Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood, don't own Lucy. Having lots of fun playing with both, however. Thank you Aunty Beeb, and thanks a ton Rea. Love you both!

Ianto ran a finger down the DVD tower. Lucy was fixing spaghetti for dinner, and she'd said it would be ready in five - so it was time to choose the movie for the night. He was torn between Galaxy Quest and the latest Harry Potter film when he heard Lucy's voice coming from the kitchen.

"WHY does it have to be me?"

"Why does what have to be you?"

He asked, pulling the Galaxy Quest DVD from its place and turning to face the kitchen.

"You know I don't like her - she's a big a special snowflake as Rose is, and twice as annoying!"

Oh. She was on the phone. With Jack, he realized, hearing the faint voice over the line. While he couldn't make out any of the words, he recognized the tone of slightly amused irritation the Captain often used whenever confronted with someone who hadn't quite yet grasped that complaining about his decisions only made him stick to them even more firmly.

"But Jack!"

It was too late. Even Ianto had heard the abrupt breaking of the connecting as Jack hung up on her, and he wasn't even in the same room.

Lucy turned and saw him standing in the doorway.

"Why is he making me do this? I'm absolutely the worst person to mentor that - that…"

She sputtered, struggling to think of the world she wanted to use.

Ianto raised an eyebrow, and held up his DVD choice for her approval.

She nodded once and turned back to the stovetop.

"It's going to be a disaster! Even leaving aside what actually happens in the episode…"

Ianto wandered back into the living room to set up the DVD. Lucy would go on and on - and he might even pick up a couple 'spoilers' from her rant, but right now he'd rather just set up the film, collapse onto the sofa and eat dinner while watching Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver (and never forget Alan Rickman - even as a 'fin-headed monstrosity' in strange alien makeup the man was brilliant and dry and funny and exactly who Ianto used to wish he could be when he grew up) save the day from the evil alien overlord.

"...and I swear, the first time she goes off on one of her self-righteous 'I'm more human than you' tirades, I'm gonna - I'm gonna… I don't even know what I'm going to do."

Lucy strode in from the kitchen, carrying two plates of pasta, green salad and garlic bread.

Ianto rolled his eyes at her dramatics. She stopped mid rant and glared at him.

"Does rolling help?"

Now she was channeling Sigourney Weaver.

Caught off guard, he snorted. He tried to play it off as a cough, but they both knew it didn't fool anyone.

"Yes." He stood, brushing imaginary dust off his vest and tugging it straight. "Yes, it does."

She handed him one of the plates and shook her head.

"But I just don't know what the hell Jack is thinking, he KNOWS-"

Whatever it was that Jack knew was lost in the thunderous rumble that suddenly filled the sky.

An orange glow came in through the kitchen window, so both Ianto and Lucy hurried back into the kitchen to see what it was. It almost went without saying that, barring a nuclear attack or a plane on fire, it would be something they'd have to deal with.

Even as he watched the fireball race across the sky, Ianto was already piling his spaghetti onto the two slices of garlic bread to make a sandwich he could eat on the go.

There was a distinctive tremor as whatever it was hit the ground, and quite close too. Ianto looked over at Lucy - she met his eyes and they both sighed at the same time. The "Three Amigos...in SPACE" would have to wait for another night.

Ianto took a bite of his spaghetti sandwich, pulled on his shirt and pulled his loosened-but-still-tied tie over his head as he did up the buttons. He pulled out his mobile just in time to see the text message from Torchwood - quickly he dismissed the message and pulled up a search engine to find out whatever he could.

Meanwhile Lucy was putting her own pasta into a thermos - it made sense, Ianto would be able to finish his spaghetti sandwich while walking to the Hub, but rather than have the team wait for Lucy to get there, Jack or Owen would come by the flat to pick her up on their way to… well, in this case apparently the crash site.

Ianto slid into his suit jacket, tightened his tie, and grabbed the remainder of her dinner as he headed out the door. Just as he stepped outside, the SUV screeched to a halt beside him, and Lucy rushed out - barely remembered to close the door behind her, but not, Ianto noticed, forgetting her thermos full of dinner.

The SUV roared away, and Ianto turned and walked briskly toward the Plas. Whatever was going on, it was probably going to be a long night.

(*) (*) (*) (*)

It was about an hour later when Jack checked in on the headset. He didn't tell Ianto much, only that the meteorite had been breached and some sort of alien gas had escaped. Still, it was enough for him to get started looking for possible related events while the team made their way back to the Hub.

Iato was sure Lucy knew what was going on - and judging from her early-evening grumbling, he suspected that she at least was pretty confident that the blame for whatever was happening fell squarely at the feet of the newest team member.

Sure enough, the first thing through the blast doors was Gwen Cooper's voice.

"I'm so sorry!"

"Seriously - stop saying that." Ianto wondered whether Lucy had warned the newbie that repeated apologies - no matter how necessary - really irritated Jack. Knowing her resentment toward the woman, Ianto wouldn't be surprised if she'd left that piece of advice off.

"I am though, I mean really...I mean really, really sorry! God, I can't believe it."

"Didn't they teach you health and safety in the police?"

Come to think of it, Owen wasn't likely to be won over by groveling either. He hoped that at least Tosh would cut Gwen a little slack.

Just then the monitor next to him sounded a notification alert. This might be something.

He quickly sent a screenshot to the printer in Jack's office and headed in by the back way - grabbing a clipboard from the top of one of the video games. It wasn't where they belonged, but he'd stopped being surprised at the odd things he'd found in even odder places after… well that was irrelevant.

The rest of the team had gone down to the autopsy bay - as Ianto headed that way, irritated voices drifted up.

"On the plus side, we've got good evidence, relatively undamaged."

Jack was trying to play peacemaker, apparently.

"On the downside," interjected Owen, clearly uninterested in being pacified, "there's an alien on the loose - we don't know where it is, why it's here, or what it's going to do"

"Don't forget," Lucy added, "it's a gaseous form and therefore we have no way of knowing how it's going to act, I mean, it could possess somebody for all we know."

Ianto rolled his eyes - he loved Lucy, really he did, but she was NOT a master of subtlety. Or did it just seem that way to him because she'd already let slip to him that this was an Episode?

"All right, you two - stop it!"

Then again, if she was trying to drop a hint to Jack, she probably should have been a little more blatant even than she was. All Jack seemed to see was two teammates ganging up on his poor helpless new recruit.

"This is the worst first day ever!"

He almost did feel sorry for Gwen, whatever she'd done was almost certainly a simple rookie mistake that any one of them could have made (though rookie mistakes did get people killed).

"We all mistakes - get over it." Jack was losing patience with the whole drama. "I seem to remember that neither Owen or Lucy settled in to Torchwood completely cleanly either."

"I bet they didn't set an alien gas on the loose." Gwen said morosely.

"No," Jack conceded. "They didn't do that - but our job now is to find and recover whatever it was that came out of there."

It was the perfect entrance cue. Ianto cleared his throat to get the team's attention.

"This might help." He kept his eyes on the printout as he read. "Nightclub death, been phoned in to 999. Circumstances are a little unusual. Might be connected."

Gwen rushed up the stairs and grabbed the report from his hand.

"This, this isn't normal."

"What have you got?" Jack asked.

"A kid died and turned into dust at the point of orgasm."

"Yeah," Jack shut the lid on the meteorite sample "I can see how that's unusual. Let's go then."

As everyone headed out of the autopsy room and toward the blast doors, Lucy paused by Ianto.

"Thanks for finding it, Ianto."

He really didn't understand. How could she be so… he didn't even know what the right word was. She SAW him, and cared. Said please and thank you every time, as if what he did mattered - as if HE mattered. So how could that girl be so irrationally hostile to Gwen, and on the poor woman's first day?

"No problem."

She smiled at him, quickly, then rushed to follow the rest of the team, leaving Ianto alone in the Hub to puzzle it over.