Title: Accidentally, on purpose
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,089 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 415 - Oops
Summary: Jack has made a bungling mess of things.



'Oops? Oops?' Ianto's voice grew louder and more incredulous with each repeat of the word. He twirled on his heels so that Jack could see the full breadth of his displeasure. 'Oops is what you say when you lock the car keys in the boot. Oops is what you say when you accidentally knock the milk carton over on the bench in the morning. Oops is forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home.' He glowered at Jack for a moment. 'Do you know what isn't oops?'

Jack's severed yet completely animated hand made a desperate crawl across the desk toward him and Ianto snatched it up, shaking it ferociously at Jack. 'This! This is not oops! It's your bloody hand and it's no longer attached to your arm!'

'I can't explain it,' Jack said, giving his honest assessment of the situation, 'but it's fine. I'm not in any pain and I still have a full range of movement. We’re just currently divorced from one another. But it’s amicable.'

'You've got more than a bloody full range of movement,' Ianto seethed. 'You've got a hand that can go anywhere without you.'

Jack scoffed at Ianto’s dramatising. 'Not anywhere. It's not like it's got eyes and can see where it's going,' Jack countered, though wishing he had kept his mouth shut when he saw just how mad the suggestion was making his lover. Who knew he could get redder in the face than the colour of his shirt?

'Should I have Owen try to stitch it back on and see if you can't regenerate some kind of physical attachment?'

Jack turned a baleful look on his lover. 'Nobody is going anywhere near me with needles,' he said, laying down firm and insistent orders he expected to be followed to the letter. This was his problem and no one was going to tell him what to do about it. He certainly wasn't going to have Owen attempt cosmetic surgery, even under sedation.

'Well, you can't very well carry on as you are,' Ianto tried to remind him. 'You can't drive, you can't tie your own shoelaces, you can't write left-handed and you can barely shoot with your left.'

He bristled at the offending remark. 'My marksmanship is just fine, thank you.'

'I suppose you could type one-handed. Albeit slowly, not that you approach your reports with any haste the rest of the time.' Ianto smirked at his last statement. 'Not sure we'd notice the difference.'

'Don't you dare think you're benching me,' Jack warned. He was still their captain, even if he now had a hand that could command attention all on its own.

'Until Tosh figures out how you managed to split your hand from the rest of you, without losing a limb herself, you're damn right we're benching you. You are quite literally handicapped.'

'I've managed with less.' Oh, the stories he could tell if he thought Ianto was in the mood for it, which judging by his expression, he wasn’t.

Ianto waggled Jack's own hand back at him, even as Jack used those fingers to try and prise themselves out of Ianto's steadfast grip. Anything to get away from further vitriol. But never bits that had a mind of their own. 'Surely even you can admit that's creepy and totally wrong.' He looked at the hand gripped in his own, and as if suddenly realising the creepiness of it, gingerly put it back down.

'I was trying to consider the upsides,' Jack replied. 'Just on a temporary basis, of course, until Tosh figures out how to fix it back on.'

'Which she wouldn't have to if you were more careful with unknown alien tech.'

'Look at it this way,' Jack said, hardly able to keep his attention fixed on Ianto when his hand was taking it upon itself to dance across the desk to amuse him. 'If anyone had to lose a hand, at least it was the guy who can’t die, right?'

Ianto gave an eye roll. 'Oh, yes, because an eternity of having your right hand missing is totally better.'


'You know me. It’ll probably reattach itself the next time I die.' Most things had a habit of resolving themselves that way, even when he’d been roasted or blasted to bits.

Ianto’s eyes kept doing their own theatre, this time arching up at the ridiculousness of the suggestion. 'Could we perhaps make that a last resort solution?'

'Always,' Jack promised, crossing his fingers over his heart. 'Just trying to calm you down. I’m okay. Really. I mean, look at it,' he said, pointing with his remaining hand, as the detached one did little flips and them attempted a mini moonwalk across his blotter. It hadn't had that much fun on its own since Ianto had let them role-play, with Ianto in his UNIT outfit, making Jack follow all kinds of kinky orders the mostly result in Jack pleasuring him, mostly, but not exclusively, with that self-same hand.

Ianto sighed at the mildly humorous performance. 'I should stash it somewhere so it won't get into any trouble but I know that if I put it in any pocket on my person that you won't be able to resist putting your hand somewhere it shouldn't be.' He heaved a long suffering breath, repeating the word “oops” under his breath, like it was the greatest disappointment of his life. 'What am I supposed to do with you?'

'Make sure it doesn't get damaged?' Jack offered up. 'That hand has been very good to you over the years.'

Ianto hummed, probably recounting the same role-play that Jack had been moments ago. 'Yes, I think it's best I keep it close by. It might like to make itself useful and crawl under the furniture and retrieve lost items, or at least dust under there.'

Jack shook his head, feeling a surge of panic. 'Oh, no. I am not cleaning under the furniture. God knows what's lurking under there.' Not to mention he, Captain Jack Harkness, did not do cleaning. No way.

'Well, perhaps you should have thought about that before you oops-ed your way into it.' Ianto scooped up Jack’s hand and grinned. 'Come on you, let’s go find out just how scary it is under Owen’s experiments cabinet. Must be years since it was cleaned properly.'

Jack watched his lover leave with his hand, making panicked gestures of its own, begging to be rescued from a fate worse than death, and then stared down at the still mysterious piece of tech and his impetuous stupidity. 'Oops.'