laligin | Tiptoe With the Tulips

Fandom: Torchwood (surprisingly)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1282
Summary: Some people will do just about anything to get into Torchwood...
Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #4, Prompts: Undercover, Spring

Tiptoe With the Tulips

The day after Jack returned, it seemed like the whole of Cardiff was celebrating. There were flowers blooming in any grassy area, and birds perched in trees and on rooftops, singing as if their lives depended on it. Ianto deliberately took his time fetching lunch, stopping to enjoy the sparkling blue water of the Bay and the mild sunshine, surprisingly warm after months of wind and rain. It had put them all in a good mood – Jack had got away fairly lightly on his arrival, as they’d all been too tired to do much more than glare at him and stalk off home (though Ianto had stuck around, and found he did have a bit of energy left), and this morning they’d been distracted by the good weather, content enough to gloss over Jack’s still-unexplained absence and return to some semblance of normality at last.

On his way down the stairs by the tourist information door, Ianto paused to glance down at the planks below, certain he’d seen something moving, just out of the corner of his eye. There was nothing immediately apparent, and when he got down to the lower level he stopped to have a good look around.

The only thing that was out of place was a bunch of half a dozen tulips – each one shaded all kinds of red, orange and yellow – lying by the bench between the door and the stairs. He blinked in surprise, then looked around again to see if anyone had lost them. There was nobody anywhere.

Frowning, he went over to crouch by the bunch, putting his bag of lunches down for a moment to pick the flowers up and have a better look at them. They weren’t tied together, or wrapped up like a gift from a florist’s would be, and there was no card or identifying marker with them. If the stalks hadn’t been so perfectly cut, just below the leaves, he’d have guessed that they’d simply been picked by someone who’d found them growing somewhere (probably a council display, considering the time of year. It was unlikely that they’d be growing wild).

There appeared to be no obvious (or suspicious, or malevolent) solution to the mystery, so, reluctantly, he decided to let it be. Retrieving the food, he went in to the tourist information office, and found a vase for the tulips, arranging them neatly and leaving them on the front desk before he took lunch downstairs to the others.

He stayed in the main area only long enough to hand out everyone’s food, and was on his way out again when Jack chased after him, asking if he knew the whereabouts of the file on a new artefact that Owen had been talking about. Ianto, smiling, told him he had the file upstairs, and Jack accompanied him back up to the tourist information office, taking the opportunity to tell him one of his new stories about travel with the Doctor.

Ianto was laughing when they opened the secret door and returned to the office. Abruptly, Jack stopped talking, and strode forwards with a frown.

“What?” Ianto asked, following him.

Jack picked up a limp tulip from where it was lying on the desk, and said, “Where did you get these?”

Surprised, Ianto said, “I found them outside. How did that fall out of the vase?”

Glancing at him briefly, Jack inspected the tulip more closely, then looked at the vase, asking, “How many were there?”

“Six,” Ianto told him, following his gaze. There were only three flowers in the vase.

Jack whirled around suddenly, pointing at another tulip lying by the door, and yelled, “Spies!”

Ianto had half a second of pure, simple confusion, and then the tulip by the door leapt up onto its two long leaves and bolted, while the three in the vase jumped out, and Jack tried to grab them, yelling, “Catch them, Ianto!”

He knocked the vase over and managed to seize two of the tulips by the stalks, despite the one he held kicking him in the wrist with its leaf-legs. Ianto went after the one by the door, stamping on one of its leaves to stop it from running any further, and then grabbing it, wincing at the high-pitched squeal it let out. Turning, he found that Jack had caught the third from the vase in a similar fashion, but was now a little stuck, with one struggling tulip held captive in his right hand, two flailing in his left, and one more trying to pull its leaf out from under his right foot. They were all squealing now.

“Ianto, tell me you’ve got all the others,” Jack called, trying to work out how to get a proper hold on his fourth tulip without letting any of the others go.

“I’ve only got the one,” Ianto told him. “There’s still one on the loose somewhere.”

Gritting his teeth and growling at the flowers, shaking them a little to try and get them to stop kicking him, Jack grated out, “For pity’s sake find it. We can’t have even one of them get away.”

Ianto nodded thoughtfully, and started searching the office. He looked everywhere he could think of, even opening the door and checking outside, but there was no sign of their errant tulip. With a little difficulty, he squeezed past Jack, mindful of the pinned flower on the floor, and went to check in the back room.

At last, peering behind one of the filing cabinets, he caught sight of a trembling tulip, trying to press itself into the corner of the wall and avoid notice.

“Aha,” he murmured quietly, and pulled the filing cabinet out a little. The flower squeezed itself through the tiny gap between cabinet and wall, above the skirting board, and attempted to make a run for it when it reached open space again. Ianto grabbed it triumphantly, and ducked through the beaded curtain with a squealing tulip in either hand.

“You’re gorgeous,” Jack sighed when he saw that Ianto had been successful. “Now can you please do something about the one I’m standing on? I’m beginning to lose all feeling in my foot.”

Ianto hesitated for a moment, then said sheepishly, “I’ve rather got my hands full, sir. And I don’t really want to try holding one in my teeth in case I bite through it by accident.”

All of a sudden, the tulips stopped struggling, wilting a little.

“Oh, you understand English?” Jack said to his tulips, with an evil grin. “Excellent. So when I say we’ve got gallons of herbicide downstairs and we can get our friends to fetch it up here at a moment’s notice, you’ll get what I’m saying, right?”

The tulips shuddered, and went entirely limp, leaf-feet dangling defeatedly. Cautiously, Jack raised his foot a little. The tulip on the floor pulled its leaf free, then hung its head and waited while Ianto transferred one of his captives to his other hand, and reached down to pick it up.

“Sensible decision,” Jack approved. “Did you really think you could sneak in here like that without getting spotted? I mean, sure it’s spring and everything, but we’re still going to notice the odd walking tulip.”

The flowers looked suitably chastised. Ianto even felt a little sorry for them.

“Now,” Jack said, in a pleased manner. “Tosh and Owen can see what they make of you. We just have to stop Owen from feeding you Miracle Gro, or we’ll have another Day of the Triffids on our hands.”

“Another?” Ianto asked, startled, pausing in his efforts to press the button beneath the desk with the back of his hand.

But Jack just grinned.

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miss-zedem.livejournal.com

Heheh lovely! Walking tulips ftw :D

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