Title: The Dust Bunny
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Nosy, Jack, Ianto, Andy.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1409
Summary: While doing the dusting, Nosy finds something lurking beneath the sofa.
Spoilers: Nada.
Warnings: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 439: Dust.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood or any of the characters



One morning, when everything was quiet and peaceful for once, Nosy the Fluff was happily dusting its way around the Hub, something it tried to find time for every couple of days, when it encountered a strange Dust Bunny. It was by far the biggest Dust Bunny the Fluff had ever come across, because between Ianto, George the suit, and Nosy itself, cleaning was done often enough to prevent dust and dirt from building up, and yet… Nosy was understandably a bit taken aback. How could the Dust Bunny have been overlooked for so long that it had grown to this size? It seemed impossible.

Keeping at what seemed a safe distance, Nosy goggled at the Dust Bunny, which just sat there under the sofa, not doing much of anything, simply looking grey and fluffy. Cautiously inching a bit closer, Nosy blinked its huge, green eyes, and the Dust Bunny blinked back. How odd! Tentatively, Nosy poked at it with the fluffy end of its feather duster. The Dust Bunny made a strange sound, a bit like a cough, and seemed to bite at the duster. Nosy hurriedly withdrew it before the precious duster could suffer damage, and studied the Dust Bunny.

It didn’t look especially vicious, but neither did it seem particularly friendly. Then again, what did Nosy really know about Dust Bunnies? In all its time on earth and in the Hub amongst its human friends, it had only ever seen the small ones until now, and they were essentially harmless clumps of fuzz, unlike this one, which not only had eyes and a twitchy nose, but also teeth.

Dealing with the build-up of dust around the Hub was one of Nosy’s self-imposed duties, because keeping the place clean was a good thing, and anyway, using the feather duster Ianto had given it was a lot of fun. But what was a Fluff to do about a giant Dust Bunny with teeth? Had any of the team come across one like this before? If they had, Nosy had never heard any of its friends mention anything about it. Then again, Nosy had only been with Torchwood a little over a year, and it had no way of knowing everything its friends might have seen before it ever met them.

Still wondering what it ought to do about the Dust Bunny, Nosy was startled by a voice behind it.

“Everything alright there, young Fluff?” It was Jack.

Nosy relaxed; surely the fearless Captain would know how to handle this curious situation. It gave a questioning hum and goggled at the Dust Bunny

“Found something, have you?” Jack knelt beside Nosy and peered under the sofa. “Oh my!” He stood up quickly, backing away and shouting for Ianto, who appeared almost immediately, as if by magic. In reality, of course, Nosy knew he’d been in the small kitchen area, washing the team’s coffee mugs in readiness for their mid-morning drinks, but he was remarkably stealthy for a human. He could move around almost as silently as a Fluff.

“You bellowed?”

“I did,” Jack agreed. “I’m sorry, Ianto, I should have listened. You were right, and I was so, so wrong!”

“Well, that’s nice. What is it we’re talking about?”

“You warned me once about the dangers of Dust Bunnies, what with the Rift and everything, that if we weren’t careful, they might evolve and try to take over the world!”

Ianto frowned for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Ah yes, I remember now. I’d had a nightmare about mutant Dust Bunnies. As I recall, you were highly amused.”

“Yes, well, like I said, I was wrong, and I apologise.”

“And what exactly provoked this change of heart?”

“There’s a mutant Dust Bunny under the sofa, just like you warned me about! Nosy found it.”

“Really.” Ianto looked down at the Fluff.

“Hum!” Nosy agreed.

“Well then, I suppose I should take a look at it, shouldn’t I?”

Nosy obligingly slithered out of the way, thinking that perhaps it should have fetched Ianto in the first place. He always seemed to know the best way to handle the peculiar situations Torchwood often had to deal with. Even Jack, who was the team’s leader, frequently looked to Ianto for advice, because Ianto knew everything.

Now, Ianto crouched down and looked under the sofa. He was silent for a long moment, assessing the situation, before he sat up and dusted his hands off. “Ah, well, that’s certainly unexpected, but you’ll be happy to know we don’t have a mutant Dust Bunny problem.”

“We don’t?” Jack sounded cautiously hopeful.

“No. We do, however, appear to have a Chinchilla in the Hub, and how it got in here is anybody’s guess.”

“A Chinchilla?” Jack knelt down for another look, less worried now Ianto had reassured him that the Dust Bunnies weren’t mutating.

“Yes, a fluffy grey rodent. They come from the Andes originally. For a long time, they were bred for their fur, the densest of any land animal.” Ianto smiled at Nosy. “Looks like you’ve got competition.”

Nosy squiggled its amusement at the idea. The Chinchilla certainly appeared very fluffy, but nothing was fluffier than a Fluff.

“Did someone say something about a Chinchilla?” Andy said nervously, as he came to join them.

Jack turned to frown at the man he still considered the junior member of the team, even though the ex-PC had been with Torchwood almost two years, which was longer than Nosy had been there.

“It’s under the sofa,” he said. “Would you know anything about that?”

“Ah, as a matter of fact I might.” Andy shuffled his feet awkwardly. “He’s my youngest sister’s pet, and she asked me to look after him for a few days while she’s away. Last minute work trip,” he explained. “She couldn’t get out of it.”

“So you brought him to work with you?” Ianto raised a disapproving eyebrow.

Andy winced. “I wasn’t planning to, usually he’d be fine in his pen at my flat, but the building manager decided to send the plumber round today to fix my shower. It stopped working, and I’ve been trying to get him to do something about it for over a month, but it didn’t seem a good idea to leave Bertie there with strange people coming and going all day. He’s only a baby, and anything might’ve happened to him!” He ran out of breath and stopped rambling, biting his lip. “Sorry. Suppose I should’ve asked if it was okay, but I couldn’t just leave the little chap. He’s my responsibility.”

“That doesn’t explain what he’s doing under our sofa,” Jack said, folding his arms over his chest.

“He must have got out of his carrier. Sorry,” Andy apologised again.

You’re lucky Myfanwy didn’t see him and mistake him for a snack,” Ianto chided. “You’d have had a hard time explaining that to your sister.”

“I never even thought of that!” Getting down on hands and knees, Andy fished Bertie out from his hiding place. “Come on, you.” He scooped the Chinchilla up and scrambled to his feet, the fluffy creature cradled in his arms, making soft squeaky sounds as he stroked it.

Looking up at it, Nosy tried squeaking back. Bertie peered down at the Fluff.

“Perhaps you’d better put Bertie and his carrier down in one of the empty cells for now, where he can’t get out and hurt himself,” Ianto said. “You can keep an eye on him over the CCTV.”

“Right, yes, I’ll do that.” Andy turned away and headed for the stairs leasing to the lower levels, Nosy slithering along behind him, curious about the strange new creature. Maybe Bertie would like some company; it didn’t seem fair to shut the Chinchilla away, all by itself in an unfamiliar place full of strange smells and noises. No wonder it had hidden under the sofa; Nosy had done that a few times itself when it first came to Torchwood, although it had been a bit too large to fit.

Behind it, Nosy could hear its friends talking.

“Good thing it wasn’t a mutant Dust Bunny,” Jack said cheerfully.

“That doesn’t mean we should drop our guard,” Ianto replied. “After all, you never know. If we don’t keep on top of the cleaning, next time it might be, and then we’d all be in trouble.”

“True,” Jack agreed. “I think I’ll go online and order another vacuum cleaner, just to be safe.”


The End