It was early on the Tuesday morning when Ianto arrived with fresh coffee beans and pastries for the team. Early morning was always his favourite time of the day. The hub was quiet and calm before his team mates arrived and he enjoyed the rare moments of normality. It was also the time of the day he managed to get all the odd jobs done and have a peek in the archive.

Sometimes he came early for other company…

Ianto let out a merry whistle as he descended into the hub, just about to wonder into Jack's office when he caught movement by the computers.

"Gwen?" The mop of dark hair moved at the sound.

"Ianto," A voice grunted from underneath the black curtain, "I could kill a coffee right now. Do you mind?"

"Of course, Gwen" Ianto said. "Long night?"

"Weevil galore," Gwen grunted, a hand emerging from the puff of hair to reach clumsily for a glass of water on her desk.

Ianto nodded, making a course for the kitchen. He could see she would be needing his services frequently if she was even going to make it through the morning. He glanced at the clock on the wall as he entered the kitchen.

"I'm later than normal," he muttered aloud. "The traffic was quite heavy I guess."

He shrugged. If they were only doing paperwork and responding to minuscule blips then he was sure to be able to squeeze in some time in the archives.

"Ianto!"

Ianto nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Jack! You know it's not polite to sneak up on someone."

"I'm sorry," Jack said, grinning. "I thought you'd be glad to see me."

Instead Ianto backed away a few steps. "You stink! And is that Weevil fluids on your jacket?!" Jack looked innocently down at his jacket, as if for the first time noticing it was covered in a glistening, brown liquid. "Did you and Gwen just get back?"

Jack carefully peeled the jacket off, and looked up at the clock. "About five minutes before you came in. Gwen's not too pleased with me as you can see."

"Anything on the rift monitor?" Ianto asked.

"Nothing," Jack sighed, as if a lack of alien attacks and life endangering situations was the biggest disappointment of his day.

"Then why keep her here?" Ianto asked, rolling his eyes at his boss as he prepared her coffee.

"I'll let her leave as soon as she's done the reports. As it is we're working on a huge backlog after… well, you know… All the stuff that's happened this year."

Ianto fought down the wave of anger and sadness that always came when Lisa's death was mentioned, knowing there was no point churning up hurt feelings again. He used the silence to finish Gwen's drink, and quickly start making Jack's. His boss stood by and watched him, sensing it was not a topic to be brought up.

"There you go, sir" Ianto said when he'd finished, handing him his coffee after sprinkling a little bit of cinnamon on top.

"You don't mind having a look at Janet's new friends when you get a chance?"

"Of course," Ianto said, dreading the thought of what probably waited for him. "Anyway, better give Gwen her coffee so she doesn't burn the place down…"

"So, what's the deal with today?" Owen asked, casually flinging his muddy legs onto the pristine surface of the table and leaning back in his chair.

"Do you mind?" Gwen snapped, pushing the feet promptly away from her, "Some of us have actually matured past high school and know how to use some bloody etiquette."

"Oh yes, because you're well past high school. We all love hearing about what Miss bloody Cooper's boyfriend had for-"

"Kids, please!"

Jack strode purposely into the room with his usual gleaming grin and swept up a seat at the head of the table. Gwen continued to scowl at Owen. "I want to keep this meeting short and sweet. You two can squabble later. If you will, Tosh?"

The woman in question blushed under the shared gaze of the three in the room but quickly gathered herself and smiled tentatively. "Looks like there's no expected rift activity today."

Gwen and Owen both groaned.

"Gwen Cooper, please tell me you have something for us to do?"

The brunette eyed Owen distrustfully. "Just a moment ago you were intent on being an absolute twat…"

"Yes, well, people change… Time is short… Yada yada… And if I have to spend another day pretending to do paperwork I will consider trying to teach Janet to dance or perhaps test-fly Myfanwy around Cardiff out of sheer and utter boredom."

Gwen looked ready to snipe at him about work ethics and pulling his weight when Ianto floated in with a tray of streaming mugs.

"Always on perfect time," Jack smiled, the words having a double meaning as the fight between the two dissolved.

"Thank God!" Owen said, speaking for everybody.

The team gratefully took their mugs and waited for Ianto to settle in next to Tosh.

"You're a lifesaver, Ianto," Gwen said, taking a long chug of hers.

"Gwen?" Jack prompted, already tapping his fingers impatiently on the table.

Gwen didn't look too pleased at being interrupted, and looked down at her pile of papers with a frown. "The agitated weevils were all dealt with last night. And I mean all. Every single one of the seven reports, with a few surprise appearances, to a total of eleven extra friends for Janet. I would have the reports written up, but in the last twelve hours I have had no sleep, and about an hour not spent running in the rain or fearing a car accident, and most of them have been spent writing these notes or here. In this room. Putting up with Owen being a prat." She flickered one last glare at him. "So I really don't know what amazing thing you expect me to have mustered up in that time."

"Right…" Jack said sighing, "I guess I should've been expecting that." Gwen nodded stiffly. "Thank you, Gwen."

The brunette nodded and went immediately back to inhaling her coffee.

"Anybody else have anything to report? Owen?"

"The snot I was examining yesterday of subject XY1 was very acidic. I may have burnt through another sheet or two…"

Jack sighed again, "Alright, noted. Ianto, we'll need more sheets. I don't think our supplies will last the month."

"Hey!"

"Just telling the truth."

"I'll pick some up today sir," Ianto agreed. "And factor it into the budget."

Jack smiled. "Good man Ianto. Anybody else? Ianto, how are our new friends going? I went down a few minutes ago to have a look and noticed Janet's tried to do some territorial thing in her cell… I think you get the gist…"

"Janet has taken a liking to the Weevil in the cell opposite so you may hear some banging but otherwise they have adjusted well."

"Alright then. Factor in more food and water into the budget too then please. We'll see what we can do about another rehabilitation mission in the near future."

"Already done sir."

"Thanks Ianto. As for the rest of us. Office work until the rift plays up again. I'll go through any possible media and Police cases. Gwen, you do those reports for me and I'll give you the rest of the day off. Owen, if you stopped procrastinating you wouldn't have to frantically try and do all the paperwork on the last day of the month. I think you know what to do, Tosh. Ianto, I'm sure we'll keep you busying archiving, but if you have any free time you can go supply shopping."

Everybody nodded and slowly shuffled out of their seats.

"Hang on," Owen said, catching the attention of everyone, "what are you going to be doing after that little bit of news checking from this morning? That's easy stuff!"

Jack grinned at him easily. "Paperwork and administration… the same as you, Owen. Just because I'm the boss doesn't mean I get to miss out on boring things."

Owen stomped out first, grumbling about how irritatingly happy Jack seemed to be about paperwork. After a stern glance at him to say that she was at her wit's end already, Gwen followed. Ianto and Tosh walked out together, chatting about the weather, or something Jack considered equally uninteresting.

He frowned and followed.

Even if he tried to appear otherwise, he really did hate paperwork. Phone calls to military and political bureaucrats were not his favourite either but at least he could mess around with them until they eventually gave up or did what he wanted them too. Paperwork had the sole purpose of ruining his day.

Jack went into his office, and cleared the table for the pillar of monotonous papers waiting for him on the filing cabinets. He wrote a sticky note and stuck it to his monitor to remind him to ring about the budget before 3pm, and another to get permission to hire someone about the mould problems in the lower levels. He grabbed the first pile of papers. It was going to be a long day.

Outside in the main area, Gwen and Tosh both worked silently. Raised voices and slamming drawers crept out of Jack's office on occasion and Janet was enjoying banging everything she could in her cell, but by now everybody was so used to these noises that it may as well been the air conditioning.

"She's quite a character," Ianto had told them while on route to the cleaning closet and both of the women looked up, smiling as they noticed the yelling going on about the budget. Ianto paused for a moment to wipe off a trail of dust on the hand rails beside him, apparently unperturbed by the sheer impossibility of one man keeping the whole Hub spick and span. "Hates Jack of course."

"She sounds like a feisty one, "Owen yelled from the autopsy bay, "wonder how many times he's shagged her."

Both of the women rolled their eyes but did not take the bait.

"Coffee?"

Everybody yelled requests and Ianto tucked his red, satin tie back into the smooth silhouette of his suit jacket before wandering off to sort it out.

Tosh had made good headway on a program Jack had requested be redone but it was too easy. She'd been letting out little cat-like yawns as she worked, fending off the need for intellectual stimulation beyond that of a normal computer whiz. She hoped some caffeine would wake her up.

Tosh smiled when Ianto placed her coffee gently on the desk.

"Thanks, Ianto. How are you going? Has Janet made some more mess?"

Ianto smiled, pretending to evaluate. "No more. I'd only give it a three. It was quite messy, but not exceedingly so."

Tosh let out a little giggle. "You rate the level of mess she makes?"

"I do now." He paused, looked at her screen and back at her. "How's the program going?"

"Fine. Just fixing up the errors the last person made. Most of it's pretty basic stuff."

"Sounds like it's a bit dull," he said. She nodded.

"What about your other program? The one you hope will be able to track the Weevil migration movements and predict possible exposure points?"

Not far away Gwen was trying to block out their excited chatter as she wrote her fifth report from the night before. The words were blurring in front of her eyes.

"Where did the third weevil go?" She muttered to herself, feeling a wave of exasperation come over her again. She could've had the reports all done in a few hours if Jack had let her go home to sleep. At the rate she was going she wouldn't get them done until mid-afternoon. So much for a day off!

The brunette reached for her messy notes again and attempted to decipher the map she'd drawn earlier as Tosh shifted through her own papers to show Ianto her plans for her program.

She was about to pass Tosh the notes and ask if she could read it when she finally registered that the computer whiz was already busy talking. Gwen dropped the papers back onto her desk, feeling somewhat hurt as she listened to the enthusiastic conversation. Tosh never talked to her like that.

Gwen tried to turn her attention back to her own work but found herself listening in anyway. Just enough to have Tosh's laugh ringing in her ears until it evolved into a pounding headache.

Couldn't they hear how loud they were being? Gwen scowled down at the page, trying to trace out her thin pencil marks in the hope it would suddenly tell her the information she needed even as the words blurred away. Ianto cracked another joke that Tosh had to giggle about. Gwen's pencil snapped in her hand. She let the shattered pieces drop onto the table. How was she supposed to get anything done with all this bloody noise?!

"There's this beautiful coffee shop just on the corner of Parson's St that just opened. They have this section of the shop dedicated to this small library where you can donate one of your novels in exchange for another book. And there are some desks overlooking a small courtyard. On the weekends I like to take my laptop down there and-"

"Do you mind?" Gwen finally burst. "Can't you see I'm busy! Busy! "

There was immediate silence. Gwen's head was ringing. She couldn't tell if it was from the lack of sleep or the overcompensation of coffee.

"Can't even read the bloody notes I need," she hissed, sweeping her remaining pens and pencils onto the floor while knocking down some picture frames too. "I give up!"

She buried her head in her arms and hoped that the others would leave her alone.

If he won't let me go home then I'll sleep here instead! She thought bitterly.

"Another coffee, Gwen?" Ianto asked, and she felt his arm brush hers as he went to grab her mug.

She slapped his hand away, not even noticing her own was bleeding. "No, I do not want another bloody coffee! I want some peace and quiet so I can finish these stupid reports so I can go home and sleep and eat some normal food and pretend I care about my boyfriend's stupid job so he doesn't leave me and ring up my parents for their anniversary and make excuses about why I can't go." Gwen knew she was rambling but could not find a reason to stop. "And then I have to message my friend and pretend to care about her new baby because I know she's angry at me for missing her wedding and her birthday so I don't lose all my friends and my boyfriend and my family. Is that too hard to understand?!"

Gwen found herself shouting by the time she finished.

"Alright Gwen" Tosh said, looking at her as if she'd just given birth to kittens. "We get it. You're tired."

Ianto just calmly pointed at her hand. "You might want to put something on that. It's bleeding all over your notes."

"Shit!" Gwen hissed, realising too late that her map had disappeared under small puddle of blood. "You've got to be kidding me!"

"I'm sure Owen-"

"I can do it myself!"

Gwen grabbed a handful of tissues and began dabbing at the ruined notes.

"Tosh, any chance you can print out the maps from last night. I think Gwen's lost her copy…"

Down the stairs, Owen was catching up on an alien autopsy he'd almost forgotten about; a big green fellow with vicious fangs and a furry behind. The species had a defensive mechanism (although why a creature with physical traits that spoke of a predator would need the defence was beyond him) of admitting a foul, nauseating fume when hurt. Despite being well and truly dead, and with fresh air pumping into the area, the corpse still smelt absolutely putrid. It was as bad as the time he'd had to deal with a body left in a functioning sauna for two weeks.

He chuckled as he heard Gwen shouting, lifting a quickly disintegrating kidney. "Guess it is like an old corpse," he thought aloud. The doctor leant down to scrawl this hurriedly in his notes after placing the kidney in a jug with preservative fluids.

After finishing the autopsy, he wandered up the stairs in pursuit for some fresh air and hopefully a coffee. As a bonus he might even catch Gwen losing it over her reports. Instead he found the rest of the team had migrated into the main area already and were eating pizza scrolls. Ianto turned instinctively with a paper bag so Owen could grab one out. Gwen didn't even look his way. She looked about ready to burst into tears.

"Cheers mate," he muttered before reaching with his other hand for the cup of coffee also extended to him. He had to admit, the Teaboy was a good butler.

"Are you sure there's nothing to do?" Jack asked Tosh. Owen frowned at the desperateness in his voice. So much for loving paperwork.

The delicate woman turned back to her screen, having already finished.

"No," Tosh said firmly. She flicked casually to the program to illustrate the lack of readings or predictions knowing nobody dared challenge readings from the rift monitor. There were resigned sighs from Jack. "I've checked three times. No proper expected rift activity to-"

Tosh was cut off by the blaring call of the alarm.

"What's that then?" Owen questioned with a grin.