Title: The Battle Of Ianto's Garden
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1231
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Ianto finds his garden is being invaded by a terrible foe!
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 374: Seed.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Yes, I do have sticky weed in my garden. Why do you ask?



The Rift had been busy recently, the Weevils had been restless, there’d been two separate invasion attempts, one through the Rift and the other involving a fleet of ships, and because of all that, Jack and Ianto had barely set foot in their cosy end of terrace house for the past month. The few times they’d made it home there’d only been time to snatch a few hours’ sleep in a proper bed and get a load of laundry done so they’d have something to wear while dealing with the next crisis to come along. To Ianto’s mind, clean socks and underwear were essentials, not luxuries.

So it was that when the Weevils at last retreated back into the sewers and the Rift decided it had caused enough chaos for a while, Jack had driven a barely functioning Ianto home and they’d slept for twelve blissfully uninterrupted hours.

“What shall we do today?” Jack asked as he and his lover enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, sitting at the kitchen table as bright sunlight poured in through the window. It was just after ten in the morning and judging by the clear blue sky, it was going to be a glorious early summer day.

Ianto smiled, finishing his second cup of coffee and stretching luxuriously. “I was thinking about getting out in the garden for a bit of light weeding. Might as well take advantage of the good weather while it lasts; it’ll probably be pouring with rain again in a few days.” British weather was like that, especially in summer.

“Sounds like a plan. I could mow the lawn if it’s not too wet.” Jack picked up his and Ianto’s empty plates and carried them over to the dishwasher, glancing through the window into the back garden as he did so. “Looks like everything’s growing well, it’s really green out there. Did you move the pile of rocks we were going to use to build a rockery? I can’t see them.”

“What? Of course I didn’t move them, why would I do that? And when would I have had the time?” Ianto pushed his chair back and stood, putting his coffee cup in the dishwasher before joining Jack at the window. He stared outside with a dawning look of horror. “Oh no!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You seriously have to ask that? I thought we were done with invasions for a while, and all this time there’s been one underway in my own backyard! Literally!” Ianto turned from the window and hurried towards the backdoor.

“Why’re you so upset about a few weeds?” Jack followed his lover out into the garden, where Ianto was staring at the corner of the garden where they intended to build the rockery, an almost panic-stricken expression on his face.

“They’re not just ordinary weeds!”

“They’re not?” Jack studied the pale green tendrils warily. “Are they alien?”

Ianto frowned. “No, although it would explain a lot if they were. That’s sticky weed, just about the worst kind of weed there is.”

“Whatever it is, it’s easily enough dealt with, right? Just pull it up and throw it on the compost heap. How hard can that be?”

“Are you crazy? It can’t go in the compost; it would take over completely! It’s probably already seeding!” Ianto shoved one hand agitatedly through his hair. “The seeds probably got here tangled up in the fur of one of the local cats, or foxes. It must’ve been growing for weeks. We’ll have to bag it up and take it to the Hub, throw it in the furnace. It’d the only way. And even if we pull up every last bit, the seeds are probably everywhere by now. It’ll just keep coming up. We might never get rid of it!”

Jack smiled wryly; so much for having a restful day pottering around the garden. The way Ianto was talking he was intent on waging open warfare against the uninvited intruder. “If it’s bothering you that much, I guess we’d better get on with clearing it; the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get the job done. You get the rubbish bags, and I’ll get the gardening gloves.”

“No.” Ianto shook his head. “Gardening gloves are useless against sticky weed, it’ll never let you go. This is a job for bare hands.” He started to roll his sleeves up. “I’ll warn you now, this won’t be fun.”

“What d’you mean? It’s just a bunch of weeds”

“You’ll see,” Ianto replied ominously, heading for the kitchen to fetch the heavy-duty rubbish bags.

Ianto was right of course; he always was. As soon as Jack started pulling up the weed, he began to understand why Ianto wanted rid of it so badly. It clung like Velcro, not just to itself, but to his trouser legs whenever he got too close, and the rocks underneath the mass of weeds, and some old logs, several shrubs he’d completely forgotten were there, and the garden bench…

It clung to his skin too, and that was the worst past. It scraped over the backs of his hands and down his arms like sandpaper, leaving his shin feeling abraded and raw, and it had to be so much worse for Ianto, who lacked Jack’s rapid healing. Jack kept going though, pulling handful after handful, yard after yard of long, sticky stems. Sometimes they snapped, other times they didn’t, and he folded them into the massive bundle in his hands, already the size of a large cushion. Twining the straggling ends into the main bundle, he tried to shove it into a rubbish bag and it stuck to that too, but eventually he managed to get it all in, except for a few bits that broke off and fell to the ground.

Looking down at his legs, Jack found his trousers smothered in bits of sticky leaf, and dozens of round green burrs, some tiny and others bigger than ball bearings.

“Those are the seeds,” Ianto informed him. “Pick them off and drop them in your bag; I don’t want you shedding them elsewhere in the garden.”

Jack nodded. “Right.” He plucked the burrs off one or two at a time. “I found the garden bench,” he added, trying inject a note of optimism intoproceedings.

“I noticed.”

“How could all this grow in just a few weeks?”

“It’s sticky weed, Jack. Give it a bit of rain and something to cling to and it’ll take over. If you stand still long enough, it’ll grow over you too.”

“It wouldn’t, would it?” Jack looked worried and hurriedly started pulling at the weed again, trying to ignore the unpleasant scratchy sensation.

“I wouldn’t risk it if I were you.” Ianto tied the top of one bag, setting it aside, and reached for another, wincing at the sight of the little green burrs scattered across the ground, each one a potential new sticky weed. He ground a couple into the paving slabs that made up the path, taking pleasure in reducing them to greenish smears. Once they’d gathered all the weed, he was going to spend the rest of the afternoon collecting every single seed he could find. This was his garden; the sticky weed wasn’t having it! He and Jack would fight it with everything they’d got. They were Torchwood, they’d defeated countless armed alien invaders; they weren’t about to be beaten by a weed!


The End