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redisourcolor Challenge 21. Theme: job. Words: icing, expedite, mossy. Phrase: Animal, mineral, or vegetable?
TITLE: A Day in the Life of Ianto Jones AUTHOR: Aviv_b
RATING: PG-13 for language
CHARACTERS: Ianto, Jack, Gwen, Tosh & Owen
WARNING: More cursing in Welsh!.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 3100
SUMMARY: Another unappreciated Ianto story. ( Read more... )“Oi! Be careful you twpsyn,” Ianto spat through a clenched jaw.
“Hold still then,” Owen said as he used his forceps to remove the last of the quills. “If I break one of these off below the surface, you’re going to have a lot more to whine about.
“I am not whining. I do not whine…yikes!”
“Yelling then, you are definitely yelling” Owen replied. “There, that’s the last of them. I’ve given you as much painkiller as I dare until I know what, if any toxin these quills contain.”
Ianto stood up carefully as the pain after the quills were removed was almost as bad as being skewered in the bum by them in the first place. He winced as he wrapped a towel loosely around his waist.
“Thanks Owen,” Ianto said still a bit embarrassed.
“Just doing my job. Go lie down on the sofa until I analyze what this thing is. Can’t have you going home until I make sure it hasn’t injected something fatal into you. And keep your com open.”
“Do you reckon its animal, mineral or vegetable?” Ianto asked as he stared at the lifeless creature sitting on a tray waiting to be dissected. It was about the size of a volleyball, solid, round, and covered with a mossy green skin.
“Good question. Won’t know until I cut it open. Want to stay and help?” Owen asked.
“Alright.”
Not sure if the creature was completely dead or whether it had any more surprises in store, Owen poked at the creature tentatively. He scrapped a bit of the green skin and put it in a test tube with some reagents. “Interesting, it produces chlorophyll which would make it a plant. But the spines are some kind of mineral.”
Before Ianto had a chance to reply, Owen deftly sliced the creature in half. The smell hit them moments later. It was putrid like rotting meat. Both men gagged and Ianto found himself dry heaving over a trash bin.
“Go on, get out of here before you get sick,” Owen ordered as he donned a mask.
Ianto didn’t have to be asked twice. He walked up the stairs from the medical bay as fast as his sore backside would allow. Ianto heard Owen muttering to himself, “Now that’s interesting, I wouldn’t have expected to find that.”
Ianto stood in the middle of the Hub considering his options. He would try lying down just as soon as he had a shower.
***
Jack and Tosh arrived back at the Hub several hours later. They had gone out to handle a rift alert near Monmouth. It had turned out to be small bits of alien tech that had fallen through the rift and since some of it was potentially dangerous, they had taken several hours to track down every last artifact.
“Where is everybody else?” Jack asked looking around.
Owen was just finishing reviewing some tissue samples that he had taken from the dead alien under a microscope. Looking up from the medical bay Owen shrugged.
“Gwen and Ianto got called out on an emergency by P.C. Andy. Seems there were four objects that just showed up in the middle of a car park at Everybody’s Gym & Fitness Centre in Newport. They destroyed three of them and brought back one for me to look at. Quite remarkable creature actually…”
“Did Gwen and Ianto go home?”
Owen nodded. “Yeah Gwen did. Teaboy is sleeping on the sofa.” Seeing the looks of concern on Tosh and Jack’s faces, he added, “he got stung with a few quills from the alien, but except for a sore backside he should be OK. And yes I’ve been checking him every half hour.”
“Poor Ianto,” Tosh said shaking her head. “He’s had quite a day, hasn’t he?”
Jack and Owen nodded in agreement. “He’s really been off his game lately,” Jack remarked. “I’ll just go and check on him and make sure he doesn’t need anything,” Jack added as he walked toward the sofa.
“Tosh, come over here,” Owen said. “I want to show you this amazing creature Ianto and Gwen brought back a few hours ago. It’s got a rudimentary circulatory system, but it also is capable of photosynthesis. And wait until you see the quills that ended up sticking out from Ianto’s backside. Turns out they’re mostly silica. Basically a granite stone material.”
Tosh smiled as she came down the steps to the medical bay. She loved looking at alien dissections.
****
The day had started out badly and had gone downhill from there. A power outage in Ianto’s neighborhood meant that his alarm didn’t go off at its normal six o’clock time. Ianto finally awoke at almost seven and realized in horror that he had overslept. He quickly showered and in his hurry, managed to cut himself shaving. He dressed and drove to work at breakneck speed.
Of course, this would be the morning the police had set up a speed trap and Ianto got caught. A rookie traffic cop took his time writing the ticket and when Ianto told him he was Torchwood, the cop stared at him blankly and then decided to check and see if there were any outstanding warrants on Ianto Jones. Twenty minutes went by before he was clear to go.
Ianto arrived at the Hub and took to invisible lift down. As he stepped off the lift he could hear Jack yelling.
“Oh no, he’s picking a fight with someone,” Ianto thought as he ran to make coffee. Just as he poured a cup for Jack he heard a phone being slammed down. Hurrying over to Jack’s office, he found Jack standing at his desk looking very satisfied.
“Everything alright, then,” Ianto asked placing the coffee on Jack’s desk.
“It is now,” Jack replied as he took a sip from the mug. “You know if I had had this coffee before I got on the phone, I’m sure I would have been much less irritable with the PM.”
Ianto paled. “
That call wasn’t supposed to be for another ten minutes,” he thought looking at his watch.
“He called early,” Jack said as he shrugged and swallowed another mouthful of coffee.
“Tell me you did not just call the Prime Minister a stupid git.”
A small embarrassed smile appeared on Jack’s face. “Yeah, I guess I got a bit carried away. But, I know you can smooth things over, right?”
Ianto nodded. “Of course sir. I’ll just go open the tourist office for the others,” Ianto said as he turned to walk away.
“Great, just make sure you get everything squared away with the PM today. Don’t want him to go running to Lizzy telling them Torchwood was misbehaving.”
“Wonderful, I always look forward to groveling at the PM’s feet,” Ianto muttered as he left the office.
“Wonder what got into him today,” Jack mused.
“The days hardly started and he’s talking to himself.” Ianto opened the tourist office just in time for Tosh to enter. Gwen showed up a bit later, and Owen stumbled in a half hour after that. Ianto made a round of coffees and listened to everyone complain that he hadn’t brought in anything for breakfast.
“You know Teaboy, some of us need more than coffee in the morning to get going,” Owen snarked. “You’d think with a cushy job like yours, you could at least get that right.”
Tosh caught the look on Ianto’s face as he turned to answer Owen. “I’ll get some,” she said grabbing her purse and heading over to the exit. As Ianto started to protest, Tosh cut him off. “No really, its fine. I need the exercise.”
“Yeah get someone else to do your job, figures.”
“Owen, I’ll have you know…” Ianto started only to be interrupted by Jack shouting from his office.
“Ianto have you called the PM back yet? Don’t let it go too long. You know how he is.”
“
Between you, Owen and the PM, I may end up killing someone today.” Ianto headed over to the conference room to call the PM. After an hour of apologies and tisk-tisking, the Prime Minister finally calmed down. “Of course, sir, I’ll make certain to be present at all future weekly calls. Yes, an oversight on my part. So glad you understand.”
As he left the conference room and came down to the main level, Gwen asked for a search for any files documenting cases where peoples’ hands and arms mysteriously calcified for no apparent reason. When Ianto asked for more information, she didn’t have many details to provide.
“There’s been reports of a type of temporary paralysis occurring in the last few weeks to people playing volleyball. No, I don’t know if they touched anything or came in contact with an alien,” she told Ianto. “No I didn’t think to go get pictures of what the limbs looked like, how hard can it be to search the archives?” Gwen asked.
“No problem, I just pop down and see what I can find,” Ianto said clenching his fists.
“Great, and could we have Thai today,” Gwen added.
Ianto sighed. “No problem.”
Heading down to the archives, Ianto realized that he had neglected to feed Janet. He didn’t have time to prepare anything fresh for her so he poured out a big bowl of monkey chow and slid it into her cell. She looked at it in disgust and spit on the Plexiglas separating them.
“Sorry, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
He had no sooner started searching for reports matching Gwen’s description than his com activated. “Oi, Teaboy, are we getting lunch anytime soon. It’s past noon,” Owen asked.
“Yes, just ordering it now.”
Ianto served the lunch and began to leave in order to continue his search for Gwen.
“What, you aren’t eating,” Jack asked.
“Well, I‘m a bit behind and I thought I’d continue searching for Gwen’s reports.”
“Sit down and eat, the reports will wait,” Jack ordered.
Ianto reluctantly sat. He ate in silence as the others laughed and bantered around him.
“You know what your problem is, Ianto,” he heard Gwen say. He looked up just in time for Gwen to accidently fling some curry sauce off her chopsticks right onto his favorite tie.
“Oh Ianto, I’m so sorry,” Gwen said. She rushed over to his side, and began to rub the silk furiously.
“No don’t, please don’t. I’ll have it dry cleaned.”
“Oh you don’t need to do that,” she said as she dipped a paper towel in water and resumed rubbing the stain. “See, it’s almost gone.”
Ianto looked down and saw that the stain was twice as big as it had been originally and that the fabric had been damaged as well. Ianto smiled weakly. “Yes, just about good as new.”
He’d hardly taken another bite when Gwen interrupted. “I really need those reports by two. It seems that whatever is causing people’s limbs to calcify, strikes between three and four in the afternoon.”
Ianto realized he didn’t really have much of an appetite anyway. “Well I’m stuffed. I’ll be back later to tidy up.” Ianto was not surprised that no one offered to clean up afterwards for him.
He had an uninterrupted hour in the archives when he heard the rift alert through his com. Jack let him know that he and Tosh were going to investigate. Not ten minutes later another rift alarm sounded. Gwen came on the com asking him to join her in checking out three suspicious objects that had turned up in a car park.
“Sure this isn’t something for the bomb squad,” Ianto asked.
“They are green orbs apparently pulsing and making sounds.”
“Sounds like one of ours then.”
They drove over to the fitness center and saw a small area fenced off by police cars. The officer in charge told them that when they tried to approach the orbs, they began to shoot rock hard quills at his team. Fortunately, no one had been hit.
Ianto and Gwen observed the orbs. They were sitting perfectly still pulsing with an eerie green glow. Ianto tossed a small stone at them at watched as quills began to shoot out of them toward the stone. Gwen scanned the orbs and got a faint reading for life signs.
“Ok, guess we’ll have to take them out,” Ianto concluded.
“Shouldn’t we ask Jack? Maybe they’re sentient; maybe they don’t intend any harm. You can’t just shoot them…”
Bam, bam, bam! Ianto shot all three and watched them collapse in a puddle of green goop. Ianto walked over to the remains of the orbs and scanned them again, this time finding no life signs.
Gwen was furious. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said as she approached Ianto. “I’m going to get some containment vessels, but you’re cleaning that up.”
“So what else is new,” Ianto thought as he turned to watch her walk over to the SUV.
And then it happened. Ianto felt several painful stings to his backside. He fell to his knees as the quills pulsed burning heat. A police officer called to Gwen who hurried back to the scene with a containment vessel. She quickly located a fourth orb hiding under a car, shot it with a stun gun and loaded it into the vessel.
“Ianto, are you OK?” Ianto shook his head, ‘no.’
Gwen got the police to carry Ianto to the SUV. Ianto had to lay across the back seat on his stomach to avoid pushing the quills in deeper. She secured the stunned alien in the boot, radioed Owen and drove back to the Hub. Ianto yelled every time she hit a bump and then began to hurl the most hideous curses at her in Welsh. By the time they reached the Hub, Gwen was hysterical.
Owen was there to meet her and they carried Ianto down to the medical bay. “He’s out of his mind with pain, Owen. You can’t believe what he’s been saying to me in the SUV.”
“Yeah pain will do that. Go home Gwen. Get some rest. I can handle it from here and I have a feeling that there’s more shouting ahead.”
Owen began to carefully cut Ianto’s trousers off him, but it was impossible not to jostle the quills a bit.
“Twll Din Pop Saes!”*
“Yeah, yeah,” Owen replied. He didn’t understand Welsh but was pretty sure he was being called some rather unflattering names. As he tried to remove the quills, Ianto became more agitated.
“Ma bys bach fi yn fwy na esgys ti am goc.”**
“Oi! Time to give you some pain relief,” Owen said as he injected Ianto with a small dose of narcotic. Once the drug began to work, Ianto calmed and except for an occasional word, returned to yelling in English.
***
“Owen, Ianto’s not on the sofa,” Jack shouted into the com.
“Shite. Where can he have gotten off to?”
Tosh immediately had her computer activate the remote tracking device quickly locating Ianto down in the showers. The men ran down to discover Ianto standing in the shower shivering. His entire buttocks and upper thighs were white.
“Get me out of here, I can’t move.”
As they helped Ianto out of the shower it was apparent that he was turning into stone.
“Owen, can you stop this,” Ianto asked frantically.
“It was small, round green, right?” Jack asked. When both men nodded, Jack sighed with relief. “It’s okay, Ianto, you are going to be alright. It’s a form of guard dog planted along the perimeters of fields on Gamma 7 to protect crops from being trampled by the native wildlife. It temporarily paralyzes any intruder that attempts to enter the protected zone. This gives the residents time to tag the intruder in order to monitor its activity. Generally though, after a few exposures, the native animals stay away so they don’t have to be relocated or exterminated.”
“How long does the effects last?” Owen asked.
“Up to seventy-two hours. Fortunately, ascorbic acid expedites the removal of the toxin from the animal. If we give him about 1000 mg he should be fine by this time tomorrow.”
“That’s a big dose,” Owen remarked, “but below the tolerable maximum level.”
Jack and Owen were still chatting as they began to leave the shower area.
“Still standing like a rock here,” Ianto pointed out.
“You grab is his arms, I’ll grab his feet,” Own said laughing.
“You have got to be kidding,” Ianto retorted.
“That’s what you get for being such a hardass,” Jack added.
“Not funny Sir.”
Ianto was too tall to fit comfortably on the sofa, so they ended up preparing a makeshift bed for him using an old air mattress on the floor of the Hub. Despite an additional dose of painkiller, Ianto tossed and turned most of the night. Jack and Owen watched him in shifts. The next day, all three men were exhausted.
Gwen arrived earlier than normal to see how Ianto was. After speaking to Ianto, and accepting his apology for his outburst the previous day, she realized that something was different in the Hub.
“Guess I’ll have to give your coffeemaker a go this morning.”
“Don’t you dare, Gwen,” Ianto warned.
“Well if we don’t have coffee, how are we supposed to work?”
“If I put you on decaf for a week, how are you going to work?” Ianto retorted.
The bickering continued until Owen, of all people intervened. “Oi, Gwen,” he said handing her some money, “go get us some Starbucks.” Whether it was due to Owen ordering her around, or that he actually gave her some money, Gwen was too stunned to reply. She grabbed the bills from Owen and headed up to the tourist office exit.
Ianto looked up at Owen in surprise. “Thanks, that was, uh, appreciated.”
“You’re my patient and it’s my job to make sure you fully recover. And I didn’t think you’d appreciate me examining you with her standing around. But I’ll expect you back at full speed by tomorrow.”
Owen gently lifted the blanket off of Ianto’s backside. Ianto’s thighs were looking better but his posterior was still granite. “Still looking like the Rock of Gibraltar there, mate,” Owen snickered. “Try and get some rest.”
“Decaf for a month, twpsyn,” Ianto replied. Then he smiled, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
And so began another day where Ianto Jones would be taken for granite..
Welsh translations* Arseholes to all Englishmen!
**My little finger is bigger than that little excuse you call a cock.
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