Title: A curly one
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,334 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 385 - Spoon
Summary: Jack is having a hard time dealing with Ianto’s new table manners.
Captain’s Log - Thursday 7th October, 2009
Well, today has been one for the scrapbook, as they like to say.
Technically I suppose we should say that it started last night. Over dinner to be exact, though probably before that. Gwen invited Ianto and I round for tea at theirs. See? Torchwood employees can and sometimes do have one night off for normal things. And Rhys, for all his many faults, is quite the master chef it must be said. Knows how to handle an eighteen wheeler and can rustle up a mean mushroom risotto. Gwen knows how to pick em.
So, there we are, enjoying a few pre-dinner drinks (water for me of course) though the pinot gris had a lovely aroma to it. Cherries, and a hint of plum.
Rhys announces dinner is served and we all sit down. I start eating and there's a yelp next to me. Don't tell Ianto I called it that, but yeah, it was a yelp. A cry of surprise in an octave that does not come naturally out in general conversation. I look to my right and he's sitting there holding his knife and fork, both which have bent over on themselves in a kind of twisty loop shape. I laughed. Of course I laughed. I figured it was some kind of practical joke and they hadn't let me in on it because I'd give it away. For the record, I'm actually brilliant at keeping secrets. Some trust, huh?
But, no. Apparently, if the yelp from Rhys is anything to go by, not a joke. In fact he was rather miffed that his cutlery was in that state. A wedding gift from the in-laws, which only tells me that Gwen’s folks don't think much of their home life if they're buying them a nice set of Stanley and Rogers. But I digress.
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘Nothing!’ Ianto insisted. ‘I just picked them up. And…’
I handed him my fork. He set down the mangled one and took it and then, before our very eyes, it twisted in on itself. Rhys was furious. Gwen looks at me as if I have the answers but I'm as amazed as her. ‘New party trick?’ I joked. Ianto's frown suggests not.
‘He's like Uri bloody Geller,’ Rhys remarked.
Uri Geller was a fraud of the highest order. History tells us that he was so ridiculously prolific at one time that the Exeter City football club hired him to invoke some psychic voodoo and crystals to help them win their last game of the season and save them from relegation (yes, Ianto, I know what relegation means; I’m not a total football dunce). Anyway, they lost by a considerable scoreline. Good old Uri let them down big time. He’d be fuming if he could see this right now. Of course, Ianto isn’t taking it quite so well, particularly when I suggested we could start lining him up for television interviews and perhaps a tour of the UK. Sometimes that man has no sense of humour.
Gwen was the only one sticking to the problem at hand, trying to understand what was going on and how it happened. Ianto at this point was getting worked up about it, protesting his innocence.
‘You were down in the archives all day, I said, pointing out the most likely source of trouble. Doing what?’
‘Tidying,’ he huffed.
‘Where? What?’ All important questions when your boyfriend starts performing the psychic reconfigurement of metal objects.
‘Just stuff!’ The way he always says it like it's my fault the place got to be in the state it is. ‘Stuff that's been there for decades untouched. God knows I didn't touch or activate anything. I was just moving boxes around.’
‘Oh, Ianto,’ Gwen sighs in that tone, as if making him out to be the architect of his own downfall. She might have a point there. I've warned them about the dangers of alien technology but who's going to listen to a word I say? I'm Captain button pusher, dial twiddler and hey, I wonder what that does? In other words, not the best role model for the safe handling of alien artefacts. Needless to say that put paid to dinner, and we didn’t even get pudding. So much for a normal night off.
I went down to the archives this morning and tried to get Ianto to explain where he'd been and what he'd been doing. My idea was to try and replicate the conditions at the time as much as possible. I even carried a spoon around with me, but try as I might, I couldn't get it to move an inch. Maybe that’s a good thing. I mean, do we really want two people bending cutlery? I hated to mention it, but suggested to Ianto that it probably wasn’t a good idea for him to carry any firearms, just until we could figure it out. The last thing we want is bent gun barrels and bullets going somewhere they shouldn't, or the gun just exploding. A gun in Ianto's hand is deadly enough when he's in control of it (and I mean deadly to the person he's pointing it at).
When that didn't work I sent Ianto back upstairs. Who knew, maybe this thing was just a temporary effect and would wear off on its own. Still, that didn't stop Gwen from yelling at him the minute he went near the kitchen. You’ve never seen a man look so despondent as one told he has to drink his tea with the tea bag still in the bottom of the cup, just waiting to slap him in the face. And no, that isn’t a euphemism for anything. I wish it were.
Needless to say he's been right misery guts all day, grumping around the hub cleaning things that don't need cleaning and nagging is about paperwork that isn't even overdue. That's what happens when you tell a man he can't make coffee and that he's on pizza and sandwiches until we can figure it out. Keeping him away from anything metal is damn hard in a hub that is ninety percent metal and computer equipment, so I sent him home, despite all his grumbling and protesting. On the plus side, it was a nice day and the walk will have burned off some of his bad mood.
Anyway, I thought I’d landed upon a brainwave. It was the local newspaper that gave me the idea actually. They’ve been trialling bamboo cutlery in restaurants and take away shops. Apparently it’s less impact on the environment than producing stainless steel and the amount of detergents that end up in the stormwater as a result of washing them. Bamboo is apparently easy to grow in large quantities, sustainable and recyclable. I mean, nobody mentioned paper plates or anything but far be it from me to poke holes. So I went all the way down to Queen Street and found a guy there who does takeaway stir fried noodles in cardboard boxes (god I love the twenty-first century!) and he was good enough to source me two dozen bamboo forks, spoons and knives. At least enough to keep us going until we can figure out a way to reverse it.
Well, let just say not all my brilliant ideas always pan out. When I got home I handed Ianto the box of noodles (see, I even brought a peace offering) and one of my shiny (or not so shiny ) new forks. Apart from being told off that noodles should be eaten with chopsticks, and yeah, I know that, but try eating your corn flakes with them - he took the fork and just stared at it. Then it snapped itself in half in an attempt to bend itself into some other shape.
I guess it’s back to the drawing board tomorrow to figure out something else. No one said being the Captain would be easy.
Captain Jack Harkness.
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