Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Jez Holton

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 3,705 words

Content notes: I don't own Torchwood, but Jez Holton is mine. :)

Author notes: Written for Challenge 237 - Amnesty and Challenge 9 -Drag

Summary: If Ianto says it'll be fine, it'll be fine.


It might have been Sunday, but Jez was slowly getting used to Torchwood's working schedule. If anything, it was still less hectic than the one he'd had when he'd been working in A and E. The days were often just as long, and the requests to work extra shifts almost as prevalent, but at least here his efforts were appreciated.

Today however was not one of those days. In fact, he seemed to be completely on his own. The others had headed out somewhere this morning before he'd rolled in at ten, and he hadn't seen them return. More likely he'd hear them first. They almost always came back laughing or joking about something. That was a plus too: how friendly everyone was. He didn't mind being left behind, not when he'd pulled a late shift the day before. It gave him time to catch up on things, and to finally get around to finishing that inventory he'd started days ago. If he didn't let Ianto know what they were short on, they'd run out before he could arrange for more.

He was knelt down inside one of the cupboards in the medical bay, checking expiry dates on bottles when the beeping of a rift alert interrupted him. He closed the cupboard and brushed off his jeans as he jogged up the steps to see what it was. As he made his way across to his desk, another figure appeared, headed towards his own desk.

'Oh, hello,' Ianto greeted, giving him a little smile and a wave.

'I thought you must've been out with the others,' Jez replied, thinking he'd been here on his own all this time.

'Oh, you mean that whole weeping paintings business?' Ianto shook his head. 'I think the three of them can handle it. I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity for some peace and quiet around here to organise things. The archives are, as always, a complete shambles if I don't keep in top of things. People think they can just take stuff and dump it back willy-nilly. They don't appreciate that there's a process, or more likely just don't care about process. Plus, you'd be amazed how quickly stuff piles up when you're busy.'

'True that,' Jez agreed.

Ianto consulted his computer as Jez stood behind him, watching him expertly navigate several programs ascertain the problem. 'Well, looks like that's the end of our quiet day,' Ianto said. 'Come on.'

'We're going?' Jez asked, a frown of confusion on his face. He didn't mean just the two of them, did he?

Ianto looked around for dramatic effect. 'Well, I don't see anyone else here.'

'You don't want to call the others?' Jez was only just past his probationary stage, and though he'd seen and done more things than he could ever have imagined, he'd rarely ever gone anywhere without a full compliment of team members there to watch his back. Even Johnson, who'd only been there six months longer than he had, seemed to be an old hand at dealing with stuff. Maybe that was the special ops training kicking in, though.

Ianto was already pulling open the drawer and removing his gun. 'They're already out on a case. We'll be fine. If we need backup, we can call.'

'Just us?'

'Just us,' Ianto confirmed.

'Whatever you say, man.'



The black Audi pulled up along the kerb as Ianto parked it, before pulling out his PDA to check for an update. 'Okay, so judging by these readings it's somewhere up there,' he said casting a glance out the window at the jumble of scaffolding and temporary sheeting. Once finished it was meant to be a gleaming new tower of corporate offices, but it seemed only half finished so far. 'Lucky it's Sunday,' he muttered. 'No tradesmen on Sundays,' he said, exiting the car.

Jez could already see the semi-automatic gripped in his hand, and a slight bulge in the back of his jacket that signaled the stun gun slipped into the belt. For Jez, it was just a stun gun. Outside of his six months probation but still only allowed a real gun occasionally, not that Jack hadn't given him plenty of practice with one. Firearms training seemed to be something of right of passage, and one that Jack delighted in. If the bemused looks from his teammates were anything to go by, Jack had out them all through the ringer at some point, and he was just Jack's latest victim. A gun that couldn't kill suited him just fine. He'd seen enough of what damage guns could do on a Saturday night shift. Guns, alcohol, drugs. Why did people do it to themselves?

'Do you know what it is?' he asked, as Ianto slipped in behind the temporary fencing, ignoring the signs that read "Danger" and "Construction personnel only".

'Not a clue,' he replied. I should warn you, though. It's not small.'

Jez swallowed hard, trying to quell that little flutter of anxiety that still accompanied any venture out of the hub. 'And that doesn't worry you?'

Ianto gave a shrug. 'It could be a cubby house, or a VW beetle, or a polar bear.' Somehow that wasn't reassuring.

Ianto stepped through the myriad of concrete pillars and temporary lighting, finding that stairwell that was yet to meet building code fire standards.

'We couldn't just use the tradesman's lift?' Jez suggested. The building was at least eight stories, probably ten.

'If you know which floor our latest present is on, be my guest.'

He didn't, so he kept his mouth shut, lest he ask something else stupid. Jez liked to think of himself as street smart, but Torchwood threw curve-balls at him all the time and that took some getting used to. He followed Ianto up the stairs, praying it wasn't a polar bear.

At each floor they found most of the fire doors held open by chocks of wood or heavy concrete blocks to better allow for the builders to come and go. The whole floor was basically still visible, lacking any sort of walls on each floor. For now it was just concrete pillars and wire mesh, giving them an easy view for their mystery item from the rift.

'Trace is getting stronger,' Ianto said, consulting his PDA as they climbed another floor up, almost at the top of the building by now.

'Had to be at the top, didn't it?' Jez said, feeling slightly out of puff.

'Always,' Ianto replied. 'No one ever said this job was easy.'

Jez heard the half growl, half clicking sound of their quarry before they reached the door. Ianto froze for a moment, listening carefully. 'I really hope that isn't what I think it is,' he finally said. 'Wait here,' he instructed, leaving Jez halfway between floors as he tiptoed the rest of the way, shuffling towards the edge of the doorway and sneaking a glance. 'Yep. It is,' he said, giving a slight roll of his eyes. He came back down to meet Jez halfway. 'Okay, so what you really need to know is this. It's called a Gronklyn, and looks like a really bad stage prop from a Jurassic Park film.'

'So, it's ugly?'

'Very much so. It's also not very nice.'

How not nice are we talking? Like unfriendly neighborhood dog, or Jaws with claws?' Jack used similar explanations which usually understated just how screwed they were.

'It's an apex predator. It'll eat anything. Having said that, it does like to play with its food first. It has venomous barbs on its tail that sedate its prey so it can take its time tearing you apart with its teeth and claws. My advice, stay away from its back end.'

'Great. Brilliant,' Jez replied, lacking for more enthusiastic words.

'It's fine,' Ianto assured him. 'The venom will only last about two hours, but that's plenty of time for it to make a meal of you before you wake back up.'

'You seem to know a lot about it. Seen these before?'

'Gronklyn venom is well know to Torchwood. They used to use it for the first prototype retcon back in the seventies. Not a bad way to go, really. After all, at least you're not in any pain. Not like being mauled to death by a weevil.'

'I hate to say it, but you're really not selling it,' Jez said.

'Ah, but I haven't told you the best part yet. It might be top of the food chain where it comes from, but that doesn't make it impossible to take down. In fact, it has a bunch of vulnerable spots on its scaly skin, that are good targets for a stun gun. Luckily, we've got two of them.'

Jez narrowed his eyes at Ianto. 'Why do I get the feeling getting close enough is going to be the hard part?'

Ianto gave him a concessionary grimace. 'There is that. Under its front arms aren't bad, and the spot underneath the base of its tail is good too. But where you really want to get it is right under the chin.'

'Right under those big sharp teeth, you mean.'

'More or less. It's still safer than the tail. So,' Ianto said, turning businesslike, 'here's the plan. I'll go in first and get its attention, then you come in. It'll want to go for me first, and it always tries to snare you with its venom, so whilst it's busy with me, it'll be too distracted to notice you going in for the kill.'

'I thought we were stunning it?'

Ianto swapped his regular firearm for the stun gun, setting it to maximum. 'These things can kill, believe it or not. A sustained burst at full power in the right place will take down almost anything. This guy is way too dangerous to save. Killing it is a mercy.'

Jez felt unconvinced, but he wasn't about to question someone who'd clearly dealt with this sort of thing before.

'Ready?' Ianto asked, watching as Jez flipped the setting on his own gun, feeling it vibrate slightly in his hand.

'Suppose so.' It didn't seem like he had much choice in the matter, watching as Ianto slipped up the stairs and rounded the doorway.

Being told he was about to confront something reptilian and prehistoric looking wasn't quite the same as seeing it for himself. Ianto wasn't wrong, it was ugly as sin, scaly and brown with a row of spines that started on his head and trailed all the way down its spine until they ended in large nasty looking barbs running along its tail. He remembered to stay away from those as warned. It stood up on its hind two legs and the two front legs were more like small arms, resembling those raptor creatures he'd seen in movies.

The Gronklyn had already clocked Ianto and was hissing menacingly at him whilst trying to corner him enough to whip its tail around and nail him with its deadly venom. Ianto however was doing a good job of avoiding the back end for the moment. Zombies in A and E had nothing on this.

'Flipping hell,' Jez muttered, watching the pair of them dance around one another.

'Anytime you feel like joining is,' Ianto said, regaining Jez's attention.

He stepped forward, stun gun held at the ready as the creature spun and saw him as well, gnashing its teeth at the pair of them, but was reluctant to do more until it could split them up and deal with one before the other.

'Right,' Ianto said. 'Two pronged attack, yeah? I'm going to draw its attention to the back. You get close enough to zap it under the chin and I'll do the underside of the tail. It'll be out for the count in no time.'

Before he could argue that this didn't seem like such a good plan, Ianto was already off, the Gronklyn turning its head to follow him, tail lashing violently but still out of reach of its prey.

'Yeah, that's it,' Ianto cajoled. 'You'd like a bit of tasty Welsh beef, wouldn't you? Last time we dealt with one of you lot, you tried to eat my fiancé. Not a very good first impression.' He gave Jez a pointed glance that said be ready to go in. 'I'll bet he tasted good, too. I've sampled him myself, though our rituals aren't quite as violent as yours.'

Jez inched closer, moving slow so as not not draw attention to himself, staggered that he was standing practically underneath that jaw full of razor sharp teeth.

'You want to have met the dinosaurs that used to live around these parts,' Ianto continued, the Gronklyn's gaze fixed on him as he moved ever so slightly, keeping its interest firmly on him and not on his teammate. 'They were twenty times your size. Now that's what I call an apex predator. You're just an amateur.'

Jez had his hand stretched upwards, his gun just an inch or two away from the soft underside of the beast's jaw, knowing this was it. Commit now or you're a dead man, he thought, before pressing down on the trigger, feeling the powerful voltage surge up into the Gronklyn. He expected it to twist back and attack him, but the shock was so strong that it almost froze and quivered.

Ianto didn't hesitate, using the moment's confusion to leap forward and use his own gun, reaching under its tail to deliver the counter blow. The Gronklyn juddered and went stiff at the double assault of high impact voltage. A few more seconds and it would be night night nurse. There was a last involuntary twitch, and then it collapsed under its own weight, Jez stepping out from under its head just in time to avoid being crushed. He let out a whoop of relief and thrill.

'Take that T-Rex! Yeah! You're dealing with Torchwood now, baby!'

He looked across at Ianto, expecting to see a pleased expression on his face at a job well done. Instead he caught the rather disconcerted look as he gripped his calf, before seeing the barb that had nestled there.

'Bollocks.' He looked up at Jez, eyes already beginning to glaze over. 'I'm just... Going to, ah... See you in a bit,' Ianto said, before slumping to the ground unconscious.

Jez rushed over, running through a gambit of standard medical checks. His pulse and breathing were slow but steady. Then he inspected Ianto's lower leg, carefully removing the barb that had broken off from the Gronklyn's tail, lodging itself in its victim. Probably an accident as it was in its death throes. He didn't think Ianto would have attempted it otherwise. Jack perhaps, or even Gwen, but Ianto was still a play it safe kind of guy.

'Aw, man,' Jez muttered, wondering what to do next. He had a dead dinosaur and an unconscious supervisor. Jack might kill him.

Okay, first thing's first, he thought. The Gronklyn wasn't going anywhere. Neither however, was Ianto. Not without help. Get him back to the hub, then worry about mini Godzilla.

'Ah, okay,' he muttered to himself, tucking his gun in the back of his jeans, before picking up Ianto's and adding his as well. He reached down and gripped Ianto under his armpits, tying to lift him up off the floor. He'd never mastered the fireman's lift and his mentors when he'd been a paramedic and junior doctor had always frowned on its usage in any situation. He began dragging him across the floor, keeping an eye out for holes. There were still gaps in the concrete flooring, left there intentionally for inner stairways, lifts, plumbing and electrical. The last thing he wanted was to drop nine floors to the ground after slipping through one of them.

'You're heavier than you look,' Jez said, finally making it to the stairwell they'd come up in, placing Ianto back down on the floor. 'Just gonna go back down and bring the tradesman's lift up here. Reckon you don't want to take a trip down the chute.'

He jogged all the way back down to the ground level, finding the lift cage not far away. It wouldn't be hard to get it going, he knew. It probably only had one button for up and down. What he didn't expect was to find it heavily chained and padlocked. 'Seriously?' he said, tugging hard at the chains. 'You really think people are going to wanna ride up and down a tradesman's lift on the weekend?' He gave the chain one last frustrated tug before giving up and returning up the nine flights of stairs to his waiting patient.

'Okay, so the whole lift thing was a bit of a bust. Gonna have to get you to teach me some of those mad lock-picking skills. For now, though, looks like we have to do this the old fashioned way.'

He gripped Ianto around the chest again and took a couple of steps down, travelling backward with Ianto trailing behind him

'Sorry,' he apologised as he heard Ianto's legs go thumping down the stairs. 'Yeah, really sorry,' he added, hearing them drag and clunk, drag and clunk, with each step.

It was terribly awkward, trying not to go tumbling down the stairs himself, with the heavy weight of Ianto's unconscious body in his arms, dragging it down and down. He stopped several times for a break, telling his complaints to no one in particular and repeating the idea that they should have called for backup. Jez stumbled backwards down a couple of steps, fortunately close to the mid floor landing, crashing only into the wall, but losing his grip on his teammate and sending him sprawling down the remaining few steps.

'I didn't mean to do that,' he apologised again, picking Ianto back up. Bloody hell. He didn't need to add concussion to the list of injuries. Ianto's neat suit was now covered in dirt and dust, the backs of his pants and shoes scraped along the concrete.

Finally Jez could feel the cool Cardiff breeze whipping up the stairwell and he knew he was almost at the bottom. Somehow he found a reserve of energy to drag Ianto the rest of the way, across the muddy construction site, navigating pieces of heavy machinery and piles of concrete, through the temporary fencing and lastly, to his car. Jez fished around in Ianto's pockets for the keys, before unlocking the door and hauling him into the back of the car, leaving him lying across the back seat. Jez hopped in and hoped that they could make it back to the hub before anyone else in the team arrived back. Perhaps Ianto would be awake then and no one needed to be any the wiser.

When he slid the car into its regular space beneath the Millennium Center, the large black SUV already occupied the space next to it. Knowing it was pointless to deny anything, he called Jack.

'Yeah, I'm in the car park. Fancy giving me a hand with something?'



When Ianto cracked an eye open, all he felt was sore. He couldn't remember having gotten into any tussles, or having overexerted himself. Then the slight twinge in his leg reminded him of where he'd been before everything had gone black. In the hazy image that floated over him, he could make out Jack's familiar face.

'I feel like I've been beat up,' he said.

'You were, in a manner of speaking,' Jack replied. 'Only it wasn't the aliens to blame this time around.'

'I said I'm sorry, alright,' Ianto heard Jez complain, somewhere off to the side.

'You ever heard of calling for backup?' Jack asked.

'It's fine,' Ianto insisted, reaching our an arm to hold Jack back from flying into a temper, though he didn't sound genuinely angry. 'It was my call. We handled it.'

Jack let out a bemused chuckle. 'Oh, yeah, you handled it alright. And now you have nine storeys worth of bruises to show for your efforts after Jez had to drag you all the way from the top floor to the car, completely unconscious. Perhaps he should have just tied you to a crane and hauled you down that way.'

'Be angry at me later,' he replied groggily, knowing he could still eke sympathy out of Jack for the present time.

'I will be,' he said, giving him a brief kiss and leaving, letting Jez follow him out, ready to receive his own telling off.



Jack turned on him in the corridor, not even waiting until they'd reached his office. 'You did good, kiddo.'

Jez frowned. 'That's not the impression I got in there.'

Jack shrugged. 'Things like that happen all the time. I'm allowed to be mad at Ianto for throwing himself into danger. That's what fiancés do. Besides, those Gronklyns are nasty. You come out of there with only temporary coma you've done okay.' He wasn't quite ready to admit he'd been bested by them on more than on occasion. Waking up to find yourself half chewed definitely made the list of most unpleasant revivals. That was a story for another time.

'So, you're not mad at me? I mean, we wouldn't have gone out there, except you guys were already on a case and Ianto said it was okay and,'

Jack laughed, reaching out and clapping him on the shoulder. 'Relax. You're alive and no one got hurt. That's a win in my book. This is our normal, and you're only just staring to get used to it. Go home, crack open a beer and enjoy then football, or whatever it is you do when you go home. Tomorrow is another day, and who knows what it'll bring.' He went to walk away before stopping and turning. 'Just one thing, though.'

Jez raised a curious eyebrow at him. 'What's that?'

'You go out with Ianto anywhere you make sure you bring him back in one piece. Drag him around just as much as you like. He's got a wedding to attend and I'm going make sure he makes it down that aisle even if it kills me.'