Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack, Owen

Author: m_findlow

Rating: M

Length: 1,502 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 205 - Glue

Summary: Jack and Owen have landed themselves in a spot of bother.


'Hand me that piece there,' Jack said pointing at it on the desk. Owen picked it up and turned it one way, before turning it the other way, frowning and turning back the way he'd had it originally.

'Don't think that's right.'

'Of course it is. Now give it to me.'

Owen sighed. 'Fine. But I say that bit doesn't go there.'

'And what would you know?' Jack snapped.

That it still doesn't go there, Owen thought, but didn't say it. 'I know that you're wasting your time,' he said instead. 'Face it, the thing is beyond fixing unless you can shove it through a rift in time and have it come back out the other end before any of this ever happened.'

Jack slammed down the tube of superglue on the bench, balefully glaring in Owen's direction.

'None of this would have happened if you hadn't brought that stupid plant in here.'

'Only because I was looking for you, and you were in here rifling through Teaboy's drawers looking for chocolate.'

Jack growled under his breath. Stupid plant. Normally he adored the idea of anything that had long tentacles and a mind of its own, but now he was faced with a dilemma.

'Fine! We're both responsible. Which is why you and I are going to fix this.'

The glass rooster ornament was in several pieces on the desk, Jack having managed to collect what was hopefully all of the shattered pieces from the floor and setting them in an arrangement akin to a jigsaw puzzle. If only that plant hadn't wrapped one of its tendrils around the statue and tried to pull it towards itself, it wouldn't have tumbled off the desk. The sheer weight of the glass must have caught the curious climber by surprise, quickly detangling itself, letting go. The sound of it smashing on the floor had sent a chill down Jack's spine. Ianto was going to kill him.

Ianto had never been one for personal effects on his desk, but then one day the rooster had just turned up, sitting idly on the opposite corner to the desk lamp. It was one solid piece of glass, though the red and gold and brown colors ran through it, creating the illusion of multiple pieces melded together. On the whole, Jack found it rather ugly and kitsch, much like those odd ceramic ducks that some people had hanging on their living room walls. He couldn't bring himself to tell Ianto he hated it.

Little did he know that Ianto found it hardly aesthetically pleasing either. Ianto still remembered the gaudy ornament sitting on the mantle in his childhood home living room, always wondering where it had come from and why anyone would put it on display. It had just always been there, for as long as he could remember. That he'd come to own it later in life was unexpected to say the least.

'Your sister thinks it's bloody ugly,' his mother said, and with those few words, he'd committed himself indefinitely to adoring it with every fiber if his being. His sister had never been unkind to their mum, but she lacked tactfulness, instead inheriting from her dad that age old habit of talking first and worry about the consequences later. When it had come time to clear out the old house and all of its possessions, it had been destined for the tip. A last minute surge of guilt had prevented him from doing the unthinkable. It was all he had left of her now.

Owen shook his head as he watched Jack try to do the impossible. Amazing the lengths Jack would go to for Ianto. This however was only going to end in tears.

'As if he's not going to know it's broken,' Owen said. 'It'll be covered in cracks.' It wasn't quite the tactful consolation he was going for, but sometimes you had to let Jack down slowly, and sometimes you just had to slap him in the face with cold, harsh reality.

'No, I've got that special glue Tosh uses,' Jack insisted. 'It binds at the molecular level so that the break is invisible. See?' he said, sticking on part of the base, watching it meld back together, the crack disappearing altogether. 'Ianto will never know.'

At least, that was the plan. He'd never asked Ianto where the statue had come from, only that its mere presence spoke volumes of the regard he held for it, ugly or not. Jack was determined to put it back together. If he didn't, he was going to find everything he valued from the waist down not so tactfully removed by Ianto's very sharp letter opener. And that was probably a good outcome by all regards.

'You're sticking it in the wrong spot,' Owen complained, watching him. He couldn't believe he even cared about the damn thing, but somewhere along the way he'd come to realise that if Jack didn't fix it to a state where Ianto was none the wiser, Jack wouldn't hesitate to drop Owen right into it when it came to the blame game.

'It's fine,' Jack said, brushing him off.

'No, it's really not. It's going to look like a Picasso when you're done with it.'

'I know what I'm doing. Go away if you won't help,' he said, squeezing more glue onto the broken section, poised to attach the piece in his hand.

'Oh, give it here,' Owen said, reaching across for the piece he was sure Jack was about to attached in completely the wrong place.

'No, wait,' Jack said, trying to swat away his hand. He tugged the piece out of Owen's reaching hand and instead Owen's hand caught in the patch of glue Jack had just applied.

'Crap,' he said, feeling the stickiness on his palm, pulling it away. Only when he tried, he found his hand attached. Oh fuck.

'It's okay,' Jack said. 'It still takes a few seconds for the bond to solidify properly.'

He reached for Owen's hand to help prise it off, forgetting the broken piece still in his own hand. His fingers had clutched around it involuntarily before realising. He quickly unclasped his hand, dropping the piece on the bench before reaching across to help Owen. He reached his hand and began gently tugging on Owen's.

'No, don't do that,' Owen said. 'The glue!'

It was too late, Jack's hand already sticking to Owen's and the glass rooster underneath.

'Oh, oops. No, it's okay. I'll just,' He tried pulling it away but now he too was stuck fast to the ornament.

'You fucking pillock!' Owen cursed.

'I didn't mean to do that.'

'And yet you did.'

'This is your fault!' Jack said, his voice raised in frustration.

'My fault? You're the one with the crazy glue.'

Jack took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. 'I think Tosh had a solvent for, er, accidents. We just need to take this upstairs and apply the solvent to free our hands.'

Owen frowned skeptically at him. 'And it won't melt off about twenty layers of skin in the process?' he asked.

Jack pulled a face and shook his head noncommittally. 'Can't guarantee that. The quicker we go get it, the less chance of that I guess.'

'Right, enough time wasted, then,' Owen said, taking off, not caring that he'd have to hold hands with Jack and take their prize with them. As he took his first step, Jack hauled him back.

'What now? I thought you said to hurry.'

'I didn't do anything. I thought you pulled me back.'

They looked down at the rooster, only to discover that the tube of glue Jack had slammed into the bench had leaked across its surface, sticking the rooster fast to the top of Ianto's desk, with them attached.

'Oh. That's not good.' Jack said.

'Seriously, Who the fuck made you leader? You'd have to be the biggest idiot in the planet.'

Jack hugged his arm around Owen, trying to tug at his own wrist to detach it, but he was well and truly stuck. He tried gripping the base of the statue, to prise it from the desk, but like everything else, the glue had worked a charm, sealing the two seamlessly together.

'Can you reach your phone?' Jack asked, tying himself in knots around Owen's body.

'Left it upstairs,' Owen replied. 'You?'

'Same.'

'We're so fucked,' Owen moaned. 'Teaboy's gonna come back down here, and here we are caught red bloody handed.'

'Maybe he'll feel sorry for us,' Jack suggested. 'We were trying to fix things, after all.'

'Or he might just leave us stuck down here forever.'

'He wouldn't, would he?' Jack said, looking less confident the longer he thought about it.

Stuck to Jack Harkness for the rest of his life, Owen thought. All because his tentacula couldn't keep its mits to itself, breaking some stupid bloody dust collector. Now that did sound like just the sort of punishment Ianto might dole out.