m_findlow

Title: Infection control
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Jack, Owen
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 172 - Germ at anythingdrabble
Summary: Owen is unhappy with Jack's laissez faire atitude.

'You probably shouldn't touch that,' Owen said, already reaching down into his kit for a pair of gloves. He snapped them on with purpose even as Jack was still prodding their latest find.

'I really have to insist,' Owen repeated, disliking the way Jack's fingers sunk down into the congealed substance pooling on the footpath of an otherwise quiet residential street. There wasn't much of it, perhaps a pint and a half at most, and to the untrained eye resembling nothing more than a pile of vomit, but it had sent their alarms into a frenzy. Tosh was still analysing the rift signatures to try and figure out exactly which of the thousand parameters had set it off so that they could find out more about it.

'It's fine, Owen. What's the worst that could happen to me? I can't die.'

'It's not you I'm worried about,' he replied, handing over the first of a set of flasks to take samples. 'It's everyone else who comes into contact with you afterwards that worries me. God knows what this stuff is and where it came from. It could be carrying any number of germs and here you are sticking your fingers in it like it's play dough. Next thing you're going back to the hub for a coffee and a snog and I've got half the hub in quarantine because we're all susceptible to something that you've become immune to in the last three thousand years of evolution. Or have you already forgotten the incident from two months ago?'

Owen could tell from the change in Jack's expression that he hadn't. Tosh and Ianto had both been in the hub's medical ward for three weeks after something they'd been studying had infected them - something Jack himself had given them as a project. It was only luck that it wasn't contagious from human to human. Not that it had helped Owen much, since his patients were both feverish and in some kind of nerve pain that refused to give in to any of Owen's treatments. It was a stark reminder that they needed to tighten their protocols or next time they might not be so lucky.

'I would never have given it to them if I'd known,' came Jack's reply. 'You know that.'

'Course I do. Didn't help us though, did it?' They'd both recovered, though there were some lingering pains that came and went which would take a few more months to disappear completely.

'You're right,' Jack said, reaching into Owen's kit and grabbing some disinfectant wipes to clean his hand. 'Put it down to a hundred years of habit. Not used to putting anyone but myself at risk.'

Owen held out a second pair of gloves. 'It's fine. Just be less you from now on then. When we get back, you go shower and try to keep your hands to yourself for twenty four hours.'

Jack choked. 'A whole day?'

'I figure that should be incentive enough for future reference.'