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Monday was the slime beast. Oh, there was probably a proper name for it, some term of art that Jack would pull out of his arse as part of the inscrutable all-knowing bastard front, but it was going into Owen's records as the slime beast. The Slime Beast of Newport, to distinguish it from the last six. This one owed him several hundred quid for the jacket and the mental anguish damages from having to be stripped to his skin by his co-workers and scrubbed under the emergency shower until grey ooze finally sloughed from stinging pink flesh, mortified in several senses of the word. He was only glad that the same thing had happened to Gwen last week.
Tuesday gave him too much information. Yeah, not as if they'd been trying to hide it, but the difference between Jack is shagging the teaboy, and Jack is shagging the teaboy whilst I am trying to catch a kip on the settee a few metres away seemed to tip the situation over into a personal affront. Particularly when it involved having to learn that your employer's twisted sense of humour ran to belting out a loud chorus of The Yanks Are Coming at a moment that he no doubt considered appropriate. There would be earplugs, somewhere, down in his drawers in the autopsy bay, but that would have involved summoning the energy, not to mention the clearheadedness, to make it down the steps and back again without breaking his neck; Owen curled himself tighter and tried to think of England.
Wednesday they brought back some bit of alien tat that had the curious effect, on humans, of damping the olfactory nerves with low-frequency vibrations. An effect that Owen didn't properly come to apprehend until the device had been removed beyond its effective range on its way down to the archives and he abruptly discovered that the milk in his coffee had gone off. Very, very off. He spat out the vile mouthful and resolved to think of some way to make the entire day Ianto's fault. Starting with why the milk hadn't got checked sooner, but possibly encompassing the sun having risen that morning in the first place.
Thursday Owen found out that there were things that could still turn his stomach. Little things, mostly. Little pieces, of little people, laid out in a neat row along a polished mantelpiece where other parents would have kept photographs. But he had the satisfaction of seeing Jack turn away from that tableau.
Friday lacked a normal job's promise of a decent interval to go out and get properly pulled and pissed before everything started again on the Monday. Every day was Monday round Torchwood. "Been a week," Tosh said, taking the other end of the settee.
Owen grunted, trying to back it with the force of the stack of unfiled reports in front of him on the table. Could have left it to later and gone home, yeah, or someone else's home as appropriate, but wasn't as if the pile wouldn't be waiting for him first thing tomorrow anyway, endless round of work and more work supposed to be its own virtuous reward by Jack's warped lights. Better to sort more of it before the hangover. "You're still here as well?" he eventually ventured when Tosh hadn't made a move to go.
A hesitant little shrug, as if she knew that her alleged life was as rubbish as his and hated to admit the failing in front of anyone, again. "Rift simulations to run. It's this or sitting in front of the tv with a laptop half the night."
In your pyjamas, he considered pointing out, and then decided that the image was too depressing for a number of reasons. "Why do we do this to ourselves, Tosh?"
She had to think about it. "Because it needs doing?"
"I didn't need anything that's happened to me this week. Or this year, come to that. Last four bloody years."
Tosh might have rolled her eyes, if she'd been less well-brought-up, or Ianto, but instead she merely dipped her head thoughtfully; "Think of all the times it could have been someone else who wasn't expecting it. At least we're used to the weird things happening to us." Something went ding over at her workstation and she glanced up. "Right, I think I will go mind the rest of this from my own sofa. Don't work all night."
Owen grunted again, weighing the stack of reports with his eyes. He'd only got halfway through the first folder of papers the medical officer would need to sign off on for the week. Tosh shifted as if to rise, then suddenly bent in to brush her lips across his cheek, ghost of a morning's spray of jasmine scent still fighting the good fight from her hair. She backed away just as quickly, cheeks staining darker. "Well. See you tomorrow, then."
Yeah. Always the tomorrow, round here. Owen sat unmoving on the settee, watching Tosh's hurried exit, as the stack of reports slid onto the floor and mingled papers in a wanton disregard for order.
Bugger.