Fffc Bingo Card - In on the joke

[m_findlow]

Title: In on the joke
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Gwen 
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: Slight spoilers for audiobook "The Sin Eaters"
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 96 - Laughing at fffc
Summary: Ianto finds their whole situation ridiculous. 

Jack unzipped the body bag and prised open both sides of it, revealing the corpse inside. Ianto's nose scrunched up as the smell rose out of the bag. It didn't so mischief as waft as it burst forth, trying to knock them all out with its stench. He didn't care if most of it was merely the salty scent of the seaside, coupled with the slightly off smell of drying seaweed. When it was added to the smell of bloated rotting corpse, that was enough to put anyone off a day trip to the beach. A dead body was a dead body and they came only in varying degrees of awful stench from recently deceased and smelling of excrement to full on maggots and flies, cover your mountain before adding your half digested breakfast on top. This definitely fell into the latter category. Ianto breathed through his mouth as much as possible, wondering why Gwen was never asked to help lift dead bodies out of bags onto the autopsy table. 

Barnacle Bill, as Ianto had christened him, was a mess of sopping wet dungarees, waxed jacket and heavy knitted jumper. The face was all puffed up from being in the water, making his pepper white beard almost retract into the skin, like it too was repulsed at being there. 

Jack wiped his hands off after the body was on the table and the bag in which it had lain cleared away. Ianto did the same, but added a few squirts of industrial strength sanitiser as well. Even that hardly made him feel clean. 'Gwen Cooper, how about you take this one,' he suggested. 

Her eyes lit up with something Ianto could only describe as childish joy. 'Really?' 

'Why not?' Jack usually took charge of cutting open things, mostly because he knew where to draw his scalpel and whether whatever was dissecting was the alien’s head, torso or something a bit more sensitive. On this occasion, failing some major hidden malformation, there was a reasonable assumption that they'd be able to determine where to cut and what might be considered normal. 'Keep me posted,' Jack added, disappearing and leaving the two of them alone with Bill. 

Ianto kept his distance as much as he could. Bill smelled bad enough now. God knew what it'd be like once Gwen started slicing him open. He put up with a lot in this job, but his stomach could only cope with so much and this was one he preferred to steer clear of. Jack hadn't said anything about him needing to assist. 

Gwen however had other thoughts. He couldn't tell if she was being serious or not when she suggested he investigate Bill's clothing, to try and trace it back to some manufacturer or source. It was the kind of mockery he should expect, having boasted that his father had been a master tailor, even if he hadn't. 

Gwen had fumbled her way through, and Jack, unable to resist sticking his nose in, had swiftly returned just as things were getting interesting. Bill had been, either in life and or in death, an incubator for something. Hundreds of somethings, all hatching from tiny little pearlescent silky cocoons. 

Gwen was interrupted by her phone ringing. She stepped away to take the call and that left Ianto staring at the corpse on the table, a large flap of skin hanging raggedly open on Bill's side. It ran from armpit to hip and had none of the elegance of the traditional Y-shaped incision he'd seen Owen make a hundred times. As Jack held up the scalpel and peered at the tiny creature skewered on its tip, Ianto laughed. Not just a little chuckle but a full on bellowing laugh. 

Jack looked at him like he'd lost his mind and that only made him laugh more. He looked at Jack, then at Bill and then back at Jack and laughed again, unable to stop now that he'd started. It was one of those fits of giggles that was self-sustaining. 

'What on earth is so hilarious?' 

'You,' Ianto replied. 'And Gwen. Cutting open bodies and-' he didn't finish the thought because he was overcome with another fit of giggles. It was so ridiculous, the pair of them carrying on like they were medical experts. He gripped the railing with one hand and clutched the other across his middle where a painful stitch was forming. The slap Jack delivered to his face sobered him immediately. 

'Ianto. Get a grip.' Jack was scowling at him now and he realised what had happened. Grief did funny things and his had snuck up on him when he least expected it. Trying to do Owen's job felt ludicrous. Them trying to do Owen's job felt ridiculous. It wasn't the kind of job where you could fake it until you make it. They could have some flesh eating parasite on the loose and here they were, investigating the etymology of waxed jackets and pausing to take phone calls.

Jack had him by the arms and this time as he cast his gaze at the corpse on the table he couldn't find a single humorous thing about it, or the situation they found themselves in. Whole days went by without thinking about Owen and Tosh now. They were just too busy to find the time for anything other than what was immediately in front of them. It felt wrong to have moved on so quickly, or to think that they could do those jobs themselves. 

'Sorry,' Ianto apologised, pulling his stoic expression back into place. Laughing had given him a temporary rush of endorphins, but they'd petered away now. 'I just…' 

'I know,' Jack said, giving him a sympathetic look. 'We're doing the best we can.' 

Were they? Ianto wasn't so sure. Hiring someone new felt wrong, yet they really did need someone. 'Lucky I waited for Gwen to leave, eh?' 

Jack frowned. 'Why's that?' 

'Ever chanced laughing at her whilst she's armed with a scalpel?'