Torchwood: Fanfic: Contagious

[m_findlow]

Title: Contagious
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,065 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, Ianto, no one is allowed to be more obsessively compulsively anal than me!" at fic_promptly
Summary: The team are doing it tough in quarantine

'What the hell do you mean we can’t leave?'

The expression from the young Welshman was stormy, bordering on scary. This was not going to end well for one of them, and Jack hoped it wasn’t him. Three days running now they’d been stuck in there with no provisions, no bedding, no running water, and most importantly, no coffee. It was bound to fray a few nerves eventually, but Jack had worked on the assumption that someone else would be the one to crack first. The weapons store was no place to keep people in quarantine.

'Owen’s concerned about cross contamination,' Jack explained.

'What cross contamination?' Gwen asked, looking weary and disheveled.

'Yeah, we’ve all been cleared of any virus,' Ianto said, still looking thunderous.

Owen plodded over to the door, dressed awkwardly in his big yellow hazmat suit. Standing next to Jack, his face barely visible though the tinted visor at the front.

'Don’t get stroppy at me,' he said, 'blame your stupid immortal boyfriend.'

'Hey, what did I do?' Jack moaned.

Owen could be heard huffing inside his suit. Every sound he made was amplified by the small microphone nestled inside, including the numerous long strings of expletives that had been muttered over the course of the past week.

'Jack’s physiology is, well, complicated. The fact that he can’t die, makes him a carrier. The spores could continue to live in his bloodstream, even though they can’t kill him. If I let you lot out, he could infect you.'

Tosh rubbed a tired hand over her face, wishing she’d been wearing her jacket when they’ve been shoved inside, the doors locked tightly behind them. It wasn’t exactly warm in here, and everywhere was nothing but cold hard metal surfaces. 'I thought you said you’d managed to create an antibody that would kill off the virus in Jack’s system?'

'I did. But it’s not foolproof. It kills 99.9% of the spores, but I’m still working on the last 0.1%.'

Jack stared at his three teammates stuck in quarantine. They all looked like they could use a proper night’s sleep, something to eat, and a cuddle, not necessarily in that order.

'What is the likelihood of this cross contamination? I mean, yes it’s got limited airborne capabilities, but how much risk is there?' Jack didn’t want to take any chances with his team, but he also knew that they couldn’t stay in there forever. Not without a way to get them food and water.

'It’s slim, but I’m not taking chances,' Owen replied.

'How slim is slim?' Gwen asked.

Owen shrugged. 'Probably one in ten thousand. No one is moving until I’ve had every surface in the hub disinfected. Producing a quantity of antibody gas big enough to disperse around the entire hub is taking a while.'

'One in ten thousand!' Ianto wailed, sounding incredulous. 'You’re keeping us in here for a one in ten thousand chance of infection? No one is allowed to be more obsessively compulsively anal than me, but that just, just-,' he didn’t even know how to finish his sentence, seemingly flabbergasted. Even Jack couldn’t keep the amusement from his face, despite the inherent gravity of the situation. It was a little bit excessive.

'Why don’t you shove Jack in quarantine?' Tosh muttered, having not caught the virus, but Ianto’s mood being the far more contagious thing in the room.

'Did you not hear what I said?' Owen snarked. 'Spores. Whole hub,' he said, treating them as if they were all complete idiots.

'One in ten thousand,' Ianto repeated back to him.

'Yeah, I’m ready to take my chances,' Gwen agreed.

'Me too,' Tosh said. 'Jack let us out.'

Jack looked at them, looked at Owen, and back again. He was slowly losing control of the situation, and could sense the mutiny on his hands if he didn’t do something. One in ten thousand was pretty low, but then again, if something was going to go wrong, it usually went wrong at Torchwood. Perhaps Owen was right to be cautious.

'What if we just disinfected one room in the hub completely, and put them in there for the time being?' Jack suggested. 'Just somewhere where they can stay comfortably until this is over?'

Owen seemed to consider this, just grateful that he hadn’t been here at the time, and was allowed to come and go from the hub, so long as he wore his protective suit.

'It still leaves the matter of how do we get them from here all the way to said room?'

'We’ll walk,' Ianto said. 'I’ll even hold my breath if it makes you feel better.'

'What do you think, Owen?' Jack asked, almost praying he’d say yes. He couldn’t stand to watch his team look at him with such wanton desperation anymore.

'It’s still risky, but at the expense of never being allowed to drink coffee again, which was sitting slightly below my fear of actually killing the Teaboy...'

'Hey, what about the rest of us?' Gwen cried. 'Don’t we count?'

'Er, course,' Owen replied awkwardly, seeing the look of fury on Tosh’s face and knowing he’d be in the doghouse when this was over.

'Okay,' Jack said, cutting them both off. 'Owen, make it happen. I want them out of there as soon as you can clear a suitable space.'

'Right,' Owen said, plodding off.

Ianto tapped on the glass, trying to get Jack’s attention, and slapping a piece of paper up against the glass.

'What’s that?' Jack asked.

'Our list of demands,' Ianto replied.

Jack scanned the list with his eyes, eyebrows raising further up his forehead. 'You guys are scary when you’ve got too much time of your hands, you know that?'

'We were bored. Making up with a list of things we would never take for granted ever again was easy.'

'I noticed you forgot one very important thing.'

Ianto frowned, looking concerned. 'What’s that?'

'Me.'

Ianto just narrowed his eyes and turned away. Jack was the whole reason they were stuck in here in the first place.

Looks like Owen’s not the only one in the doghouse when this is over, he thought glumly.

Several hours later, Owen had been industriously working away, disinfecting one of the medical suites on a lower level. He chose one as far from the main level of the hub as possible. Whilst it would increase the duration of their exposure to the air, there was far less chance of cross contamination further from where the incident had happened. All he now had to do was keep Jack away from that area to minimise additional infection.

Remarkably, he was able to accommodate most of the team’s requests, which weren’t really that onerous. All they really wanted was to be comfortable if they had to be stuck there. There was only one key exception – running water. He just didn’t trust the Victorian age plumbing. They’d have to live with bottled water for drinking and washing. They wouldn’t enjoy cold water bathing, but given they’d have beds to sleep in, computers to keep them occupied, clean clothes and fresh food, it was a small price to pay.

'Are we ready?' Jack asked, looking across at Owen.

'Yup. Now remember, you lot,' he said, issuing instructions for the fourth time. 'You’re to walk across to the lift and get in, wait for me to push the button for sublevel 14, and walk to medical suite six. Don’t touch anything, not the railings, not the buttons in the lift, don’t even brush the walls. Once you get downstairs, there’s a decontamination box for your shoes. Slip them off without touching them and keep walking. When you get inside, press the button the seal the doors and hit the intercom to let me know.'

'Yes, mum,' Gwen said, rolling her eyes.

'Have a go at me all you want, but I'm only doing this for your benefit.'

Jack waved sadly at them, wishing his immortality wasn’t such a burden to everyone. 'See you in a week. Believe me when I say this will be harder on me than it will be on you.'

'Yeah,' Owen added, 'you guys get a week’s holiday, and we get a week of scrubbing the hub,' he moaned.

It wasn’t so bad once they were down there. True to his word, their accommodations were comfortable enough, with extra rooms attached to the main living area which allowed them to prepare basic meals and have limited bathroom facilities. Once they’d run out of things they could work on via their computers, they lounged around, watching movies or reading books. When that novelty wore off, they had to get more creative. They could still video link with Jack and Owen and find out what was happening in the real world, but with so much disinfecting to be done, they barely had time for a catch-up, stopping only when Ianto had called for pizza to be delivered to them to keep them going.

When finally Owen was satisfied that every ventilation system in the hub had been scrubbed, and the antibodies forced around the massive base several days running, disinfecting every surface, he let Jack do the honours of letting the rest of the team out of their confinement.

Having to live upstairs with Jack for the past week had been a nightmare, and Jack had been miserable for the lack of company, the pair of them quietly driving each other mad. It was only by good fortune that the rift decided to behave itself, since Owen wouldn’t let Jack out of the hub under any circumstances.

Jack, in his excitement, nearly bounced down the stairs, unable to wait another second until he could wrap his arms around his beloved Welshman once more and give him the biggest bear hug of all time. What he found when he got down there was not what he expected.

For starters, he could hear squealing and laughter coming from all three of them. It sounded like a party. No fair, Jack thought. He was the king of parties, and nobody around here was going to have a party without him! When finally he came face to face with the perspex window, he saw them on the floor, tangled together in the most awkward looking way possible.

'Who said you could have a threesome without me?' he cried.

Gwen, startled by Jack’s voice, lost her balance, falling over on top of Ianto, which in turn sent Tosh tumbling down on top of both of them. They all giggled and laughed until they were out of breath, partly from the sheer fun of it, and partly from seeing the devastated look on Jack’s face.

'It’s twister, Jack,' Tosh finally replied, catching her breath. 'Not a threesome.'

'Twister?' Jack asked, disbelieving. Who were these people and what had they done with the real Gwen, Tosh and Ianto?

'We were bored,' Gwen said. 'Tosh figured out a way to convert the laptop into a projector, so that we could project the dots onto the floor, and set up a random move generator program in place of the spinning dial. Ianto is currently winning. He's beaten us five times out of the last seven.'

'Finally all that bedroom gymnastics is playing dividends,' he grinned.

Jack crossed his arms, annoyed. 'Well, seeing as how you’re having so much fun, I suppose you won’t want to come out now.'

'Oh, don’t be such a sulk, Jack,' Ianto implored. 'What else were we meant to do to kill time?'

'You could come join us if you like,' Tosh offered. 'We’re so up to date with our reports that another few hours wouldn’t kill anyone.'

'Okay,' Jack said, his mood brightening. 'I just have one condition, though.'

'What’s that?'

'It has to be naked twister.'

The three of them looked at one another, before getting up and dusting themselves off.

'Actually,' Gwen said, 'I should probably get home and make sure Rhys is okay.'

'I... just remembered that I left a program running on one of our network isolated servers that I should really check on,' Tosh added.

'Yeah,' Ianto agreed, 'and the archives, well, they don‘t sort themselves out. There’s a mountain of boxes down there to catalogue.'

All three of them rushed past Jack, headed on their merry way to suddenly very urgent tasks.

'Oh, come on guys!' Jack whined.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Poor Jack just can't catch a break!

t least there will be no further contagion to worry about.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

He has been very unfortunate. The only kind of quarantine he wants is the kind where he's stuck in bed with Ianto for several days.