Title: Sticking point
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,239 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 395 - Stick
Summary: Ianto fixed one problem, only to create a much bigger one.


Ianto was distracted from his second coffee by the sound of the tourist office internal door sliding open, admitting Jack into his little domain.

'Morning,' Ianto greeted, setting his coffee down. 'You're not usually up here so early,' he added. 'Did my fresh pamphlets get delivered to you by accident?'

'I wish it were something so boring,' Jack said. 'Rift alert. Not much by the looks of it, but still. Figured you and I could handle it without Gwen.' There was a little smirk added to the end of the statement which suggested that work was only part of his decision to run it without their third member. Not that Ianto minded. He loved going out with Jack, just the two of them. There was a totally different dynamic when they worked together without Gwen.

He picked up his coffee and took one final swallow, unsure when they might be back for coffee next. Washing the cup out would have to wait until they were back as he slid open a drawer and extracted his gun, making sure it was ready to go.

'Let's roll,' Jack said with a trademark smile, heading for the door. He paused and Ianto would have stacked into him had he not been watching. 'What the hell?' Jack said, grunting as he tried to force the tourist office door open, which was somehow stuck. 'Ianto? A little help here?'

Ianto rolled his eyes at Jack and added his own shoulder, finding it more than a little stuck. With some more pushing from both of them, it finally relented and there was a rending sound of something tearing as it finally did give way, nearly sending them both tumbling out onto the quay as it abruptly surrendered.

'What was that?' Jack asked, righting himself and shrugging everything back into place, coat falling neatly around his legs as he did so. Ianto always wondered if there wasn't something in his immortality that made him able to do that; just shake himself back into an image of unruffled perfection.

'Uh, that,' Ianto replied, pointing at the tourist office frontage. It could scarcely be called a frontage for all of the posters now plastered across it from one wall to the other and then extending along the quay. They announced various concerts, gigs and social causes, but were so numerous that many overlapped or completely covered others, resulting in the thick paper wall that had sealed them inside, covering the door jamb as if it was never used.

'You know I'm all for us maintaining our excellent cover as a secret organisation,' Jack mused, 'but it'd still be nice if we could use the front door once in a while.'

'I swear it wasn't like this the other day.' Admittedly he hadn't been out here for a few days but this was ridiculous. He huffed. 'Well, looks like we know what I'll be doing when we get back.'

Jack sighed. 'I'm guessing it won't be coffee and cuddles.'

'Nope.'

'I was afraid of that.'



Ianto wasn't looking forward to the task ahead of him. Fortunately, their rift alert had turned out to be nothing important and so they were back at the hub in no time at all, leaving him with the unenviable task of deciding how to tackle the mountain of posters making a mural of their tourist office entrance.

'We are a real tourist office,' he complained out loud as he set down his bucket with its solvents, water and scraping tools, beginning the arduous task of tearing off what he could and then scraping at the rest. It was well stuck, he realised, wondering what the heck kind of glue these people used. He understood that they needed to withstand a bit of rain and a lot of salty bay air, but there was a limit. Plus he was fairly certain the council hadn't given permission for anyone to start sticking their gig posters down here. He was never going to win the Welsh Tourist Board award if his frontage looked like this. Despite what Jack said, there was secretive and there was subtle. If people really did think this place was just a pokey little, sometimes open, tourist bureau, then they wouldn't bat an eye at the people occasionally coming and going from it. It looked a whole lot more suspicious when people came and went somewhere where there was supposedly nothing. And Jack was hardly one to talk when he was the most conspicuous man about town, driving a huge black vehicle with their name emblazoned on the sides and the roof - in yellow, no less.

By the time he'd scraped every last shred of paper from the walls, once again revealing the nondescript door through which they did so much of their Torchwood business, he was worn out. He looked back down at his bucket of supplies and grimaced. In there was a can of spray paint and a stencil that read "Post no bills". He was reluctant to use it, marking the now pristine walls with permanent painted words in white, but he needed to give a clear message to the next wave of bill posters that they would have to find somewhere else to tout their events. He took the stencil out and stuck it to the wall with some masking tape and began spraying.



‘I’ve got those new pamphlets in the mail,’ Jack announced as Ianto entered Jack’s office the next morning.

‘You picked up our post? ‘

‘We'll, I mean you were sleeping in and I was bored.’

‘It was five am when you left,’ Ianto argued. ‘I did not sleep in.’.

‘If you say so. Here, take these and do whatever it is you do with them.’

‘Would that be putting them in their little plastic holders?’ he teased, knowing full well that Jack was merely playing dumb for his benefit.

‘I wouldn't know.’

‘Well, maybe you could learn,’ Ianto said. ‘Fancy coming up to watch me before I fix us a coffee?’

Jack’s eye predictably lit up at the suggestion. ‘Ianto watching? That's my favourite sport.’



Ianto hadn't expected to have to twist Jack's arm to get him to come and help. If anything, by now he'd be looking for any way to avoid finishing up more reports. And he'd nag Iatnto to be quick about it so that coffee wasn't any more delayed than it absolutely had to be.

‘Just swap out these ones with the ones on the desk,’ Ianto told him, snapping an elastic band off a couple of bundles and passing them across.

‘Twenty percent discount on Millennium Stadium parking?’ Jack asked, flipping the glossy brochure over to idly read what it had to say. ‘How come you always make me pay full price?’

‘We can afford it,’ Ianto replied. ‘And discounts are for tourists, not locals.’

Jack made short work of his pamphlet duties, loitering whilst Ianto switched out the rest of them in the little spinning stand by the door. Jack pushed open the door and took a loud inhalation. ‘Another beautiful day,’ he said, letting some rare early morning sunshine hit his face. ‘I thought you were going to clean up these posters outside, though.’

Ianto frowned. ‘I did.’

‘Well…’ Jack gestured outside, holding the door open for him.

‘Those little bastards!’ Ianto exclaimed, seeing a fresh round of posters covering his formerly pristine walls. Any evidence of his warning signs stating that plastering posters here was banned went unnoticed. Every one of his stencilled signs was covered.

‘Ianto! Language. Please.’

Ianto growled under his breath. Like Jack never swore when it suited him. ‘Those little buggers,’ he repeated. ‘How’s that?’

‘Better,’ Jack replied, though still sounding unimpressed.

‘I …’ Ianto couldn't even find the words.

‘Perhaps you should have gotten up at five like me and then you'd have had extra time to strip all these.’

‘Very funny.’ He scowled at them. He was going to have to come up with a better plan this time.



Jack was grumpy at having to park the SUV up on Bute St the following morning, the car park for the Millenium Centre being closed for reasons unknown to him. ‘They could have sent us a memo,’ he complained as he and Ianto alighted from the vehicle, Jack slamming the door harder than was strictly necessary.

Ianto raised an eyebrow at him. ‘A memo? “Dear Torchwood, we wish to advise that the underground car park, and therefore access to your secret base, will be off limits this coming Thursday. Please make alternative parking arrangements”?’

‘You're not nearly as funny as you think,’ Jack grumbled.

‘Oh, lighten up. It's only a short walk. Let's go grab takeaway coffees and take the long route via the tourist office. ‘

Jack gave him a strange look. ‘You want to buy someone else's coffee?’

‘The walk will give us time to finish it before Gwen finds out we didn't buy her one.’

‘Well… I mean if you say it's okay…’ Jack replied, clearly wondering if this was Ianto merely testing him.

‘Buy me a cherry danish and it'll be more than okay,’ Ianto said. Not to mention that coffee pretty much fixed any and all of Jack’s moods.



Ianto could scarcely keep the grin off his face as he and Jack descended the quayside steps and began the walk down the quay, finishing the last remnants of their coffees, having stopped inside the cafe to eat their pastries. ‘Well, would you look at that,’ Ianto mused as they finally reached the end of the quay. ‘No posters. Not a single one.’

‘Huh,’ Jack replied, less impressed than Ianto had hoped. ‘Guess they must've got the message after you tore them down twice. What did you do different?’

Ianto hummed in agreement, sipping the last of his coffee. ‘Let's just say I'm cleverer than the average bill poster.



Gwen's growl of frustration could be heard from five yards as Ianto happened by on his way up to the hothouse.

‘Ianto, have you been buying those cheap post-it notes?’ she demanded to know, spying him as he crossed the hub. He frowned as he came over to inspect the issue. ‘Rhys buys them all the time and it drives me mad. They don't bloody stick to a thing.’

‘I never buy cheap post-its.’ It was against his moral code. Post-its had one sole function and if they couldn't do that then he wasn't buying them.

‘Well, this pack must be duds then,’ she said. None of them will stay put for more than two seconds before falling off. I thought using them to colour code my research would make it easier for Jack to follow it.’

Ianto looked at the papers arrayed all over the wall and her desk, then sighed. ‘I don't think post-its are going to help you explain that to Jack,’ he told her, not holding back on the truth.

‘Disappear before I find a reason to blame you for this,’ she said.

He was about to reply when a loud crashing sound interrupted them.

‘What the bell was that?’ Gwen asked.

‘Who around here is breaking stuff?’ Jack demanded to know, coming out to join them.

‘Not us,’ Ianto said.

‘Well, I didn't just imagine that noise.’

Gwen pulled up the CCTV from around the Plass. ‘There,’ she said. ‘The water tower.’ She peered closer. ‘It's like all the mirror tiles have fallen off it.’

‘Well, that explains the crashing sound we heard. Nobody use the invisible lift unless you want to shower us in broken shards.’

‘What do you suppose made them do that all of a sudden?’

Jack didn’t look like he had any answers. ‘That tower has withstood every storm and bit of bad weather this town has thrown at it. Hell, it even survived the earthquake of 2006. Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘Um, maybe we should… ‘Iano didn't get to finish his sentence before Jack was shouting “Look out!” and grabbing at them both as the rest of the mirror panels from the underground half of the water tower also came crashing down in an avalanche of glass. His tugging was insistent enough that it drew them both away from their desks in the chaos, trying to put his body between them and the falling debris.

‘Is everybody okay?’ Jack asked once the tinkling of falling glass came to a silent end around them, having taken shelter in the doorway of Jack's office.

‘We're fine,’ Gwen said, brushing off his concern, ‘but what is going on?’

Jack's phone began to ring before he could answer her. They watched him for a few moments as he listened to the person on the other end and then hung up. ‘Okay, so we've got reports of localised random damage coming in; shop front windows tumbling out, tables and chairs falling apart, and a local Spar whose aisles are now full of spilled food packaging. I don't know what it has to do with us, but the police are already pointing fingers. The immediate area around here is apparently literally falling apart and it may be spreading. Check it out. Maybe it's something that disrupts atomic bonds or breaks them down or–’

‘Oh.’ Ianto's one word disrupted Jack from further possibilities.

‘What?’

‘I, um… think I might know what's causing it.’



Gwen frowned at the small device as Ianto brought it up from the archives and placed it on his desk. It looked a bit like her internet router at home, except this one didn't blink incessantly, threatening to cut off her connection to the world wide web on a regular basis. This one merely had three lights along one side that remained a solid green. ‘What is it?’

‘Doesn't have a name,’ Ianto replied.

‘And we know how you love to name things,’ Jack said, looking somewhat unimpressed. ‘What does it do?’

‘Well, the research on it was a bit limited. I was trying to figure out a way to stop those blasted posters being stuck all over the tourist office and the database kicked this up as something that might do the trick. It's meant to set up a very specific field that enables you to repel certain objects.’

‘Like insect repellent at a camp-site?’ Gwen asked.

‘It's a bit more sophisticated than that, but I suppose you could probably use it like that. Or for instance setting up a field that runs the length of the quay and repels glue so that people can't stick up posters.’ He’d been so proud not only to find something in their endless archives that was finally of use, but to have also figured out how to get it to work for precisely the thing that he needed it.

Jack didn’t share his enthusiasm. ‘Well, I think it's safe to say it's repelling a lot more than that, and over a much wider area. As in everything with any kind of adhesive holding it together.’

‘Yes, well, as I said, the research was a bit limited.’

‘Need I remind you why we don't tinker with things we don't understand?’

‘Says you who tinkers all the time,’ he retorted, slightly offended at the constant double standard. Jack didn't deny it but neither did he further the argument. And Ianto had been careful. Alien tech was tricky at the best of times. Testing out something completely new and unknown was bound to throw up a few little bumps in the road. He just hadn't imagined things falling apart because of it. Or that the field might decide to expand on its own, taking it upon itself to make sure that no one in the greater bay area could stick up as much as a lost dog notice.

‘So, let's switch it off and let that be that,’ Jack said. ‘I can live with a few scruffy posters stuck on our secret base.’

‘Um…’ Ianto cringed and braced for impact.

Jack's arms folded across his chest. ‘You don't know how, do you?’

‘No.’ There didn't seem to be any point in giving a protracted response. ‘I was very careful to program it based on what we had on file. At least I thought I had been. It's just that nobody ever bothered writing down how to de-program it or turn it off.’ He hadn’t planned on ever turning it off if it worked as intended. Presumably the power on it might one day run down, but even that wasn’t clear. It just seemed to work. A little too well, unfortunately.

Gwen sighed and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Of course they didn't.’

‘Well, you had better figure it out before someone gets hurt when windows from the office buildings in the city start falling out,’ Jack threatened. ‘Now I've got to call back the police commissioner and admit that this is our fault and that we're working on fixing it. I know which task I'd rather have.’

‘Want to swap?’ Ianto asked hopefully.

Jack gave him a baleful glare. ‘Fix it. Now.’



‘I think…’ Ianto began slowly, after having battled with the device and the limited file notes for the better part of four hours, ‘maybe I've got it.’ He looked across at Gwen. ‘Only, how do we know it's working?’ Everything around the hub that relied on some kind of adhesive holding it together had already broken or fallen apart so there was nothing left to test.

Gwen grabbed for her pad of post-it notes and scribbled something on one of them before reaching across and sticking on his forehead. He frowned and went crossed-eyed, waiting for it to flutter off, only to find it stayed there for an agonising sixty seconds before he finally conceded that he was going to have to remove it himself, pulling it off to read the words "professional idiot" written on it. ‘Gee, thanks.’

‘The insurance companies are going to hate you,’ she said. ‘Just about every cafe, restaurant and the Millennium Centre is looking at having to replace windows, mirrors and anything else that fell apart. Not to mention the council who'll be furious about the water tower.’

Not to mention Jack either, Ianto thought, who'd been even more displeased at having council contractors coming into the hub to replace the mirrors for their own part of the water tower, and all the retcon that would be needed to get that job done. He hated people coming into his hub.

‘Have you finished being clever?’ Jack asked, coming to check on his progress and dumping yet another pan full of broken glass into a bin. Normally they'd all pitch in to fix the problem but Jack had decided that since Ianto had screwed up he could fix his own mess on this occasion. The constant sound of Jack moving around the hub sweeping up broken glass was meant to constantly remind him of that fact. That was his punishment for dabbling in things he didn't understand. If things had been more precarious he had no doubt Jack would have been there trying to fix it straight away but with the world not at stake, Ianto was on his own.

‘Yup. Going back to being the stupid one who just makes the coffee,’ he replied sullenly. ‘Clever is more trouble than it's worth.’

‘Maybe next time just stick to boring ways of dealing with everyday headaches.’

‘Duly noted, sir.’