with his fingers as he watched the traffic slowly drifting around them. It felt like every car on the road was going faster than they were, even the ones that were so old they probably couldn't do more than forty miles an hour. 

He should hardly be surprised at their pedestrian speed given who was behind the wheel. Having Jack say that Ianto drove like an old old lady had to be seen to truly be believed. He'd never met a bloke that was so cautious behind the wheel as Ianto. How he ever managed to get the SUV anywhere it needed to be in a hurry defied belief. Owen wondered if maybe the way he drove it when they were inside it was just a ruse, and that when he had to take it out to drop them off somewhere and return to the hub, that he then took it out on the motorway and floored it, ripping up and down between Newport and Cardiff, just for fun. That would have been what Owen would have done if Jack ever let him have the keys for more than five minutes. A beast like the SUV was meant to be thrashed and pushed to its limits. That's what Jack did each and every time he drove it, and Jack was like a kamikaze pilot, throwing it into ridiculously fast hairpin turns, flying it down alleyways that were scarcely wide enough to let the SUV pass through them, and hitting the brakes hard, stopping the car on a dime. He understood how a car like this should be driven. 

‘Forty,’ Owen muttered. 

‘I beg your pardon?’ 

‘The speed limit,’ Owen clarified. ‘I don't think we're doing it.’ 

If Ianto was annoyed by Owen's comment he didn't show it. ‘That's the upper limit, Owen. Not the minimum.’ 

‘Same difference. It'll take a month of Sundays at this rate.’ 

‘You were the one who insisted in coming along to help pick up supplies,’ Ianto reminded him. ‘I believe your exact words were that “I wouldn't know the pointy end of a hypodermic needle if I shoved it in my arse”. So, if you want your very specific medical gear, you get to put up with me driving you all around town to get it.’ 

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Owen grumbled, slumping down in the seat. He did want to have a say in what he got, if for no other reason than these places sold a whole lot more stuff than he ever bothered to think about. Going in person would give him a chance to find other stuff that would be useful for them to have around the hub, and with Ianto toting the corporate credit card, there was no limit on what he could get. It was a bit like Christmas, without all the crappy bits like family and having to be nice. 

‘Can we at least have something to listen to?’ Owen begged. 

‘The radio is on. What more do you want?’ 

Owen pointed at the central dash. ‘I meant music, Ianto. Not this crap that's on right now.’ 

‘It's not crap. It's Radio Wales.’ 

‘Exactly,’ Owen said. ‘A bunch of sad people from tin pot towns no one has ever heard of, telling their sad little stories about things happening in places that nobody cares about.’ 

‘It's the national broadcast,’ Ianto emphasised, and Owen noticed him grip the wheel a little tighter at Owen's needling. 

‘Yeah, and where's Barry Beat and Red Dragon gone?’ Jack always had the radio on but at least it was tuned to something you could hum along to. He didn't let them have much music on around the hub, only when they finally stopped to kick back and have some fun, a drink and a pizza on the sofa or a few rounds of basketball. The rest of the time the place sounded like a morgue. And when it wasn't, Jack usually provided his own soundtrack, but Owen couldn't have said what half the songs were that Jack claimed were well known tunes. Maybe they had been back in the eighteenth century, or whenever it was that Jack had dredged them up from. It was no Motorhead or Goldfrapp, that was for sure. 

‘Are you sure you aren't alien, Ianto?’ 

‘What, because I choose to listen to a radio station that isn't just endless ads and stupid people talking about themselves and what they saw on YouTube yesterday?’ 

‘Some of us happen to like that sort of thing,’ Owen argued. ‘It's called keeping up with the times. Honestly you're worse than Jack and his bloody showtunes. Do you even like music?’ 

‘Of course I like music.’ 

‘What kind?’ 

‘All kinds.’ 

‘Spoken like a man who couldn't name a single band he's listened to in the last month.’ 

Ianto's jaw clenched. ‘I like music,’ he repeated. ‘I just so happen to also like having the radio tuned to something informative when I'm out on the road. It doesn't kill you to be up to date with the weather and the local traffic conditions.’ 

‘The way you drive, you're probably the cause of most of Cardiff’s traffic bottlenecks.’

‘You can go fetch your own supplies next time if you like. You don't need a chauffeur.’ 

‘Maybe I will,’ Owen said, getting testy. ‘And then I'll have on whatever I like and turn it up as loud as I like. We've got Bluetooth so I could play anything I want from my phone.’ 

‘Good for you,’ came the terse reply. 

Owen growled and suffered through the bland little jingle that preceded the hourly news bulletin, before sitting up a little straighter in his seat. ‘Hang on, did they just report that it's raining mice in Splott?’ 

Ianto smirked, swinging the car around and heading back towards the hub. ‘And now you know why I keep the radio tuned into the news. You wouldn't have found out about that on Barry Beat FM.’