Fic: Hair Today
Title: Hair Today
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3258
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Once again alien tech has had an unfortunate effect on a member of the team.
Written For: Challenge 368: Brush at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
When the team arrived back at the Hub following their latest retrieval jaunt, Ianto took the situation a lot better than Gwen had been expecting. He looked from her, to Owen, to… Jack and closed his eyes, shaking his head.
“I don’t think I even want to know. Whatever’s in the box, give it to Tosh. You can explain to her whatever it was you lot did. As for you…” Ianto turned his gaze on what he assumed was Jack, only because his lover had been with Owen and Gwen when they’d left two hours earlier, meaning the third member of the returning party couldn’t really be anyone else. “You’re a mess. I’ll get the brushes, see if I can’t clean you up and make you look a bit more presentable. And don’t you dare move while I’m gone! I’ll have to sweep up after you as it is.” Muttering to himself under his breath, Ianto stalked away, his annoyance obvious in the stiffness of his back.
“Well, that didn’t go so badly,” Gwen commented, smiling.
“Don’t count your chickens,” Owen warned her, lugging the containment box over to Tosh’s workstation and plonking it down. “Just because he hasn’t killed us yet doesn’t mean he’s not going to. This is just a reprieve. Once he’s dealt with Jack, then it’ll be our turn, and there’s no way I’m taking the rap for this one.”
Gwen huffed. “I wasn’t asking you to.”
“No? Who’re you going to blame then, Jack?” Owen glanced back over his shoulder at Gwen. “Don’t forget, I was there; I saw everything.”
“No you didn’t. You were fetching the containment unit.”
“We had comms on. I heard Jack tell you not to touch it, and I heard you say it was stuck in the mud. What did you do, kick it to get it loose?”
“No, of course not, I’m not stupid! I just pushed it gently with the toe of my boot. I didn’t touch it, not really,” Gwen insisted.
“News flash, Cooper; that’s still touching, which Jack specifically told you not to do.”
“Owen’s right, it still qualifies even if there was no skin contact,” Tosh agreed before turning her full attention to the item in the box.
Throughout the whole conversation, Jack hadn’t moved an inch, unwilling to bring Ianto’s wrath down on his… head. He simply hunched in on himself, quivering a little, a large, disconsolate, hairy blob peppered with bits of twig, dry mud, and vegetation.
After a few minutes Ianto returned, dressed in overalls and carrying a dustpan and brush in a bucket, along with an assortment of grooming tools. He glanced at the rest of the team. “So, which of you was responsible for this? Make no mistake, I will find out, and it will go a lot easier for the culprit if they just admit it.”
“It was Gwen,” Owen said firmly, not giving Gwen a chance to lay the blame elsewhere. “Jack told her not to touch it, but she nudged it with her foot anyway, and it… went off or something.”
“Owen!” Gwen glared at Torchwood’s medic.
“Told you I wasn’t taking the fall for something I had nothing to do with.” Owen smirked at Gwen as Ianto turned to glare at her.
“I should’ve known. Why is it you always assume Jack’s orders don’t apply to you?” he asked in a deceptively mild tone.
“He only said not to touch it, and I didn’t. I just gave it a nudge with my boot to get it out of the mud.”
“Gwen, kicking things still counts as touching,” Ianto pointed out with exaggerated patience. “You made contact with it using part of your body; that’s what touching means. The fact that you didn’t use your bare hand is immaterial. You did something you were explicitly told not to do and now Jack is…” Ianto paused, turning to frown at the hairy lump that had once been his lover. “To be honest, I have no idea what Jack is, just that he’s not himself, and you’d better hope Tosh can reverse whatever it is you’ve done to him. I think it’s safe to say he’s not going to be happy with you either once he’s himself again.”
Jack made a… sound that seemed to indicate he already wasn’t particularly happy with Gwen.
“It’s not my fault, I didn’t know that would happen!” Gwen protested.
“Exactly, which is why when someone tells you not to touch something, you DON’T TOUCH IT!” Ianto snapped. “For all you knew, it might have exploded and taken your leg off. Count yourself lucky all it did was turn your boss into a hairy lump.”
Jack quivered some more, although whether from anger or misery it was impossible to tell. The movement precipitated a shower of loose hairs and other detritus that scattered across the floor around him, but Ianto made no comment, just walked over to his lover and petted him soothingly on his… top until the quivering stopped.
“Feeling a bit better now, Jack? Right, let’s see if we can tidy you up a bit, shall we?” Ianto set to work with one of the brushes he’d fetched, starting at the top of what used to be Jack and working his way downwards, untangling knots as gently as he could. When he discovered a pair of bright blue eyes hidden under the unruly mass of hair, he used hairclips to pin the long, brown strands out of the way so that Jack could see more clearly.
The brushing seemed to calm Jack further and he made a sound like a cross between a sigh and a purr, his eyes half closing. Sparing no effort, Ianto continued grooming his boyfriend until every strand of hair was smooth, straight, and free from both tangles and muck. Setting his brushes aside, he stepped back to appraise his handiwork.
“There, that’s a big improvement. You still look a bit like Cousin It, but at least you’re tidy. Now, just stay put while I sweep up. Don’t want you spreading this mess everywhere, do we?”
Jack remained right where he was as Ianto swept up around him, emptying the dustpan carefully into the binbag lining his bucket, then cleaning the brushes he’d used to groom Jack. When he was done, he tied the bag and collected up all of his equipment, before smiling reassuringly at his lover.
“Okay, why don’t you go on up to your office and… make yourself comfortable? I’ll bring refreshments, after I have Owen scan you and see what’s safe for you to eat and drink. Assuming you can eat and drink.”
Jack rocked gently back and forth in what Ianto took to be a nod of agreement before shuffling away in the direction of his office. Somewhere under the hair there must be some means of locomotion, although Ianto, to spare Jack’s dignity as much as possible, had resisted the temptation to investigate while brushing him. Jack probably wouldn’t have objected to having his undercarriage groped, he was generally eager to indulge in any such activities, but to Ianto’s mind there were some things that just shouldn’t be done in front of the entire team.
Forcing his mind back to the matter at hand, Ianto took the rubbish down to the furnace, returned his cleaning supplies and implements to their proper places, and removed his overalls. Back in the main Hub, he summoned Owen to Jack’s office, where what passed for Torchwood’s leader was now standing behind the desk, blue eyes peering across it from about six inches above the wooden surface. Jack blinked at Ianto and Owen and made an indecipherable sound again.
“Can’t get into your chair?” Ianto asked.
The whole of Jack swivelled left, right, and left before looking straight in front of him once more.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Ianto smiled sympathetically. “Don’t suppose you can do much of anything like…” he gestured at his hairy lover. “That. Alright, Owen, scan Jack and tell me what I can feed him. He’s bound to be hungry by now.”
“Does he even have a mouth?” Owen studied Jack curiously.
“You tell me. You’re the one with the medical scanner.”
“Yeah, fair point.” Owen got to work, running his scanner over Jack from top to bottom. “Okay, there IS a mouth. Even has teeth in it.”
“Well, that’s something. Whereabouts?” Ianto bustled forwards with more hair clips, securely pinning the long face hair to both sides as Owen indicated where to find Jack’s mouth.
Predictably, Owen laughed. “Looks like one of those long, droopy moustaches you’d see in old Westerns.”
“I’d advise you not to make fun of the man who signs your paycheque and authorises your expenses,” Ianto warned. “He’s probably not in the best mood right now.”
“Whatever.” Giving a pretty good impression of being unconcerned, Owen tapped at his scanner. “Looks like he can pretty much eat anything he used to, but he might have a bit of trouble feeding ‘imself. No arms.” He snickered. “You might say he’s completely ‘armless!”
Ianto gave Owen a withering look. “That is SO not funny.” He patted Jack’s hair consolingly. “Stay here and I’ll bring you coffee and cookies in a few minutes.” With that, he steered Owen out of the office and down to the medical bay, out of Jack’s hearing.
“Now what? If this is about punishing me for a couple of jokes…” Owen started.
“It’s not, although don’t be surprised if I serve you decaf. You should try to be more sensitive to others’ misfortunes. It’s not like Jack did this to himself; he doesn’t need you making him feel worse than he already does.” Ianto leaned against the wall, folding his arms over his chest and giving Owen The Look. “No, right now what I’d like to know is how Jack ended up in such a mess in the first place.”
“It’s like I already told you. Gwen kicked the device, it went off, and…” Owen shrugged. “Captain Hairball.”
“That’s not what I meant. How did he end up all tangled and covered in half the countryside? I’m betting he didn’t start out that way.”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s a windy day, isn’t it? Forecast said to expect winds gusting up to forty-five miles an hour; it was blowin’ Jack’s hair all over the place.”
“That accounts for the tangles, but what about the rest?”
Owen kicked uncomfortably at the floor tiles with one foot. “Couldn’t see through all that hair, could he? Wasn’t easy getting ‘im back to the SUV. He kept bumping into things, bushes, fences and stuff; walked, if you can call it that, right through a couple of hedges, and he kept falling over. I stood ‘im up again every time though and kept ‘im pointed in the right direction. Well, mostly. Was a bit hard to figure out which way he was facing, so he wandered off a few times.”
Ianto stared ceilingward in exasperation. “You didn’t think to uncover his eyes so he could see where he was going?”
“Oi! I’m a doctor, not a bloody hairdresser! I don’t carry hairgrips around with me, and Gwen said she didn’t have any either.”
“You had your medical kit with you, didn’t you?”
“’Course I did.”
“Then you could have rigged a headband from a length of bandage, kept the hair out of his eyes that way!”
Owen frowned. “Oh, yeah, that might’ve worked.” He shrugged. “Too late now though.”
“I’m surrounded by morons.” Shaking his head, Ianto pushed away from the wall. “See if Tosh needs any help; I’m going to make coffee for Jack.”
“What about the rest of us?”
“You don’t deserve it. If you want some, you can fetch it yourself from the coffee shop across the Plas, or better yet, send Gwen.”
Retreating to the kitchenette, Ianto brewed coffee for himself, Jack, and Tosh, taking the tech genius hers on his way back to rejoin Jack. He set her mug and a plate of cookies beside her keyboards.
“Refreshments are served.”
Tosh smiled up at him. “Thanks, Ianto; just what I needed.”
“How’s it going?”
“Slow; I’ve got to clean all the mud off the device without accidentally triggering it, but as long as it’s in the containment unit no one else is in danger of ending up like Jack.” The boxes were lined with a substance that absorbed and neutralised all kinds of energy.
“Do you think you’ll be able to fix Jack?”
“Oh yes.” Tosh sounded reassuringly confident. “That shouldn’t be a problem; it’s fairly standard transformative technology, we’ve seen similar things dozens of times. Never one exactly like this, but the scans I’ve taken show comparable circuitry. It’s just a case of figuring out how to operate it in reverse so that it restores Jack to the way he was before. It’ll probably take me a few hours to reconfigure the settings though.”
“Take your time, there’s no rush. I’m sure Jack will understand.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’m ready.”
“I know you will.” Picking up his tray again, Ianto went to join Jack.
Unsurprisingly, Jack was exactly where Ianto had left him. He made a sort of questioning sound when he saw his lover.
“Sorry it took so long, I needed to have words with Owen and see how Tosh was getting along. The good news is, she’s confident she can fix you. The bad news is, it’s going to take a while; you’ll be stuck like this for at least a few more hours. I brought you coffee and dark chocolate Hobnobs though.”
Jack’s mouth tried to smile, although the result was more like a silent snarl. It was quite disturbing, but Ianto didn’t let on, he just smiled back.
“Here, I’ll put your coffee on this chair.” He moved the wooden visitor’s chair around beside the desk and set one of the spare mugs on it. “Thought it best not to use your favourite in case it accidentally gets broken.” He popped a drinking straw into the mug. “See how you get on with that.”
Shuffling over to the chair, Jack latched onto the straw and slurped up half his coffee in one go, before turning his attention to the cookies, staring helplessly at them.
“Oh, right; no arms.” There was no way Jack could lift the Hobnobs to his mouth and bite bits off. Ianto snapped his fingers. “Got it! Why don’t I break them into pieces for you?”
That seemed to work. Jack was able to tilt himself just enough to snag pieces of chocolate coated cookie between his teeth, crunching them up with eyes half closed in bliss. Three cups of coffee and most of a packet of biscuits later, Jack bared his teeth at Ianto again and… Well, it was probably meant to be a thank you, but it sounded more like a load of scrap metal in a tumble drier. Even Jack winced, quickly shutting up.
“You’re welcome, just, perhaps it would be best if you don’t try to thank me again until you’re back to normal. Um, I could put a movie on for you if you’d like?”
Jack rocked backwards and forwards again, approving the suggestion.
“Any preference?”
A game of charades ensued, with Jack bobbing up and down as Ianto tried to guess what he meant, and after a lot of wrong guesses…
“A musical? Yes?”
Jack rocked more vigorously; he seemed relieved that Ianto had finally understood him.
“Okay, well you’ve got lots of those saved, so why don’t I suggest a few and you nod when I get to the one you want?”
Out of respect for Jack’s situation, Ianto refrained from suggesting ‘Hair’. Eventually they settled on ‘Guys and Dolls’, because Jack had a thing for the young Marlon Brando. Ianto set the movie running on Jack’s laptop and went to get on with a few necessary tasks around the Hub.
While the rest of Torchwood went about business as usual, Jack spent the afternoon watching musicals, and munching popcorn out of a shallow dish, which Ianto had to keep refilling for him. Finally, halfway through the Wizard of Oz, Tosh appeared in the office doorway to tell Jack she was ready to restore him to normal. Jack shuffled out from behind his desk so fast that he bumped into one corner and would have toppled over if Ianto hadn’t caught him and set him back on his… whatever was under all the hair. Leaning against his lover’s leg, Jack rubbed against him in lieu of a thank you, then followed Tosh from the office, leaving Ianto picking long brown hairs off his charcoal grey suit.
Turning Jack back into himself was a bit of an anti-climax. There was no bright flash of light, no iridescent shimmering, not much of anything really; Jack was simply a hairy lump, and then he was Jack again, fully dressed, complete with coat, boots, and his Webley in its holster on his belt.
He beamed at Tosh. “I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating; you, Miss Sato, are a certified genius. Thank you.” Turning to Ianto, Jack kissed his lover on the lips. “Thank you too, for going above and beyond. I know it can’t have been easy having a hairy monster to look after.”
“Well, not so much a monster as…” Ianto trailed off, smiling wryly. “You were more like a very fluffy pet, but I prefer you like this. You don’t shed as much.”
Jack laughed, but his smile faded as he turned to Gwen. “As for you, Gwen Cooper, I think you need to brush up on the rules regarding the handling of unidentified alien tech. If I tell you not to touch something, then you don’t touch it, you don’t nudge it with your boot, poke it with a stick, or do anything at all to it until I determine whether or not it’s dangerous. If something explodes, I’ll come back, but you won’t, and I don’t want to have to explain that to Rhys. Understood?”
“Yes, but…”
“No. I give the orders; they’re for your safety as much as anyone else’s!”
“Fine,” Gwen grumbled. “I was only trying to help.”
“Maybe Tosh should turn you into a hairy lump for a few hours and see how you like it.” Jack folded his arms and glared at Gwen.
“Okay, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again!” Gwen threw her arms up in the air and stalked back to her workstation.
“Not until the next time,” Ianto muttered under his breath, then turned to Jack. “Shall I order pizza? Biscuits and popcorn are a bit lacking in nutritional value; at least pizza contains protein.”
“Maybe later. First, I think you need to check me over thoroughly, just to make sure all that hair really is gone. There might still be some hiding under my clothes.”
Ianto smirked wickedly. “Or course, Sir. It would probably be wise to check for that.”
“Can’t be too careful; alien tech can be sneaky. My office, five minutes. Everyone else, go home.”
Jack didn’t need to tell his team twice; they were gathering their things and turning off their computers before he’d finished speaking.
“Goodnight!” he called to their backs as they headed through the cogwheel door. As it closed behind them, he grinned at Ianto. “Is it just me, or did they seem in a hurry to leave?”
“Can’t really blame them, Sir. Today’s been a bit… hairy.”
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3258
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Once again alien tech has had an unfortunate effect on a member of the team.
Written For: Challenge 368: Brush at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
When the team arrived back at the Hub following their latest retrieval jaunt, Ianto took the situation a lot better than Gwen had been expecting. He looked from her, to Owen, to… Jack and closed his eyes, shaking his head.
“I don’t think I even want to know. Whatever’s in the box, give it to Tosh. You can explain to her whatever it was you lot did. As for you…” Ianto turned his gaze on what he assumed was Jack, only because his lover had been with Owen and Gwen when they’d left two hours earlier, meaning the third member of the returning party couldn’t really be anyone else. “You’re a mess. I’ll get the brushes, see if I can’t clean you up and make you look a bit more presentable. And don’t you dare move while I’m gone! I’ll have to sweep up after you as it is.” Muttering to himself under his breath, Ianto stalked away, his annoyance obvious in the stiffness of his back.
“Well, that didn’t go so badly,” Gwen commented, smiling.
“Don’t count your chickens,” Owen warned her, lugging the containment box over to Tosh’s workstation and plonking it down. “Just because he hasn’t killed us yet doesn’t mean he’s not going to. This is just a reprieve. Once he’s dealt with Jack, then it’ll be our turn, and there’s no way I’m taking the rap for this one.”
Gwen huffed. “I wasn’t asking you to.”
“No? Who’re you going to blame then, Jack?” Owen glanced back over his shoulder at Gwen. “Don’t forget, I was there; I saw everything.”
“No you didn’t. You were fetching the containment unit.”
“We had comms on. I heard Jack tell you not to touch it, and I heard you say it was stuck in the mud. What did you do, kick it to get it loose?”
“No, of course not, I’m not stupid! I just pushed it gently with the toe of my boot. I didn’t touch it, not really,” Gwen insisted.
“News flash, Cooper; that’s still touching, which Jack specifically told you not to do.”
“Owen’s right, it still qualifies even if there was no skin contact,” Tosh agreed before turning her full attention to the item in the box.
Throughout the whole conversation, Jack hadn’t moved an inch, unwilling to bring Ianto’s wrath down on his… head. He simply hunched in on himself, quivering a little, a large, disconsolate, hairy blob peppered with bits of twig, dry mud, and vegetation.
After a few minutes Ianto returned, dressed in overalls and carrying a dustpan and brush in a bucket, along with an assortment of grooming tools. He glanced at the rest of the team. “So, which of you was responsible for this? Make no mistake, I will find out, and it will go a lot easier for the culprit if they just admit it.”
“It was Gwen,” Owen said firmly, not giving Gwen a chance to lay the blame elsewhere. “Jack told her not to touch it, but she nudged it with her foot anyway, and it… went off or something.”
“Owen!” Gwen glared at Torchwood’s medic.
“Told you I wasn’t taking the fall for something I had nothing to do with.” Owen smirked at Gwen as Ianto turned to glare at her.
“I should’ve known. Why is it you always assume Jack’s orders don’t apply to you?” he asked in a deceptively mild tone.
“He only said not to touch it, and I didn’t. I just gave it a nudge with my boot to get it out of the mud.”
“Gwen, kicking things still counts as touching,” Ianto pointed out with exaggerated patience. “You made contact with it using part of your body; that’s what touching means. The fact that you didn’t use your bare hand is immaterial. You did something you were explicitly told not to do and now Jack is…” Ianto paused, turning to frown at the hairy lump that had once been his lover. “To be honest, I have no idea what Jack is, just that he’s not himself, and you’d better hope Tosh can reverse whatever it is you’ve done to him. I think it’s safe to say he’s not going to be happy with you either once he’s himself again.”
Jack made a… sound that seemed to indicate he already wasn’t particularly happy with Gwen.
“It’s not my fault, I didn’t know that would happen!” Gwen protested.
“Exactly, which is why when someone tells you not to touch something, you DON’T TOUCH IT!” Ianto snapped. “For all you knew, it might have exploded and taken your leg off. Count yourself lucky all it did was turn your boss into a hairy lump.”
Jack quivered some more, although whether from anger or misery it was impossible to tell. The movement precipitated a shower of loose hairs and other detritus that scattered across the floor around him, but Ianto made no comment, just walked over to his lover and petted him soothingly on his… top until the quivering stopped.
“Feeling a bit better now, Jack? Right, let’s see if we can tidy you up a bit, shall we?” Ianto set to work with one of the brushes he’d fetched, starting at the top of what used to be Jack and working his way downwards, untangling knots as gently as he could. When he discovered a pair of bright blue eyes hidden under the unruly mass of hair, he used hairclips to pin the long, brown strands out of the way so that Jack could see more clearly.
The brushing seemed to calm Jack further and he made a sound like a cross between a sigh and a purr, his eyes half closing. Sparing no effort, Ianto continued grooming his boyfriend until every strand of hair was smooth, straight, and free from both tangles and muck. Setting his brushes aside, he stepped back to appraise his handiwork.
“There, that’s a big improvement. You still look a bit like Cousin It, but at least you’re tidy. Now, just stay put while I sweep up. Don’t want you spreading this mess everywhere, do we?”
Jack remained right where he was as Ianto swept up around him, emptying the dustpan carefully into the binbag lining his bucket, then cleaning the brushes he’d used to groom Jack. When he was done, he tied the bag and collected up all of his equipment, before smiling reassuringly at his lover.
“Okay, why don’t you go on up to your office and… make yourself comfortable? I’ll bring refreshments, after I have Owen scan you and see what’s safe for you to eat and drink. Assuming you can eat and drink.”
Jack rocked gently back and forth in what Ianto took to be a nod of agreement before shuffling away in the direction of his office. Somewhere under the hair there must be some means of locomotion, although Ianto, to spare Jack’s dignity as much as possible, had resisted the temptation to investigate while brushing him. Jack probably wouldn’t have objected to having his undercarriage groped, he was generally eager to indulge in any such activities, but to Ianto’s mind there were some things that just shouldn’t be done in front of the entire team.
Forcing his mind back to the matter at hand, Ianto took the rubbish down to the furnace, returned his cleaning supplies and implements to their proper places, and removed his overalls. Back in the main Hub, he summoned Owen to Jack’s office, where what passed for Torchwood’s leader was now standing behind the desk, blue eyes peering across it from about six inches above the wooden surface. Jack blinked at Ianto and Owen and made an indecipherable sound again.
“Can’t get into your chair?” Ianto asked.
The whole of Jack swivelled left, right, and left before looking straight in front of him once more.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Ianto smiled sympathetically. “Don’t suppose you can do much of anything like…” he gestured at his hairy lover. “That. Alright, Owen, scan Jack and tell me what I can feed him. He’s bound to be hungry by now.”
“Does he even have a mouth?” Owen studied Jack curiously.
“You tell me. You’re the one with the medical scanner.”
“Yeah, fair point.” Owen got to work, running his scanner over Jack from top to bottom. “Okay, there IS a mouth. Even has teeth in it.”
“Well, that’s something. Whereabouts?” Ianto bustled forwards with more hair clips, securely pinning the long face hair to both sides as Owen indicated where to find Jack’s mouth.
Predictably, Owen laughed. “Looks like one of those long, droopy moustaches you’d see in old Westerns.”
“I’d advise you not to make fun of the man who signs your paycheque and authorises your expenses,” Ianto warned. “He’s probably not in the best mood right now.”
“Whatever.” Giving a pretty good impression of being unconcerned, Owen tapped at his scanner. “Looks like he can pretty much eat anything he used to, but he might have a bit of trouble feeding ‘imself. No arms.” He snickered. “You might say he’s completely ‘armless!”
Ianto gave Owen a withering look. “That is SO not funny.” He patted Jack’s hair consolingly. “Stay here and I’ll bring you coffee and cookies in a few minutes.” With that, he steered Owen out of the office and down to the medical bay, out of Jack’s hearing.
“Now what? If this is about punishing me for a couple of jokes…” Owen started.
“It’s not, although don’t be surprised if I serve you decaf. You should try to be more sensitive to others’ misfortunes. It’s not like Jack did this to himself; he doesn’t need you making him feel worse than he already does.” Ianto leaned against the wall, folding his arms over his chest and giving Owen The Look. “No, right now what I’d like to know is how Jack ended up in such a mess in the first place.”
“It’s like I already told you. Gwen kicked the device, it went off, and…” Owen shrugged. “Captain Hairball.”
“That’s not what I meant. How did he end up all tangled and covered in half the countryside? I’m betting he didn’t start out that way.”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s a windy day, isn’t it? Forecast said to expect winds gusting up to forty-five miles an hour; it was blowin’ Jack’s hair all over the place.”
“That accounts for the tangles, but what about the rest?”
Owen kicked uncomfortably at the floor tiles with one foot. “Couldn’t see through all that hair, could he? Wasn’t easy getting ‘im back to the SUV. He kept bumping into things, bushes, fences and stuff; walked, if you can call it that, right through a couple of hedges, and he kept falling over. I stood ‘im up again every time though and kept ‘im pointed in the right direction. Well, mostly. Was a bit hard to figure out which way he was facing, so he wandered off a few times.”
Ianto stared ceilingward in exasperation. “You didn’t think to uncover his eyes so he could see where he was going?”
“Oi! I’m a doctor, not a bloody hairdresser! I don’t carry hairgrips around with me, and Gwen said she didn’t have any either.”
“You had your medical kit with you, didn’t you?”
“’Course I did.”
“Then you could have rigged a headband from a length of bandage, kept the hair out of his eyes that way!”
Owen frowned. “Oh, yeah, that might’ve worked.” He shrugged. “Too late now though.”
“I’m surrounded by morons.” Shaking his head, Ianto pushed away from the wall. “See if Tosh needs any help; I’m going to make coffee for Jack.”
“What about the rest of us?”
“You don’t deserve it. If you want some, you can fetch it yourself from the coffee shop across the Plas, or better yet, send Gwen.”
Retreating to the kitchenette, Ianto brewed coffee for himself, Jack, and Tosh, taking the tech genius hers on his way back to rejoin Jack. He set her mug and a plate of cookies beside her keyboards.
“Refreshments are served.”
Tosh smiled up at him. “Thanks, Ianto; just what I needed.”
“How’s it going?”
“Slow; I’ve got to clean all the mud off the device without accidentally triggering it, but as long as it’s in the containment unit no one else is in danger of ending up like Jack.” The boxes were lined with a substance that absorbed and neutralised all kinds of energy.
“Do you think you’ll be able to fix Jack?”
“Oh yes.” Tosh sounded reassuringly confident. “That shouldn’t be a problem; it’s fairly standard transformative technology, we’ve seen similar things dozens of times. Never one exactly like this, but the scans I’ve taken show comparable circuitry. It’s just a case of figuring out how to operate it in reverse so that it restores Jack to the way he was before. It’ll probably take me a few hours to reconfigure the settings though.”
“Take your time, there’s no rush. I’m sure Jack will understand.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’m ready.”
“I know you will.” Picking up his tray again, Ianto went to join Jack.
Unsurprisingly, Jack was exactly where Ianto had left him. He made a sort of questioning sound when he saw his lover.
“Sorry it took so long, I needed to have words with Owen and see how Tosh was getting along. The good news is, she’s confident she can fix you. The bad news is, it’s going to take a while; you’ll be stuck like this for at least a few more hours. I brought you coffee and dark chocolate Hobnobs though.”
Jack’s mouth tried to smile, although the result was more like a silent snarl. It was quite disturbing, but Ianto didn’t let on, he just smiled back.
“Here, I’ll put your coffee on this chair.” He moved the wooden visitor’s chair around beside the desk and set one of the spare mugs on it. “Thought it best not to use your favourite in case it accidentally gets broken.” He popped a drinking straw into the mug. “See how you get on with that.”
Shuffling over to the chair, Jack latched onto the straw and slurped up half his coffee in one go, before turning his attention to the cookies, staring helplessly at them.
“Oh, right; no arms.” There was no way Jack could lift the Hobnobs to his mouth and bite bits off. Ianto snapped his fingers. “Got it! Why don’t I break them into pieces for you?”
That seemed to work. Jack was able to tilt himself just enough to snag pieces of chocolate coated cookie between his teeth, crunching them up with eyes half closed in bliss. Three cups of coffee and most of a packet of biscuits later, Jack bared his teeth at Ianto again and… Well, it was probably meant to be a thank you, but it sounded more like a load of scrap metal in a tumble drier. Even Jack winced, quickly shutting up.
“You’re welcome, just, perhaps it would be best if you don’t try to thank me again until you’re back to normal. Um, I could put a movie on for you if you’d like?”
Jack rocked backwards and forwards again, approving the suggestion.
“Any preference?”
A game of charades ensued, with Jack bobbing up and down as Ianto tried to guess what he meant, and after a lot of wrong guesses…
“A musical? Yes?”
Jack rocked more vigorously; he seemed relieved that Ianto had finally understood him.
“Okay, well you’ve got lots of those saved, so why don’t I suggest a few and you nod when I get to the one you want?”
Out of respect for Jack’s situation, Ianto refrained from suggesting ‘Hair’. Eventually they settled on ‘Guys and Dolls’, because Jack had a thing for the young Marlon Brando. Ianto set the movie running on Jack’s laptop and went to get on with a few necessary tasks around the Hub.
While the rest of Torchwood went about business as usual, Jack spent the afternoon watching musicals, and munching popcorn out of a shallow dish, which Ianto had to keep refilling for him. Finally, halfway through the Wizard of Oz, Tosh appeared in the office doorway to tell Jack she was ready to restore him to normal. Jack shuffled out from behind his desk so fast that he bumped into one corner and would have toppled over if Ianto hadn’t caught him and set him back on his… whatever was under all the hair. Leaning against his lover’s leg, Jack rubbed against him in lieu of a thank you, then followed Tosh from the office, leaving Ianto picking long brown hairs off his charcoal grey suit.
Turning Jack back into himself was a bit of an anti-climax. There was no bright flash of light, no iridescent shimmering, not much of anything really; Jack was simply a hairy lump, and then he was Jack again, fully dressed, complete with coat, boots, and his Webley in its holster on his belt.
He beamed at Tosh. “I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating; you, Miss Sato, are a certified genius. Thank you.” Turning to Ianto, Jack kissed his lover on the lips. “Thank you too, for going above and beyond. I know it can’t have been easy having a hairy monster to look after.”
“Well, not so much a monster as…” Ianto trailed off, smiling wryly. “You were more like a very fluffy pet, but I prefer you like this. You don’t shed as much.”
Jack laughed, but his smile faded as he turned to Gwen. “As for you, Gwen Cooper, I think you need to brush up on the rules regarding the handling of unidentified alien tech. If I tell you not to touch something, then you don’t touch it, you don’t nudge it with your boot, poke it with a stick, or do anything at all to it until I determine whether or not it’s dangerous. If something explodes, I’ll come back, but you won’t, and I don’t want to have to explain that to Rhys. Understood?”
“Yes, but…”
“No. I give the orders; they’re for your safety as much as anyone else’s!”
“Fine,” Gwen grumbled. “I was only trying to help.”
“Maybe Tosh should turn you into a hairy lump for a few hours and see how you like it.” Jack folded his arms and glared at Gwen.
“Okay, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again!” Gwen threw her arms up in the air and stalked back to her workstation.
“Not until the next time,” Ianto muttered under his breath, then turned to Jack. “Shall I order pizza? Biscuits and popcorn are a bit lacking in nutritional value; at least pizza contains protein.”
“Maybe later. First, I think you need to check me over thoroughly, just to make sure all that hair really is gone. There might still be some hiding under my clothes.”
Ianto smirked wickedly. “Or course, Sir. It would probably be wise to check for that.”
“Can’t be too careful; alien tech can be sneaky. My office, five minutes. Everyone else, go home.”
Jack didn’t need to tell his team twice; they were gathering their things and turning off their computers before he’d finished speaking.
“Goodnight!” he called to their backs as they headed through the cogwheel door. As it closed behind them, he grinned at Ianto. “Is it just me, or did they seem in a hurry to leave?”
“Can’t really blame them, Sir. Today’s been a bit… hairy.”
The End