Fanfic - Tickled Pink [Torchwood: Jack/Ianto]

Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Mostly gen, with light Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13 (just some innuendo at the end...)
Notes: (Anti-ish-)Valentine's Day fic. Beware the crack. Muchas gracias to Areale, who, after listening to my moaning about how I wanted to write a(n anti-)V-day fic, gave me the initial idea for what should happen. Everything else - i.e. what caused what happened - is mine. *devious grin*


Tickled Pink

“Are you doing anything on Valentine’s?” Gwen asked Ianto.

“Probably,” Ianto said. Gwen’s eyes lit up.

“Really?” she asked. “Like what? Rhys has something planned, but he’s keeping it under wraps and for once, I can’t get anything out of him.”

“Well,” Ianto said thoughtfully. “I’ll probably begin the day with a spot of cleaning. Then there’s all the feeding to get through, and after that work in the archives. Then I’ll probably –”

“I meant anything special,” Gwen interrupted, lightly smacking Ianto’s shoulder in indignation. “With Jack.”

“Right,” Ianto said, smirking. “Well, Jack will be around the Hub, won’t he?”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Impossible, you are,” she said fondly.

“I do try,” Ianto replied. “Honestly, though, no concrete plans. Rift will probably ruin them anyway.”

“Oh dear,” Gwen said, frowning.

“Relax,” Ianto said. “Jack and I will cover it. We don’t want to give Rhys another reason to go off on Torchwood.”

Gwen beamed at him. “Brilliant. You ever want a day off, let me know and I’ll stay here round the clock.”

“We’ll think about it,” Ianto said, smiling.

---

“Want to go down to the florist’s?” Ianto enquired casually. He held a sheaf of papers to his chest as he leaned in Jack’s doorframe.

Jack lifted his head and pretended he hadn’t been falling asleep over his paperwork. The effect was somewhat ruined by the sheet of paper stuck to his cheek. “Why, you gonna buy me flowers?”

“I’m sure you’d like me to,” Ianto said.

“Yes, please,” Jack said. “We could decorate Myfanwy’s nest. Get some pink and white roses, she might like that.”

“Just white, maybe,” Ianto said. “Definitely not pink.”

“Why,” Jack asked, grinning. “What d’you have against pink?”

“Nothing, really,” Ianto said. “Other than there being so much of it around, this time of year.”

“So we’ll go get Myfanwy some pink roses,” Jack decided.

“Nope,” Ianto said.

Jack paused and looked at Ianto. Then he leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “All right, what is it?”

Ianto smirked. “Everything pink around Cardiff seems to be disappearing.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “Everything pink.”

“Flowers,” Ianto said, waving the print-outs he was carrying at Jack. “Cards, ribbons, wrappers, sweets.” He lowered the papers and waggled his eyebrows at Jack. “Shirts, dresses –”

“Let’s go,” Jack said, grinning from ear to ear.

---

Jack was extremely disappointed not to find any naked people wandering the streets, despite Ianto pointing out to him that in the event of one’s attire mysteriously vanishing off one’s body, very few people were liable to remain in the public eye.

“I did,” Jack grumbled. “On live television, even.”

“I don’t want to know,” Ianto said.

“De-fabricator,” Jack explained. “It was a makeover show. I decided to leave around the time they suggested I’d look better with a dog’s head.”

“I really don’t want to know,” Ianto said. Jack grinned to himself.

“Florist!” he announced, stopping in front of the shop. “Oh, she doesn’t look happy.”

“Half her stock just vanished the day before Valentine’s,” Ianto said. “I imagine I wouldn’t be happy, if I were her.”

“Good point,” Jack agreed. “This is where it all started?”

“Near as I can tell,” Ianto said, re-checking his scanner. “Where the first reports of vanishing pink things came from, at any rate.”

“Good enough,” Jack said, pushing the door open.

“Can’t you read?” the woman behind the counter asked, glaring at them. “We’re closed!”

“We’re not looking to buy anything,” Jack said, flashing her his most charming grin. “We just had a few questions about your missing stock. Captain Jack Harkness, by the way. And you are?” Jack kept the smile up full-force as he leaned across the counter and into her personal space. Any more, Ianto thought, and she might just melt.

“Oh, well,” she said, flustered. “I’m Ellen.”

“Very nice to meet you, Ellen,” Jack said winsomely, shaking her hand and lingering just a little too long with the touch. She flushed scarlet.

“And this is Ianto Jones,” Jack said, leaning back slightly and indicating Ianto. “Now, I understand some of your stock’s gone missing?”

“It’s terrible,” she said earnestly. “A lot of it’s just vanished.”

“All the pink flowers, apparently?” Ianto asked.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Doesn’t matter what type. If it’s pink, it’s gone, with just the stems left behind. The arrangements are all ruined. How’re we supposed to deliver them tomorrow, that’s what I want to know.”

“Was there anything out of the ordinary that happened earlier?” Jack asked.

Ianto glanced at his scanner, which informed him the Rift energy traces were twenty-seven hours old. “From last evening, perhaps,” he added. “Did you see anyone suspicious? Kids hanging around, maybe – it might have been a prank or a dare.”

“There wasn’t anyone around,” she said. “I locked up as always last night. I don’t see how they could have gotten in.”

“And you didn’t see anything strange?” Jack asked.

“No, nothing,” she said. “Well, unless you count the flamingo.”

---

“Hullo, Rhys. What? Oh, no, no, nothing like that. No, just – do you or Gwen have anything pink? Yes, pink. Cups, that’ll do. Are they still there? No? Right, then. Thanks. Oh, and – er, if I were you or Gwen, I wouldn’t wear any pink for the next couple of days. Bye!”

---

“Okay,” Jack said, looking far too amused. “What’ve we got?”

“Pink things are disappearing all over the city,” Ianto recited, peering out over the Plass as if it held answers for him. Evening was coming on; he wondered if they’d be able to sort this out before Valentine’s. “Some of them from places which were locked up, which implies that whatever it is, it isn’t stopped by closed doors.”

“Teleportation,” Jack suggested. “Or it could be a gas of some sort.”

“That’s magnetically attracted to the colour pink,” Ianto said dryly. “Do aliens pick the best times to cause havoc? Any other time of year there wouldn’t be nearly as much pink around.”

“I think they’ve got a calendar of Earth holidays and they strategise, one species for each major holiday,” Jack said. “So, flamingos.”

“Flamingos are cropping up near a number of places which have suffered from a dearth of pink,” Ianto said. “Are we presuming these two incidents are connected?”

“What else would a group of flamingos be doing here?” Jack asked reasonably. “Wait, is it a group? A flock? A gaggle?”

“Pat,” Ianto said.

“What?”

“Pat,” Ianto repeated. “Are we really going to chase down alien flamingos? Really?”

“Yes,” Jack replied solemnly. “Yes, we are.” He stood up and strode off, greatcoat swirling dramatically around him.

“At least,” Ianto mused out loud. “It isn’t a murder of crows.”

---

“On your right!” Jack yelled.

“On your head!” Ianto yelled back.

“What?” Jack asked, stopping. Then he squawked in indignation as a pink behemoth landed squarely on him, wings beating violently around his head. Ianto stunned his own target and then sat down to watch. Jack wrestled his flamingo into submission, cursing fluidly all the way through.

“Subdued the creature, sir?” Ianto asked, scooping up his flamingo and making his way over.

Jack growled.

---

The flamingos were very noisy. They were also very impolite.

“Let us expletive go, expletive,” Ianto read from the translator. “Expletive-ing expletives, thinking you can expletive-ing keep us expletive here?”

“Why do we have a censor on our translation programme?” Jack asked.

“Don’t know,” Ianto said. “I’ll expletive you up, you expletives. Expletive give me some expletive food you expletive-ing expletives.”

“What d’you want to eat?” Jack asked, spinning around to smile at the two caged flamingos. They shrieked in response.

“Expletive,” Ianto translated.

“We don’t actually know,” Jack said. “But if you’re going to be that way about it…”

The flamingos flapped their wings frantically and screeched.

“You expletive brought us here,” Ianto read.

“From the streets to here, yes,” Jack said. “But we weren’t the ones who brought you onto Earth in the first place. How did that happen?”

The flamingos looked as startled as it was possible for flamingos to be. Then one spread its wings in preparation for more shrieking. The other whacked it over the head with one wing, then looked at Ianto and Jack and squawked.

“We were with the crèche,” Ianto read out. “Then we were here.”

“Rift,” Jack said, turning back towards Ianto.

The flamingo squawked a little more.

“Can you get us home? And some food?” Ianto read. “Well, we can certainly try, at any rate.”

“I’m thinking something pink,” Jack said wryly, then jumped when a beak nudged him in the side. “Oh, hello. You have portable trans-mats on you or something?”

The flamingos winked.

---

“They eat pink things?” Ianto said in disbelief. “Correction: they absorb pink things from a maximum distance of five metres? They feed off the colour pink?”

“Evidently,” Jack said. “Well, I suppose they are flamingos.”

Ianto gave him a dirty look.

“But we can send them back!” Jack said brightly. “The Rift flare that brought them here hasn’t closed up yet. We’ve got another few hours before that happens, so all we need to do is bring them there and shove them through.”

“Why can’t everything Rift-related be this neat and tidy?” Ianto wondered.

“It can’t all be easy!” Jack laughed.

---

“You said something about easy?” Ianto asked, huffing mightily.

“Less talk,” Jack gasped. “More lifting.”

“Why are there so many flamingos?” Ianto moaned plaintively. They managed to shove the crate up onto the landing. “And why are there so many stairs?”

“They need a lift in here,” Jack panted, flat on his back on the ground.

“I want a trans-mat,” Ianto said.

“I want baby flamingos to have trans-mats,” Jack said. He pushed himself painfully to his feet and hooked his fingers in the sides of the crate, hauling it along a foot. A chorus of indignant squawks erupted from within.

Ianto sighed and clambered up to lend a hand. Between them, they managed to get the crate of baby flamingos up to where the two adults were waiting.

One squawked at them. Ianto tiredly pulled out his portable translator. “About expletive time,” he read.

“There’s gratitude for you,” Jack muttered, opening up the crate. The baby flamingos stumbled out, squawking happily when they saw the adults. The babies hadn’t understood Jack and Ianto, so they’d spent the past couple of hours chasing them down one by one and carting them up to the roof of a lift-less, twenty-storey building. Ianto would have been annoyed if he’d had the energy to spare.

“That’s the last lot,” Jack said, straightening. “Go on, then. Right through there.” He pointed to where a faint light shimmered, marking the Rift opening.

The adult flamingos both squawked, one after the other, then herded the babies through before vanishing. Jack looked at Ianto.

“The first one said thank you,” Ianto translated. “The second one thinks we have expletive-ing good food.”

---

“Alien crisis averted,” Jack said in satisfaction, leaning back against the counter. He watched as Ianto deftly made up two cups of coffee.

“Other than all the missing pink things,” Ianto pointed out.

“A little less pink around Valentine’s never killed anyone,” Jack said. “I’m guessing we’re not doing anything special tomorrow?”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “You were spying on me and Gwen today morning, weren’t you?” he asked.

“’Spying’ is such a harsh word,” Jack protested.

“But accurate,” Ianto said. “Remember what I told her I had planned for tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “Cleaning the Hub, feeding the residents, archival work.”

Ianto smirked, sipping his coffee. “Now you’re paraphrasing. Try and recall the exact words, Jack.”

Jack frowned. “What, something about beginning with a bit of cleaning. Then getting through all the feeding, and after that, work down in the archives. Right?”

“Right,” Ianto said. He placed his mug down on the counter, sauntering over to Jack. “You’ll notice,” he added, ghosting his hand down the front of Jack’s trousers. “That I never mentioned what I’d be cleaning.”

Jack’s eyes darted involuntarily to Ianto’s mouth, which curved in a pleased smirk. “Or,” Ianto continued. “Who I’d be feeding, and with what.”

Jack swallowed hard.

“Or exactly what kind of work I was planning on completing in the archives,” Ianto purred. “Really, Jack, you’re usually quicker on the uptake than this.”

“My apologies,” Jack said, his voice hoarse as Ianto lazily rolled his hips against Jack’s. “Let me try and make up for that.”

Ianto smirked as Jack began unbuttoning his shirt. “Don’t try too hard,” he advised. “You’ll need your strength for tomorrow.”

~fin