Fic: Jack's Bad Morning

[badly_knitted]

 


Title: Jack's Bad Morning
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack, Ianto.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Jack’s day got off to a spectacularly bad start and only seems to be getting worse...
Word Count: 1318
Written For: Prompt 135 – Out Of Sorts at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
 
 


Jack was feeling out of sorts. He didn’t feel ill or anything, nothing that simple or easy to explain away; one of the benefits of being immortal was that even if he did happen to catch whatever virus was currently making the rounds, nine times out of ten the vortex energy coursing through him would eradicate it before he felt any ill effects from it. He didn’t even have a headache or the random muscle pains and over-sensitised nerves from resurrecting, because he hadn’t died in several weeks. He was simply... off, in an undefinable yet annoying way, and perhaps because of that, he couldn’t seem to do anything right.

 
Normally, he wasn’t a klutz. His fifty-first century reflexes meant he could usually avoid the clumsiness that plagued regular humans on occasion, but today...
 

When he’d showered this morning, freshening up after a Weevil chase that had taken up most of the previous night, the bar of soap he’d been using had slipped from his grasp. He’d juggled it for several desperate seconds before it had escaped him entirely, shooting over the top of the shower curtain, and when he’d tried to go after it, he’d caught one foot on the edge of the bathtub.

 
Trying not to fall, he’d grabbed for the nearest thing the steady himself only to pull the entire curtain rail down, ending up on the floor anyway, still wet and soapy, and tangled in the waterproof fabric. Where the soap had gone he couldn’t say, because despite crawling around on the bathroom floor after turning the shower off, he hadn’t found it, although he had managed to bash his head on the underside of the washbasin.
 

All of that would have been bad enough, it wasn’t an auspicious start to his day, but apparently whatever was jinxing him had only just begun to make his life difficult. Getting dressed, he’d buttoned his shirt wrong twice, then caught his shirt tail when he was zipping up his pants, tearing a large, ragged hole in the fabric, meaning he’d had to change again. To cap that, one of his braces had pinged as he was fastening it, the elastic slapping him sharply across the nose and bringing tears to his eyes.

 
At least he’d managed to get his boots on and tied without mishap, but as he’d climbed the ladder up to his office, he’d banged his head on the edge of the manhole leading to his bunker, almost knocking himself out. He went up and down that ladder several times a day, he knew where the edge was without having to look, so obviously it must have moved somehow.

 
Thinking he’d be safer sitting at his desk, and hoping to gain a few brownie points with Ianto, he’d decided to while away the time before the team came in by doing his paperwork. As much as he hated it, he had to admit if was less of an ordeal if he dealt with things as they came across his desk instead of letting them pile up. An hour, five papercuts, a torn fingernail, and a painful pinch from a bulldog clip later, everything from his inbox had been shifted to his outbox, even if there were ink smudges on a few of the reports from his pen developing an unexpected leak. He had ink on his shirt cuff as well, not to mention all over his hands, but when he stood up to go and wash them, he tripped over the wastepaper basket and fell flat on his face. Now there was a partial handprint in blue ink on the worn concrete floor of his office. What Ianto would say about that was anybody’s guess.
 

“Maybe I’m dehydrated,” Jack muttered to himself as he tried to scrub the ink off his fingers with a fresh bar of soap and a nailbrush. It faded a bit, but they still looked blue, and of course some of the ink came off on the towel when he dried his hands. If it had been one of the blue towels it might not have mattered, but of course it was one of the new extra fluffy white ones, which now had random blue smears across the middle, plus a streak of red from his torn fingernail, which he’d caught on the thick pile and ripped further. Tossing it in the laundry hamper, along with his ink-stained shirt, he got out yet another clean shirt and put it on, trying not to get blood on it.
 

Back in his office, Jack checked his watch and saw there was still a half hour before Ianto would be in, bringing breakfast, so he went to the kitchenette and got a bottle of water out of the fridge. The cap didn’t want to come off, which he supposed was par for the course with the way his morning was going, then when it finally did, he fumbled the bottle and spilled water all down himself, soaking icy cold right through his clothes to his bare skin.
 

Jack whimpered. He’d already changed his shirt twice; he couldn’t go through that again! It was only water this time though, uncomfortable but not a serious problem. It would dry soon enough if he just left it. He drank the rest of the water and dropped the bottle in the recycling bin, only to see it bounce out again and roll across the floor. Frustrated and annoyed beyond endurance, he stalked over to it and kicked at it viciously, whereupon it sailed through the air in a graceful arc, rebounded off the wall, and hit him right in the groin. Hard. All the breath went out of him with a wheezing groan, and he doubled over.

 
When Ianto arrived a few minutes later, he found Jack curled up on the cold concrete floor of the kitchenette, clutching himself and groaning. He was immortal, he healed quickly and thoroughly from any injury, but pain like that doesn’t just magically go away.
 

“Jack? What happened?” Ianto dropped to his knees beside his stricken lover.

 
“Everything hates me!” Jack whimpered, uncoiling just enough to gaze piteously up at Ianto from tear-filled eyes. At Ianto’s puzzled look, Jack regaled him with the sorry tale of his disastrous morning. “I don’t even know what I did to make the universe mad at me!”
 

“It’s just one of those days, Jack. We all have them sometimes, days when it feels like we can’t do anything right.”

 
“Not you,” Jack insisted. “The universe loves you, you’re prefect in every way.”
 

Ianto snorted. “Hardly. A couple of weeks ago, I got up, opened the bedroom door on my foot and took the skin off two toes. Then the shower tap got jammed on cold, I dropped my toothbrush down the loo, went back to the bedroom, trod on my phone, and broke it. I must’ve knocked it onto the floor getting out of bed.”
 

Jack looked up at him wide-eyed. “What did you do?”
 

“Went back to bed of course, which is what you should do. You’ll find a few hours’ sleep works wonders.”
 

By that point, Jack was willing to try anything. “Okay, I can do that.” Slowly unfolding himself, he let Ianto help him to his feet and dust him off. “Thank you.”
 

“You’re welcome.” Ianto gave Jack a sympathetic smile and a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
 

Nodding, Jack turned to hobble away in the direction of his office but paused as Ianto called after him.
 

“Try not to fall out of bed, yeah?”
 

Jack managed a watery smile. “No promises, but I’ll do my best.” All he wanted to do was go to bed, pull the covers up over his head, and forget this horrible morning ever happened. On second thoughts, better not tempt fate with the covers; he’d probably just suffocate himself.
 

 
The End