Title: Not for general use
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,319 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 511 - Beam
Summary: Jack has revised plans for their weapons training date night.


Ianto felt that there were better ways they could spend their night off than weapons training, but he also knew better than to argue with Jack on that point. Jack had lost more people to Torchwood than anyone, so it seemed only fair that he impressed upon them all the importance of being able to adequately defend themselves in as many different scenarios as possible. Most of what they did happened in the heat of the moment so there wasn't a lot of time to be thinking about trajectories and wind resistance and whether a standard bullet could penetrate the thick skin of an unknown alien species. Muscle memory was doing most of the heavy lifting, so Ianto supposed that training that memory was for his own benefit. He knew Torchwood would kill him one day, but he hoped to prolong that day as far off into the future as he could.

He collected his usual bag of kit from the armoury – a few automatic and semi-automatic pistols, two fully automatic machine guns, a stun gun and a heavy replica of Jack's own Webley for those odd occasions when he'd had need of it in a crisis. Of all their guns, Jack’s was always the hardest because it was heavy and had limited firepower, with a decent recoil that could topple the uninitiated.

Jack had already beaten him down to the underground shooting range, standing there in shirt and vest, seemingly waiting for him. He seemed to enjoy dressing up for the occasion. Date nights with Jack were often that kind of strange affair. Who knew how weapons training might end tonight.

‘Put all that stuff away tonight, Ianto,’ Jack called out,beaming as he leaned against a small table, like the kind of you might stand around at the pub with a few beers. It was already laden with an array of weaponry Ianto had never seen before; and he knew all their weapons, keeping a close inventory of the armoury stores at all times.

Ianto's brow scrunched up as he came closer, getting his first good look at the new additions. ‘What's all this?’

‘New toys,’ Jack replied. ‘Thought we'd get in some practice with them.’

Ianto peered quizzically at the small selection of strangely unfamiliar weaponry. ‘And these came from where?’

‘I picked up these babies last night whilst you were at home sleeping soundly.’

Ianto frowned. ‘You mean whilst you were also meant to be at home sleeping soundly after three days of barely any sleep?’

Jack shrugged off the comment, neither concerned about the lack of sleep, nor the promise to share Ianto’s bed. ‘Intercepting alien shipments of illegal weapons waits for no man, Ianto.’

Ianto raised his gaze from the weapons cache to Jack. ‘Illegal?’

‘Stolen,’ Jack clarified. ‘Totally acceptable for use across all eight sectors of the Shadow Proclamation governmental zone.’

‘Right…’

‘State of the art laser weapons,’ Jack said, waving away Ianto's lack of enthusiasm. ‘Range at least thirty yards, and the precision is meant to be first class.’

‘And they're safe?’

‘Of course they're safe! Ianto, what do you take me for?’

‘Someone who shoots first and asks questions later.’

‘It's fine. Seriously. All you have to do is grab hold of it like this. See?’ he said, demonstrating. ‘It even has a regular pistol grip so there's no confusion about which end shoots.’

‘Always a plus.’ He hated tubular weapons with a passion because you never knew if you were about to put a hole the size of a large pizza through yourself. He tentatively took the proffered weapon, gripping it unnaturally tight. He was usually calm with a gun in his hand, which was odd given his general dislike for killing. He always liked to think of it as more of a negotiating tool than a weapon of death. ‘I'm not about to accidentally trigger it, am I?’ he asked, making sure it wasn't pointed at either of them, which was easy since Jack was sidled right up next to him now, his preferred position for firearms training, regardless of who he was training. Owen had hated it. The regular staccato of “Geroff!” could be heard between rounds of bullets as Jack – probably internationally – invaded what Owen considered his personal space.

‘It needs a thumb tap,’ Jack explained. ‘You lift your thumb slightly higher than the grip and tap the end of the chamber.’ He adjusted Ianto’s grip on the gun ever so slightly, showing him how to comfortably hold it whilst not having his thumb fully wrapped around the grip.

‘Is it still called a chamber if it doesn't have bullets?’
Jack’s eyes narrowed at him goodhumouredly. ‘Don't split hairs. See if you can hit that weevil over there,’ he said, pointing at the cardboard silhouette about twenty yards distant, slightly off to the left. It already had more than its fair share of bullet holes, but it still snarled menacingly all the same.

He took aim and tapped the side of the metal casing gently; just one delicate tap. A bright neon yellow beam shot out of the weapon, piercing the cardboard cut-out and leaving a smoking hole the size of a pound coin. Ianto couldn't explain why, but he was disappointed the beam of light wasn't red, or even green. Too much Star Wars, he decided.

Jack whooped and whistled. ‘Nice shooting, Tex. Here, my turn,’ he said, taking the weapon from him. Jack didn't wait before there were blazes of bright yellow zipping in every which direction, taking out weevils and hoixes, and even a well concealed Judoon paratrooper. Some remained standing, though vastly more damaged than before, whilst others toppled due to too many holds perforating limbs or the timber supports that usually held them upright. The smell of scorched cardboard filled the enclosed space and tendrils of smoke rose from still burning wounds.

‘I'm not sure I approve of Torchwood adding laser weapons to our standard armoury cache,’ Ianto said, surveying the damage.

‘Why not? They don't need charging like plasma weapons, and they don't need bullets like traditional firearms. They literally never run out of power needed to operate them.’

‘Neither do knives but I don't see us carrying those either, apart from the kind that comes from Switzerland and attaches to your car keys.’

Jack pouted. ‘Just because you've never tried something isn't a reason not to.’

‘That actually holds true for a lot of things. Like swimming with sharks or taking part in a live action William Tell re-enactment.’

‘It's all about practice. You just need to get comfortable with the feel of it and get your eye in.’ Jack tried being fancy, shooting beams of laser light overhead, underarm and doing some kind of contortionist flip that made him shoot from behind and through his legs. ‘There's nothing to it, see?’

Ianto squinted, picking out new destruction from old. Not all the props in the range were meant to be targets. Civilians in the form of discarded store mannequins, dressed in charity shop clothing, were included for the express purpose of making sure you could fire and not hit the innocent. ‘You just waved it around and cut off the top of a woman's pram, along with the head of her infant child.’

‘Oh. Whoops.’

‘Why don't I just take these and put them in the secure archives,’ Ianto said, moving to gather up the offending surplus.

‘But… Why?’

‘Decapitated infants aren't enough reason?’

Jack put his hands up in defense. ‘Okay, so I got a little trigger happy. Wouldn't happen in real life.’

‘Yeah. Because Jack Harkness has never done anything impetuous. Ever.’

There was a dramatic and petulant eye roll that would have made Owen proud. ‘Fine. We'll go back to plain old boring conventional guns. Happy?’

‘Happier that these are no longer in the hands of smugglers,’ Ianto replied. Or gung-ho idiots, he silently added.