Torchwood Advent Challenge - 11th December

[m_findlow]

Title: Going too far
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,086 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Prankster"
Summary: Owen's jokes have gotten out of hand

'Hey, Tosh! Everything on my computer is coming up in Swahili,' Jack said.

'Not just yours,' Tosh replied. 'Mine too.'

'Oh, well that's a relief. I thought maybe I'd accidentally bumped something when I was down in the archives, and that it was translating everything in my head. I was a little worried my question might have come out in Swahili, too.'

'How do you know it's Swahili?' she asked.

'I met a guy in a bar once...'

'Well, it's like our systems have been tampered with, resetting all our language settings.'

'How would that happen?'

'Hang on, I'm just looking into it. Urgh,' she let out a frustrated sigh as she checked the security logs.

'What? Is there a bug in our systems?' Jack's face looked concerned at the possibility.

'Yeah,' she replied. 'A really big pest called Owen. He must have done this last night after I left.'

'But you can fix it, right?'

'Of course. It just might take a while. I'm good, but our systems are great, and Owen had everything he needs in here to cause chaos.'

'That's okay. Gives me an excuse not to reply to the Home Office's emails. Ianto!' he yelled. 'How about some of that coffee?'

 

'I'm so sorry, sir. I don't know how this happened,' Ianto apologised, face bright red. 'There must have been a mixup at the cleaners.'

Jack pulled out a pair of very pink satin boxers. They weren't alone in the hamper, joining several other pairs. His Calvin Kliens were nowhere to be found amongst the pile of his other clean laundry.

'You know, I've always been a briefs man. How am I supposed to save the world wearing these?' It was a matter of practicality. It didn't matter how sexy satin boxers might be. No one wanted to have to rearrange their junk in the middle of a crisis.

'What are you moaning about, boss?' Owen said. 'You'd prefer it if you didn't have to wear anything.' The grin on Owen's face was about to break it right in two.

'That's true, but now I'm faced with having a drawer full of nothing but pretty pink boxers.'

'I'll call the cleaners and head back there straight away,' Ianto said, still furiously embarrassed. He'd only been looking after Jack's extended laundry for a few months.  

Jack reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him. 'Hold on a sec,' he said, turning back to face Owen. 'You wouldn't happen to know anything about the mystery laundry thieves, now would you, Owen? I notice your clean scrubs are missing from the hamper.'

'No idea what you're talking about, boss. I collected my stuff and left the rest. Do I look like the kind of guy who wants to pour over your laundry? Even clean, that's more than I can stomach.'

Jack grabbed his keys and wallet. 'Looks like we're going shopping, Ianto. Anything you'd like? Maybe a nice new suit? My shout. Plus, I could always use a second opinion on some new underwear. Might need a master tailor's son to help out.'

Ianto flushed the same colour as Jack's new wardrobe and left quickly. Jack looked back at Owen and glared. 'I know it was you.'

Owen smirked back. 'Prove it.'

 

'You fucking tosser!' Suzie seethed. 'You think I'm an idiot? I know it was you.'

'Oi, steady on, Suze,' Owen said, holding his hands up in defense as she shoved herself right in his face.

'Guys!' Jack yelled. 'Get a room!'

Suzie pulled herself up and stormed towards Jack's office, slamming the door behind her.

'Jack, you're not going to just let him keep doing this are you? I'm sick of his ridiculous practical jokes.'

Jack groaned. 'What's he done this time?'

'I had a box of blasting caps on my desk that I was going to test out with that new gun we found. Only I noticed that the edges were powdery. Someone - and I think we all know who I'm referring to - dismantled the blasting caps and filled them with chemicals that would have filled the entire room with thick black smoke, and it'd stink of sulphur for weeks.'

'Didn't I warn you to keep your cupboard full of chemicals locked?' Jack asked.

Suzie rolled her eyes at him. 'He's a trained doctor. He doesn't need tricetylchlorine and hydrochloric acid. There's enough chemicals in the kitchen cupboards to cook up a small bomb.'

Jack sighed and leaned back in his chair, knowing it would be almost impossible to placate his second in command. 'What do you want to me to do? Ban him from going within twenty feet the dishwasher?'

She growled at him, before leaving. 'As if he'd know what the dishwasher was, anyway,' she muttered.

 

'Where's Ianto?' Jack asked, looking around the otherwise quiet hub.

'Said he was going downstairs to clean the shower block,' Tosh replied.

Jack sighed. 'One of these days we're gonna run out of things for that kid to clean.' He tapped his comms unit. 'Ianto! Think you can tear yourself away from your scrubbing brush for ten minutes and whip us up some coffee?'

There was a sound on the other end of the line, followed by something that sounded a lot like someone scrunching cellophane in their hands. 'I'll be there in a minute.'

When he did arrive, Jack nearly scoffed at the sight of a very damp Ianto, covered in clusters of white foam. 'What happened to you? Were you cleaning the showers or taking one?'

'The place has been overrun by soap!' He seemed to realise the drama with which he'd made his first statement, tugging on the end of his jacket and coughing awkwardly. 'But, nothing I can't fix.'

Jack folded his arms. 'What do you mean it's been overrun by soap?'

'I...' he paused, unsure how to phrase it. 'I put some cleaner into the pipes that feed from the water supply tank, to get rid of any built up muck. You're supposed to leave it sit in the pipes for at least an hour before turning them back on to flush it out. Only when I came back to turn the water back on, well...'

'Well, what?'

'It was everywhere!' he cried. 'It was coming out of the shower heads and the taps and the drains. It was taller than me. I managed to crawl through to the emergency tap and switch it on to flush it away, but... It's not meant to do that.' He waved his arms emphatically, and it flicked off a bit of soap suds which landed on Jack's boot.

'Sorry. I promise I'll fix this. I must have gotten the instructions wrong and added too much detergent.'

Jack tried hard not to giggle at the sight in front of him, but it was hard when Ianto had a small pyramid of soap suds sticking out of his hair. Ianto was about as likely to misread instructions as Jack was to give up eating donuts.

'Sounds like maybe someone might have switched your cleaning products. I hear that sort of thing has been happening a lot lately,' Jack said, casting a baleful glaring in Owen's direction.

Owen shrugged and grinned. 'He's been moaning about the state of the showers for weeks. Said he wanted to soap up the whole place and give it a good clean. Who'd be stupid enough to walk through it, is what I want to know.'

'You're such an arsehole sometimes, Owen,' Suzie said, shaking her head. Tosh reserved her own comments, instead handing Ianto a box of tissues. He took the box and plodded off, as if that alone would fix his problem.

 

When Jack came downstairs later to check on Ianto, he found him just standing there, hands on hips.

'Woah,' Jack said, taking in the sight.

'Not the word I would have used,' Ianto replied.

'That's some practical joke.'

'I'm not seeing the funny side.'

Jack watched as the residual soap bubbles slowly slipped down the walls and into the pool of mess all over the floor. He could only have imagined what it must have looked like half an hour ago before the bubbles had slowly started to dissipate. 'No, I suppose not.'

'I asked Owen to help clean it up, and do you know what he said to me?'

'No?' Jack surmised.

'"No fucking chance", were his exact words, but yes, the sentiment was the same.' Ianto let out a sigh. 'This wasn't what I signed up for.'

Jack sympathised. In the old days Owen's pranks were relatively harmless and easily resolved. A whoopee cushion here, some super glue there, keys on keyboards rearranged to spell rude words, or just two keys surreptitiously switched so that the recipient couldn't figure out why they had so many more typos than usual. Screws loosened on chairs, coloured dyes injected into the fruit in the fruit bowl, stinky cheese tucked under the bonnet of the SUV. When he'd gotten bored of basic pranks, he'd gotten more inventive. Judging by the sight before him now, this was likely to take hours to clean up. As if their general support officer didn't have enough to do.

'Best get to work then, sir,' Ianto sighed, picking up the mop and sighing again.

Indeed, Jack thought, deciding it was time to take matters into his own hands. 'Leave that for now,' he said. 'You and I have other work to do.'

 

'Are you sure this is such a good idea?' Ianto asked, feeling ill at ease. 'Doesn't it seem a little cruel?'

'You wanna feel sorry for Owen, now?' Jack asked.

Ianto tried to picture the mess still left in the showers downstairs, which would now be largely a pile of water, plus walls covered in dried soap scum that would have to be scrubbed and rinsed down by hand. Revenge wasn't usually his cup of tea. He'd considered putting Owen on decaf, which seemed like a good sort of punishment to mete out since he made everyone's coffee. Then he thought about how that would impact Owen's temperament and how much everyone else would suffer as a result, immediately quashing the idea.

'This isn't revenge,' Jack insisted. 'This is teaching him a lesson.'

Ianto failed to see the subtle difference, if there even was one.

'The odd harmless prank here and there is fine, and everybody can look back and have a laugh, but things are getting out of hand,' Jack explained.

Not nearly as much as they were about to, Ianto thought. Jack's plan was bordering on insane.

'I should have put a stop to this a while back.' Jack reached out a hand, placing it on Ianto's shoulder, catching him by surprise with the gentle touch. 'Now just remember, Ianto. Whatever you see, whatever Owen tells you, don't believe it. None of this is real, I promise you.'

Ianto kept his expression neutral. He didn't want to admit that it scared him to think this could all go horribly wrong.

Jack held up the tiny pill in his hand. 'It'll be fine. I'll just be asleep for a while. It'll only look like I'm dead.' He didn't need to tell Ianto the truth. None of them knew, and that was how it was going to stay. But this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Owen was going to get his just desserts this time.

'What if he doesn't believe me?' It felt wrong to have to pretend.

'Ianto, you are the most trustworthy, honest, believable person I know. Owen will eat it up. Besides, you only have to get his attention. I'll do the rest.' Being dead ought to give Owen more than enough to chew on. If Ianto turned out to be the worst actor in the world it wouldn't matter one iota.

'Just one thing, though,' Ianto said.

'What?'

'Don't let the girls be here. I don't want you to frighten them.'

Jack wanted to reach out and kiss Ianto for being so thoughtful. It hadn't even crossed his mind that he'd have the whole team in a panic. He didn't need to be that convincing.

'Just the three of us,' he promised.

 

Ianto sucked in a nervous breath. If he was worried about looking scared he needn't have bothered. His hands were clammy and his face ashen. Jack had ingested the tablet whilst at his desk and then rested his head in his arms on the desk whilst the drugs took effect. He might have looked asleep but as Ianto reached out a shaking hand, he couldn't find a pulse. It didn't matter that Jack had assured him it was there, so slow and so faint that even Owen wouldn't find it.

He stumbled out of Jack's office, checking the girls had both left. Something odd going on down at city hall was the lie he'd fed them.

'Ow-, Owen,' he stuttered, gripping the rail of the autopsy bay hard.

'What? Come to grizzle at me?'

'It's Jack,' he said, voice wavering. He couldn't understand why he felt so upset, but it certainly helped him sound convincing.

Owen caught the look of distress, and flew up stairs, letting Ianto follow in his wake.

'What happened?' he demanded, seeing Jack slumped on his desk, checking for a pulse and not finding one.

'He said he had a headache. I brought him the paracetamol from the medicine cupboard and when I came back to bring him coffee, he was like this.'

Owen grabbed the bottle, checking the label. Paracetamol. He twisted off the lid and looked inside. He expected large white tablets, but instead found small pink ones.

'How many did he take?'

'I dunno. Two, three? He always takes more than it says on the bottle.'

'Shit,' Owen said, dragging Jack out of his chair and lying him on the floor, before starting chest compressions.

'What's wrong?'

'It's not paracetamol. Three of those things is enough to cause a brain aneurysm.'

'But, that's not what it said on the bottle. I thought it was safe to give to him.'

Owen pumped harder on Jack's chest. How the hell had this happened? He was responsible for everything in that cabinet. How could he have mislabeled something so dangerous?  

One two, three, four, he counted in his head with each compression. 'Come on, Jack!'

Ianto had tried to play his part, but even he could see now that Owen was well beyond scared. Part of him wanted to stop this silly game and tell him. He wasn't enjoying getting back at Owen nearly as much as he'd thought.

'Owen, stop.'

'No.'

'Please.'

'No. There's a defibrillator machine in the cupboard. Go get it!'

'Owen, he's,' He didn't know what to say. Dead? Not dead? Utterly mental?

Owen fell back on his heels, chest heaving from the exertion. He couldn't believe it. One stupid mistake and now Jack was dead. Ianto reached across to put a hand on his shoulder, but Owen backed away from the touch, standing up shakily. 'Fuck!' he yelled. He ran a hand through his hair and stared around the room. 'Fuck!' he swore again.

Ianto knelt down next to Jack's inert body and gently shook his shoulder.

'No more games, Jack. Time to wake up and show Owen it was all a stupid joke.'  

Owen watched him. Poor kid. He couldn't accept that Jack was gone. Owen could scarcely believe it himself. What the hell were the others going to say when they found out? This was all his fault.

'Jack, please,' Ianto begged. 'Please wake up.'

'He's gone, mate,' Owen muttered, feeling like he was about to throw up. He couldn't look at either of them. It was the sudden inhalation of breath that made him spin around.

'Jack?' Ianto said, gripping his hand hard as he convulsed up off of the floor.

'I'm okay,' he gasped. 'I'm okay,' he repeated, remembering why he hated dying so much. At least this time, for the first time, he wasn't alone.

'Jack?' Owen knelt down on his other side, pushing him back down just was he was trying to sit up. 'Lie down,' Owen commanded.

'I'm fine, Owen,' he said, sitting up despite the hand trying to press him down.

'You should be dead.' He grabbed the bottle of pills off Jack's desk and shoved it in his face. 'What made you think these were safe? They don't look anything like painkillers! Even you're not stupid enough to not to know that!'

Jack let Ianto help him up. He could tell from the colour of Ianto's face that he'd been out of it for a while. Enough that he'd given them both a fright. Then Ianto hit him.

'Ow!' Jack said, rubbing his arm where Ianto had punched it hard. 'What was that for?'

'For taking this stupid prank too far. I should have stopped you.'

'Wait, what?' Owen said. 'What prank?'

'He didn't take the tablets, Owen. He took something else that would make it look like he was...' He didn't even say the last word. 'He switched the bottles so you'd think you'd labeled them incorrectly.'

'How's it feel to get a taste of your own medicine, Owen?' Jack asked, looking pleased with himself.

'Cunts!' Owen swore at them, furious.

'Language!' Jack warned. 'Not so nice when the prank is on you, is it?'

Ianto hit him again. He was never going to let Jack talk him into anything ever again.

'Stop hitting me! I did this for you.'

'Then I apologise to Owen on both our behalfs for being such idiots.'

Owen stared at them. He wanted to be mad at Jack, but watching Ianto be mad at him on his behalf was almost as satisfying.

'You fuckers,' Owen said. 'I ought to castrate you both. You're lucky I didn't try the defibrillator on you. I could've killed you with that thing.'

'Many have tried,' Jack replied. 'Few have succeeded.'

Ianto frowned at him. 'I think you mean none.'

'Yes,' Jack said, quickly correcting himself. 'That's right. If you wanna be Mr Prankster around here, stick to whoopee cushions and crazy glue. Otherwise be prepared to get back as good as you give.'

'Yeah, alright,' Owen moaned. 'You've made your point.'

'Good.' Jack clapped his hands together. 'Ianto, what's say you fix us all some coffee. Pretending to be dead really takes it out of a guy.'

Ianto scowled back. 'So long as neither of you mind decaf. I've got a bathroom that still needs cleaning.'

Comments

[jo02]

I have a feeling this was a lot of fun to write - it was certainly a lot of fun to read :)

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Strangely, this one was a bit of a chore and got written piecemeal. Glad it turned out okay. :)

[bk_forever]

Owen deserved payback for his stupid pranks, but that was a bit extreme. Good thing Ianto didn't think Jack was really dead.

Owen should be forced to clean the bathroom himself though. I feel bad for Ianto still having to do it.