Wearing Thin (Torchwood, Owen Harper)

[RiversD]

I started this last April for tarotgirl's comment meme on livejournal, and finished it much later because I suck at speed. Prompt was for Owen with a cold and the rest of the team making fun of the doctor being sick, because situations like that form the basis of the most sophisticated comedy in the workplace.

 

Part I

 

“Ekschuh!” The first time, Owen wasn’t really thinking. His hands were occupied with a bowl of… well, he wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t prepared to admit ignorance just yet- and the itch that had been lingering high in his sinuses since breakfast decided to step up its game. So he twisted away from the… goop, let’s call it goop… and sneezed into the shoulder of his lab coat. And again.

“hh…ektchiew!”

“Bless you!” Gwen called over. She was hovering on the far side of the room, keen to know the results of today’s autopsy, less keen to be in close proximity to the goop. He nodded an acknowledgement, and sniffled to buy himself time before his nose started dripping on the sterilised surfaces.

“You alright?” Gwen asked, as he hurried to set down the bowl.

“Coming down with something, I think.” He admitted. Hands freed, he took a couple of paper towels, stepped back a little, and blew his nose. “I- ugh, sorry.” He turned away from Gwen and tried to clear his airways again. Once he was satisfied with the result, he binned the tissues and disposable gloves, and headed back to the bench.

“Sorry. I’ve been feeling a bit grotty today.”

“Well, that’s just not good enough.”

Owen paused halfway through pulling on a fresh glove and glanced up.

“What?”

“We don’t have a substitute doctor, you know. If you can’t keep yourself free from disease at all times…” Gwen shook her head and tutted. “Well, it’s just unacceptable, Owen. You’re letting the whole team down.”

She managed to hold on to her serious face for almost two seconds before the giggles started. She was getting better at that, Owen mused. He managed to give her a half-smile in return. She was the first to make that joke today, after all. Though he had a sinking feeling that she wouldn’t be the last…

[RiversD]

Part II

Jack wandered in about an hour later, feigning boredom and utterly failing to fool either Owen or Gwen.

“I think we’re pretty close.” Owen reassured him.

“Yeah?” Jack flicked his attention over to Gwen. “Is he just trying to get rid of me, or has he actually been working?”

Gwen smiled. “He’s made a fair bit of progress. In between all the sniffling and moaning, that is.”

“You can shut up, for starters.” Owen warned her. “I’ve not complained once, and you know it.”

To his own disgust, he was forced to sniff emphatically at the end of his sentence. It was that or start to drip. Jack’s gaze wavered between the two of them, confused.

“He’s got a cold.” Gwen explained.

“Really?” Jack raised his eyebrows at Owen, who scowled back.

“Yeah. It’s not exactly beyond the realms of possibility, is it?”

“I guess not. Still…”

“What?” Owen glowered. Jack shrugged.

“I don’t know. It’s just… weird.”

Owen rolled his eyes. “Says the man who got stabbed by a giant bee just last week.”

“That’s different.” Jack smirked. “Besides, I think we all know it’s not the first time I’ve been impaled by a-”

“Couldn’t let it go, could you?” Owen sighed.

“Hey, if you set ‘em up, you can’t expect me not to take a shot.”

“I guess not. Tell you what, though.” Owen gestured at the thing on the slab. “This was not a well alien.”

“No?”

“No, its stomach’s shredd-ed-eh‘kiSCHuh!” Caught off guard by a tickle, Owen deflected the sneeze into his elbow.

That set Gwen off again, turning away from them to smother a fit of giggles against the back of one wrist. Jack shot her an affectionate smile.

“Sorry, Owen. It’s objectively funny.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you know what ‘objectively’ means.”

“Oh, you want to go, little man?”

“No.” Owen scrubbed irritably at his nose and turned back to the autopsy table. “Actually, I’d like to do the job you asked me to do. But I guess laughing at me is more important, is it?”

Jack rolled his eyes, but nevertheless signalled that Owen had his attention for the time being. The doctor sighed, and continued his report.

“Like I said, this thing’s stomach is a mess. I found a lot of gravel in there- looks like it’s been scratching the stomach walls, and I’m pretty sure when I cut into some of the tubes further down I’m going to find stones blocking them up.”

“Based on what?” Jack was back to serious, a miracle that lasted for all of five seconds.

“Based on a quick feel wi- Ek’scHUH!”

Gwen put a polite hand to her mouth. Jack saw a window for innuendo and leapt for it, like a cat faced with a laser pointer.

“Wow, Owen, if you give all your subjects that treatment, it’s no wonder you’ve picked something up.”

“Shut up.”

“I just hope you used protection.”

“I said, shud-” Owen broke off, realising that the congested creak of his raised voice was going to outweigh any benefits to shouting at his boss. He sighed, and turned back to the thing on the table. It was easier than meeting Jack’s eyes.

“The lower tubes feel hard and lumpy.” He explained, praying that Jack could find it in him to let that one go.

In fact, Jack was winding up to take it on, one of his dirtiest grins announcing the fact, but Gwen cut him off, perhaps sensing that if this argument were allowed to run free it might seriously delay the rounding up of this case.

“That could explain why it seemed so uncomfortable before. It was practically waddling.”

“Definitely.” Owen snatched gratefully at the chance to get back on track. “Its whole digestive system’s being… was being… cut up and clogged by the stuff. So my thinking was, it must have been eating it by accident, somehow.”

“How do you eat gravel by accident?” Jack wanted to know.

“Thad-” Owen sniffed against the congestion, trying not to break the flow. “was my question too. So I analysed the rest of the stomach mulch, and I found a lot of hydrocarbons, carboxylic acids, and even some undigested bitumen.”

He looked back up at the two of them. Neither of them had followed him so far, so he presented his conclusion with a flourish. “I think it feeds on crude oil residue, or something like it. I think it’s been eating road surfacing.”

“Road surfacing? Wouldn’t someone have noticed? I’m pretty sure Ianto taps the council’s phones in his spare time.”

Owen shrugged. “Perhaps it ate the raw stuff. You know, un-set. It would be easier to digest. Plus, if it was getting it from a mixing plant there might be unmixed bitumen about and it might not realise that the processed stuff had gravel in it until it’s insides started kicking up a fuss.” He ploughed manfully through to the end of his sentence before breaking for breath, blotting a couple of tissues against his now leaking nose.

“You’ve been reading up on this.” Accused Jack. Owen gave his nose several hard blows before even trying to reply.

“I googled it, yeah. Got a problem?” he sniffed. “There aren’t any mixers near us, though, as far as I know. Best guess, it hitched a ride on a works truck.”

“Sears Street was being resurfaced Tuesday.” Gwen piped up. “Rhys was moaning about the diversion he had to take to work.”

“Then let’s find out who did it.” Jack was halfway up the stairs before either of them could answer, shouting: “Ianto!”

[RiversD]

Part III

The headache was settling in for the long haul by the time Owen had got the creature’s bloated body into a mortuary drawer. Not that any of the others had stuck around for the rest of the autopsy. Jack, Gwen and Tosh had run off to investigate the construction company with almost indecent haste.

Couldn’t blame them, really. Alien incursion-stopping would always trump corpse-prodding. But this was a really bad headache. Owen rested his head against the cool metal of the drawers and fought against the temptation to curl up and sleep right there.

He went to press his sleeve against his nose, thought better of it, and wandered sniffling across the room to collect a handful of tissues instead. At least he could still breathe for the most part, he mused. Having to blow his nose every thirty seconds was annoying as all get out, but he knew that once the congestion set in properly it would be goodbye to any coherent thought.

The irritation in his right nostril was threatening to grow into something more. He let it, reasoning that he might as well let his body have its way every once in a while. Not that it was averse to ignoring the brain’s authority altogether, if today's performance was any measure of that.

“ah…huh!” He raised the tissues as the tickle passed the point of no return and became a burning imperative. He breathed in slowly, held on the very edge of relief for a too-long instant, and sneezed.

ah’KISCHoo! iskch! ah…ohgod- Ek’ESCHUH! he braced one hand against the wall, dizzied by the unexpected force of his body’s response. This cold was kicking his backside six ways from Sunday, there was no hiding from it.

Still, he forced himself to go back upstairs. He would have to eventually. He wandered listlessly around the hub for a while, pausing occasionally to bin his used tissues and collect some fresh ones, until the sound of typing from Ianto’s desk drew him in that direction almost subconsciously.

“Hey.” he poked his head round the door. “How’s it going?”

Ianto glanced up in a startled manner that suggested he had forgotten that he wasn’t alone in the building. “Oh, hi. It’s going alright, thanks. Using the peace to try and get through the backlog in my inbox. You?”

Owen ignored the question. “Any news from the others?”

Ianto glanced at his phone. “Jack sent me a picture of Gwen knee-deep in some kind of tar-flow.”

“Sounds hilarious.” Owen flexed his shoulders and winced.

“You alright?”

“Just a twinge. I’m fine.”

As though cued by the laws of cosmic humour, Owen’s nose decided to prove him wrong. He raised a hand to pinch it closed when he felt the impulse start to gain traction, but succeeded only in forcing the resulting sneeze into a half-stifled “nk’chISHuh!"

“Bless you.”

The tremor in Ianto’s voice had been barely noticeable, but it was painfully obvious that he was now biting his lip to keep from openly sniggering. Owen knew he should just let it go, but he was tired and aching and just didn’t have the strength to stop himself.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing, it’s just, well…” Ianto smiled exactly the sort of smile that made Owen want to punch it off his face. “The irony can’t have escaped you.”

Owen gave him a dirty look. “Do you know, it had? As soon as the first symptoms hit I completely forgot that I was a medical professional. All those years of training, completely wiped.”

His nose prickled urgently, and he tugged a tissue from his pocket to attend to it. His nostrils were already rubbed raw- tissues that had felt soft enough this morning might as well have been cardboard now. He gave a weary sigh.

“Honestly, the stuff we see in this job, and you lot can’t accept that doctors catch cold as easily as everyone else. I don’t see why it’s so funny.”

“Me neither. It just is, you know?”

“Oh, sod off.”

Owen turned on his heel and headed for the door. Then, because he was tired and angry and feeling the need to lash out at something,he turned, and asked:

“Do you really tap the council’s phones when you’re meant to be having lunch? Because normal people know how to take a damn break.”

“Of course not!” Ianto looked uncomfortable for a moment, then turned back to his computer, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “not every day.”

On any other day, Owen would have stayed for the fight, but right now he just wanted somewhere to curl up and ignore the world. Fat chance, in this place, but he could try.

Eventually, he sat at his desk, not having the energy to think of somewhere else to be. Besides, the headache was making it hard to look at shiny surfaces, and he was pretty sure he had some paracetamol in a drawer somewhere.

Edited February 27, 2016 by RiversD

[RiversD]

Part IV (final part)

Two dry-swallowed pills and half an hour later, Owen’s head was emitting only background pain but the rest of him was uncomfortable enough to make up the loss. Gwen had come back from the hunt covered in tar and its related products, and so loud in her anger over this that it had been a blessed relief when she had left to get a change of clothes. Owen was sure by now that he was starting a fever, less because of the heat he could feel in his ears and cheeks than because things he would have found endlessly funny yesterday now made him want to throw things at the walls.

And to make things even more unbearable, his nose was itching again. At least he had tissues, for all the mixed blessing they were. He gathered a handful, feeling the irritation blossoming into an urgent need.

He made a token effort to clear the itch from his nose with a quiet blow, but his reflexes were having none of it. He was sneezing almost as soon as his nose touched the tissue.

Ek’shiuh! eh- kSCHuh!

Owen blew his nose, wishing for the umpteenth time that he had some way to tell when it was going to be more than one sneeze. The second one was always enough of a surprise to raise his heart rate embarrassingly afterwards. He scrubbed a knuckle against his septum, a lingering tickle still unsettling his breathing and threatening to spill over into something more substantial. He sniffed hard, hoping that that would shift it.

Then he heard Tosh’s voice to his left, and realised that she must have returned to her own desk, close enough to hear him when he sneezed. Drat. He’d rather not have disturbed her.

“Owen? Are you-”

"hh’ISSKCHuh!" The prickling sensation peaked so suddenly that Owen didn’t have time to even think about fighting it. He scrabbled for fresh tissues, breathing hard. He was sure sneezing shouldn’t make you feel like you’d been punched in the stomach, but here he was, and it sucked.

“Oh.” Tosh sounded mildly amused. Well, of course she did. By the time Owen felt his face was respectable enough to look up, she had almost made it to his desk. She didn’t look as happy about all this as Ianto and Jack, but…

Owen couldn’t bear it. He cut her off before she had opened her mouth more than half way.

“Don’t say it!” Tosh blinked, nonplussed. “Don’t you dare, Tosh, I’m serious.”

Owen buried his face in his hands. His head felt as though someone had filled it with bees. No, wasps, he decided. Bees didn’t deserve to be slandered by association with this hell.

A few slow, laboured breaths later, Owen became dimly aware that his immediate surroundings had been quiet for longer than he had expected. He raised his head a little to investigate.

Tosh was hovering awkwardly behind the desk, clearly uncertain whether to leave or not. Oh god, and she was making that face she only used when she was hurt but didn’t think she had the right to be. A wave of guilt sloshed through Owen’s beleaguered mind, and he slumped .

“I’m sorry, Tosh. It’s not you I’m cross with, really.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s just been a really long day, and Jack was…”

“It’s okay.”

He simmered into miserable silence under the weight of her understanding. Not knowing what to do next, he lowered his face into his hands again. He heard Tosh walk away, and was honestly a little relieved. He felt as though his brain had fused into uselessness, and he was fighting a dreadful urge to burst into tears.

He wasn’t aware of how long he held that position, chewing at the inside of his cheek in an attempt to maintain some kind of control over himself. But he heard the click of Tosh’s shoes on the floor as she came back into the room, and hoped it hadn’t been that long, for the sake of his ego.

He jumped at her gentle touch on his shoulder, and looked up to find Tosh standing beside him, holding a steaming mug of something or other. She leant past him and slid it onto the desk.

“I thought tea might be gentler on your throat.” she explained. “But if you want coffee right now, I can-”

Owen cut her off with a touch to her wrist.

“Tea’s great. Thanks, Tosh.”

Perhaps the whole world wasn’t against him after all.

END.

[AnteatersOnParade]

You are an amazing and wonderful person for posting all parts at once.    

That was a beautiful fic! I'm not familiar with the fandom but I really enjoyed this one! Great job, thanks so much for sharing this with us. 

[stephab13]

Oh gosh. There is not nearly enough Torchwood on here, and Owen? I think this might be the only one here!

But it's just wonderful. You have this remarkable talent for voices, and this really is no exception. Your Owen is absolutely spot on, and the relations with all the other characters... Thanks for posting it!!!

[angora48]

Ooh, this was gorgeous!  I love Owen being all sick and cranky and self-conscious, and everyone's level of joking felt just perfect:  Gwen teasing, Jack naughty, Ianto restrainedly ironic, and Tosh backing off as soon as she sees how miserable Owen is.  Really great!

[Sitruuna]

Since someone else resurrected this I'll just leave a comment and say that HOLY SHIT that's a nice story ouo I especially like the ending, Tosh brining Owen tea and all that

Edited June 7, 2016 by Sitruuna

[RiversD]

Awh, you guyyyyyssss... thank you so much for these!

Special thanks for reassuring me on the character-consistency front- it had been a while since I watched the earlier episodes and I was a little uncertain how good my memory of them was

Ahh, I'm just so glad people liked it!

[MeForever]

On 28-2-2016 at 0:33 AM, RiversD said:

Jack saw a window for innuendo and leapt for it, like a cat faced with a laser pointer

I snickered so loud when I red that

[Jelloicious]

Awww, this was wonderfully written, with excellent voice for all the characters!  (LOVE that Owen caught Ianto out on his phone tapping).  The Tosh/Owen interaction is spot-on.  

 

[silentdreamer789]

Perfect in every way!