Title: There Are No Phones
By: bittersweet
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: gen but with hints of Owen/Tosh & Owen/Ianto & Jack/Ianto
Summary: Based on the scene from Sleeper where the phones are down, and Ianto does his excellent phone rant... you gotta love it, his timing is just too perfect.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gareth David Lloyd, a blessing to the world because if I did he would be locked in my bedroom FOREVER and we would have no Ianto. Ahhh! Bad thought!

***

Owen liked taunting Ianto, but not for the reasons one might suppose. It wasn't because he was so neat and efficient – Owen knew for a fact that without Ianto's prodigious ability to organise twenty-seven things at once and still be there for everyone else the various member of Torchwood would have killed themselves through lack of information, lack of coffee, overwork, a diet consisting solely of pizza and beer, or in Jack's case no one to shag senseless when he was feeling lonely.

It wasn't because Ianto had to do the menial jobs, though Owen always felt a bit of smug satisfaction that it wasn't him. It wasn't even due to how annoyingly bloody good Ianto was at everything... in fact, though he would never admit it, he was a little intimidated by the seemingly endless list of "things we had no idea Ianto could do."

No, he liked taunting Ianto for a very different reason. At the moment, though, he had more important things to do then muse on why he so loved to torment teaboy. At the moment they were stuck in the Hub with a possible alien invasion hanging over their heads, and according to Tosh there was no way to contact Jack.

"The network is down."

"Can't you patch something through, just for a moment..."

"The network is down. There are no phones."

"What about a mobile?"

This turned out to be more than a certain young Welshman could put up with.

"Mobiles, landlines, tin cans with bits of string, everything, absolutely everything: no phones, phones all broken." Ianto held his hand up to his ear in imitation of a phone call. "Hello? Anyone there? No! 'Cause the phones aren't working!"

Tosh laughed, and Owen threw Ianto a filthy look. It hadn't been that funny. Besides, being laughed at didn't help his growing sense of powerlessness. For once, Owen didn't feel like joking.

"What happens if they don't stop it?"

Tosh looked at him oddly before attempting reassurance. Apparently the fact that they were stuck in the Hub, completely useless and without any way of contacting Jack and Gwen didn't bother her at all. Nor did it seem to bother teaboy. As much as their blind faith annoyed him, a part of him wished he could trust that much too.

"They'll stop it."

"But what if they don't?"

This time Ianto replied.

"Then it's all... over."

Owen didn't like the sound of that. He didn't want it to be over. There were so many things he hadn't done. So many So many things he hadn't said. Like that Tosh was actually quite adorable sometimes, and very smart, and that Ianto made the best coffee he had ever tasted. There were so many things he didn't know, like how it felt to bungee jump, or what caviar tasted like, or why Americans all have such good teeth, or what the world would be like if you had a million trillion dollars. Now he would never know. He may only have minutes left, and he couldn't do any of the things he wanted to do.

Except...well, he had always wondered how Tosh would kiss, and what it was that Ianto did that made Jack have that dreamy, cross eyed look when he left the conference room with a few tell-tale buttons missing off his shirt.

"Lets all have sex."

Ianto fixed him with a long-suffering look.

"And I thought the end of the world couldn't get any worse."

Owen had the unpleasant experience of not being able to come up with a reply. It wasn't an experience he had often, and it wasn't one he liked...especially since, a little while later, they discovered that Jack and Gwen had in fact stopped the end of the world and now he had to pretend that awkward conversation never occurred. So he hid out in the autopsy room for a while, and continued his previously interrupted self-analysis.

Owen liked taunting Ianto, but not for the reasons one might suppose. It wasn't because he was so neat and efficient. It wasn't because Ianto had to do the menial jobs. It wasn't even due to how annoyingly bloody good Ianto was at everything.

The main reason Owen liked taunting Ianto was because the young Welshman could give as good as he got. And, like today, sometimes one better.