Fic - "Doctors and Nurses" - Torchwood
Title: Doctors and Nurses
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: T (at max!)
Pairing: Jack/Gwen
Summary: One stormy night, Jack is bitten by a weevil and attempts to cope with the wound himself, until, mid session of mopping up of blood, he is interrupted.. Includes half naked Jack, so if that won’t prompt you to read this, nothing will!
Author's Note: Written for the prompt "muscular" from philippa_.
Jack was not amused. He could cope with most of his deaths, for a shot to the head was quick and painless. However, his worst death was being mauled by a weevil, as that took some time before he finally blacked out, the blood pooling from his neck, or wherever the bite marks were this time. It was his second time that week that he’d been out hunting down a marauding weevil and been killed soon after. When he awoke, he always caught them again, but the pain from the death could still be vividly remembered.
He burst into the Hub, leaving the black, stormy night behind him, yet bringing in a great deal of water which dripped from his drenched person, dragging a protesting weevil behind him, its claws fastened with a pair of “alien handcuffs”, as Owen liked to call them. They resembled two blue bangles, one worn on each claw, but if the prisoner attempted to move its hands too much, it was shocked with a bolt of energy from the not-so-innocent bracelets, and frozen until the captor saw fit to release the prisoner, with a press of a button Jack had cleverly installed on his watch.
Jack shook his head, spraying water droplets everywhere, as he wrestled with the creature down the stairs to the cells. It had been a horrible night, the rain pouring from the sky, and, as Jack thought, as if Mother Nature herself had thought, “Hey, Jack’s not having a hard enough day, let’s add a rainstorm to his evening.” Thus he was soaked to the skin, and freezing cold.
Having installed the weevil next to Janet, he left the two aliens to become better acquainted and hoping desperately that Ianto wouldn’t end up having to look after a weevil crèche in the bottom of Torchwood Three, gave Janet strict instructions not to flirt too much, and left the room.
As he strode across the empty Hub to his office, he reached up a hand to brush his sopping fringe out of his eyes. As he did so, a blinding pain shot through him, and he winced, seizing hold of the railing as he passed it. Bugger. Despite regaining his life, the wound was still there, and hadn’t healed properly, as it usually did. For some reason, his body didn’t like properly repairing weevil wounds when he returned from the dead. Evidently it was too brutal for his bizarre, mutated immune system, to deal with.
He dragged himself into his office, and immediately set about pulling off his clothes.
Jack had thought the Hub was empty, but he was wrong. He had left earlier on that evening to catch the weevil, sending everyone else home, but Gwen had stayed on, eager to finish some paperwork, and also to avoid returning home relatively early in the evening, for a Torchwood employee. She had been looting the kitchen when Jack returned, and hearing the growls of the weevil, had come out just in time to see her boss dragging the creature through one of Torchwood’s many doors. She went over to her computer and was sat getting on with her work when he returned. Due to his pain, he didn’t see her, and blithely entered his office without the knowledge that he was not alone.
As Jack had fallen to his knees, writhing in pain, Gwen had caught sight of the red blood stains and ripped shirt on his front. She had paled; just because Jack died often didn’t mean that it was a comfortable experience for his friends every time it happened. Now, she hurried over to his door, and was just about to make herself known when she fully took in the sight in front of her.
The Hub was dark outside, and the sound of rain battering against the metal structure could be heard clearly, yet there was an odd warm glow in the captain’s office, emanating from the old fashioned lights on the wall. The mahogany furniture gleamed with it, giving the room a soft atmosphere, not often seen in Torchwood.
Jack stood with his back to her, pulling off his coat and throwing it to the floor. Next came his shirt, which he ripped off with a low groan, twisting his shoulders as the pain gripped him once again. It clung to his arms, the water making it almost transparent against his white T shirt, which he pulled off last.
Gwen stood fixed to the sport, as Jack reached behind him to pull it off over his head, revealing a wet, glistening back, rolling with muscles as he tossed the shirt aside, glaring at the scarlet mark and tears on the front. He rolled his head back, then looking down at his chest, scrutinised the wound closely.
He reached out for a bottle of spirit standing on his desk. Putting the neck into his mouth, he pulled out the cork with his teeth, and biting hard on it, splashed his chest liberally with the alcohol, hissing as it stung him. Satisfied that the wound was now sterilised, he spat the cork out and took a swig from the bottle himself, gulping it down as it blended the pain away.
Gwen couldn’t stop staring. It was hardly as if she’d never seen a man’s chest before; Rhys’ favourite past time was wandering around their flat in the nude, but this was.. well, it was Jack. It was obvious that the Captain was very handsome, and it was only in her dreams that she got to watch him strip in front of her.
She blushed as she ran her gaze down from the nape of his neck, where his dark hair curled, along his spine and round to his flat stomach. She watched a drop of water trickle a path down the centre of his chest. It lurched and jumped over the gashes caused by the weevil, then finally hurried down the last few centimetres of bronze skin across his stomach before reaching the waistband of his trousers. Gwen took a sharp intake of breath.
Jack looked around immediately as he heard the noise, and seeing Gwen, was shocked for a moment, as they regarded each other, Gwen guilty as she was caught red handed eyeing up her boss. Then, Jack’s face broke out into a grin.
“Didn’t know you were still here.”
Gwen shook her head, and flustered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “No, I had some stuff to finish.” She waved her hand about as she tried to say something. She finally alighted upon his fresh wound. “How did that happen?”
“Courtesy of Janet’s cousin. Probably in-bred.”
“Oh.” Gwen bit her lip. “It looks awful. Did you.. did you..”
“Die?” Jack finished the sentence for her, and nodded. “Yeah. But I was up again soon and caught it, don’t worry. No more Dracula bites for that one. Perhaps we’ll get Owen to wear down its teeth.”
“Yeah.” Gwen cocked her head. “Did it hurt, Jack?”
Jack blew out his cheeks, as he assessed how great the pain level had been. “Oh, I would say so.”
“Does it still hurt?”
Jack shook his head in a non-committal way, ever the modest hero. “When I move, I guess. It’ll be gone soon.”
Gwen gave the marks a rueful look. “You ought to have them bandaged up though.” She took comfort in the authority this gave her, allowing her to cover up her embarrassment. “I’ll get Owen’s kit.”
“Aw, Gwen, don’t make a fuss, I’ll be fine,” Jack whined, but it was no point, as Gwen had already turned on her heel and was hurrying towards Owen’s medical supplies.
She returned a few minutes later, and instructed Jack to sit down on his desk. “With pleasure, Nurse Cooper,” he wise cracked back, with a glint in his eye, and Gwen rolled her eyes.
“I don’t intend playing doctors and nurses with you, Captain Harkness.” She pulled out some bandages, and checking that Jack had sterilised the wound properly with his vodka earlier, motioned for him to raise his arms.
Obeying, Jack winked at her. “Aw, come on, I bet you’d love to wear a nurse’s uniform.”
Gwen ignored him, carefully winding the bandage around his chest. “You ought to take more care of yourself, Jack.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point, I’m immortal anyway. I might as well put myself in danger instead of you lot. Ow!” He winced, and Gwen gave him an apologetic glance.
“Sorry” she muttered, going more carefully this time, taking care not to apply too much pressure as she wrapped him up.
Jack looked down at her, and smiled. He loved the look of concentration she so often got on her face; it made Gwen look so serious. She was biting her tongue between her teeth as she thought hard, and her brow was furrowed. He grinned to himself.
“There, all done.” Gwen sighed and stood back, admiring her handiwork.
Jack leant forwards towards her and with dark eyes, asked “Kiss it better?”
Gwen looked up sharply at him, and his eyes seemed to be telling her that he knew she had been watching him all that time as he undressed. Her heart leapt, and she was filled with the urge half to obey his request and half to run away and bury her head in paperwork for the next few days. However, his blue eyes were burning with electricity, and she couldn’t look away.
Kneeling down beside him, and inclining her head towards his chest, she parted her lips, and moving infinitely slowly, pressed them against the tender, tawny skin, just below the bandage. His skin was hot, and still wet from the rain, yet ever so soft, just like his hands. Her eyes closed.
There was a bang, and Gwen pulled away from him in an instant. They spun around to see Tosh and Owen bursting into the Hub, chattering loudly to each other.
“Gwen? Gwen, you still here? Look, you’re not staying here anymore, you’re coming home with us.”
Jack and Gwen hurriedly got to their feet, and Gwen went out to them, as Jack pulled on his shirt once again.
“I really need to finish this -”
“Gwen, Jack won’t give a damn if you don’t get that in by tomorrow. Oh, you’re back, Harkness - tell Gwen she can have the night off, Jack!”
Gwen turned round to see Jack standing in the doorway of his office, looking down on them. He shook his head, dismissing the topic. “Just get it in as soon as you can.”
Gwen opened her mouth to protest, but Tosh and Owen had seized her by the arms and were dragging her towards her desk, where Tosh threw her coat at her, and they then steered her towards the door.
“See you tomorrow, Jack!”
“Yeah, bye!”
Jack nodded at them, one hand in his pocket, and the other raised in farewell as they left the Hub. Gwen was able to sneak one last glance at him before the cog door closed behind her. Jack was staring straight at her, a smug look on his face, and a sparkle in his eye. Then he turned, and went back into his office. Gwen closed her eyes for a moment, as she recounted the seconds before Tosh and Owen’s impromptu arrival. This was not good. She could not be having such thoughts about Jack. She was engaged to Rhys, wasn’t she!
As Gwen went to sleep a while later, back at her flat, she listened to Rhys snoring and turned on her side. Images of Jack pulling off his shirt raced through her mind. She shook her head. The chances were slim of her getting any sleep that night, with a half naked Jack wandering through her dreams. She banged her head against her pillow in frustration, wondering why on Earth it was that she had such a handsome man as her boss.
Jack, on the other hand, was sitting back in his office chair, his arms folded across his chest and chuckling to himself, wondering if he could get away with calling Gwen to his office the next day and asking for her to change his bandages.
After all, “Nurse Cooper” suited her very well.
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: T (at max!)
Pairing: Jack/Gwen
Summary: One stormy night, Jack is bitten by a weevil and attempts to cope with the wound himself, until, mid session of mopping up of blood, he is interrupted.. Includes half naked Jack, so if that won’t prompt you to read this, nothing will!
Author's Note: Written for the prompt "muscular" from philippa_.
Jack was not amused. He could cope with most of his deaths, for a shot to the head was quick and painless. However, his worst death was being mauled by a weevil, as that took some time before he finally blacked out, the blood pooling from his neck, or wherever the bite marks were this time. It was his second time that week that he’d been out hunting down a marauding weevil and been killed soon after. When he awoke, he always caught them again, but the pain from the death could still be vividly remembered.
He burst into the Hub, leaving the black, stormy night behind him, yet bringing in a great deal of water which dripped from his drenched person, dragging a protesting weevil behind him, its claws fastened with a pair of “alien handcuffs”, as Owen liked to call them. They resembled two blue bangles, one worn on each claw, but if the prisoner attempted to move its hands too much, it was shocked with a bolt of energy from the not-so-innocent bracelets, and frozen until the captor saw fit to release the prisoner, with a press of a button Jack had cleverly installed on his watch.
Jack shook his head, spraying water droplets everywhere, as he wrestled with the creature down the stairs to the cells. It had been a horrible night, the rain pouring from the sky, and, as Jack thought, as if Mother Nature herself had thought, “Hey, Jack’s not having a hard enough day, let’s add a rainstorm to his evening.” Thus he was soaked to the skin, and freezing cold.
Having installed the weevil next to Janet, he left the two aliens to become better acquainted and hoping desperately that Ianto wouldn’t end up having to look after a weevil crèche in the bottom of Torchwood Three, gave Janet strict instructions not to flirt too much, and left the room.
As he strode across the empty Hub to his office, he reached up a hand to brush his sopping fringe out of his eyes. As he did so, a blinding pain shot through him, and he winced, seizing hold of the railing as he passed it. Bugger. Despite regaining his life, the wound was still there, and hadn’t healed properly, as it usually did. For some reason, his body didn’t like properly repairing weevil wounds when he returned from the dead. Evidently it was too brutal for his bizarre, mutated immune system, to deal with.
He dragged himself into his office, and immediately set about pulling off his clothes.
Jack had thought the Hub was empty, but he was wrong. He had left earlier on that evening to catch the weevil, sending everyone else home, but Gwen had stayed on, eager to finish some paperwork, and also to avoid returning home relatively early in the evening, for a Torchwood employee. She had been looting the kitchen when Jack returned, and hearing the growls of the weevil, had come out just in time to see her boss dragging the creature through one of Torchwood’s many doors. She went over to her computer and was sat getting on with her work when he returned. Due to his pain, he didn’t see her, and blithely entered his office without the knowledge that he was not alone.
As Jack had fallen to his knees, writhing in pain, Gwen had caught sight of the red blood stains and ripped shirt on his front. She had paled; just because Jack died often didn’t mean that it was a comfortable experience for his friends every time it happened. Now, she hurried over to his door, and was just about to make herself known when she fully took in the sight in front of her.
The Hub was dark outside, and the sound of rain battering against the metal structure could be heard clearly, yet there was an odd warm glow in the captain’s office, emanating from the old fashioned lights on the wall. The mahogany furniture gleamed with it, giving the room a soft atmosphere, not often seen in Torchwood.
Jack stood with his back to her, pulling off his coat and throwing it to the floor. Next came his shirt, which he ripped off with a low groan, twisting his shoulders as the pain gripped him once again. It clung to his arms, the water making it almost transparent against his white T shirt, which he pulled off last.
Gwen stood fixed to the sport, as Jack reached behind him to pull it off over his head, revealing a wet, glistening back, rolling with muscles as he tossed the shirt aside, glaring at the scarlet mark and tears on the front. He rolled his head back, then looking down at his chest, scrutinised the wound closely.
He reached out for a bottle of spirit standing on his desk. Putting the neck into his mouth, he pulled out the cork with his teeth, and biting hard on it, splashed his chest liberally with the alcohol, hissing as it stung him. Satisfied that the wound was now sterilised, he spat the cork out and took a swig from the bottle himself, gulping it down as it blended the pain away.
Gwen couldn’t stop staring. It was hardly as if she’d never seen a man’s chest before; Rhys’ favourite past time was wandering around their flat in the nude, but this was.. well, it was Jack. It was obvious that the Captain was very handsome, and it was only in her dreams that she got to watch him strip in front of her.
She blushed as she ran her gaze down from the nape of his neck, where his dark hair curled, along his spine and round to his flat stomach. She watched a drop of water trickle a path down the centre of his chest. It lurched and jumped over the gashes caused by the weevil, then finally hurried down the last few centimetres of bronze skin across his stomach before reaching the waistband of his trousers. Gwen took a sharp intake of breath.
Jack looked around immediately as he heard the noise, and seeing Gwen, was shocked for a moment, as they regarded each other, Gwen guilty as she was caught red handed eyeing up her boss. Then, Jack’s face broke out into a grin.
“Didn’t know you were still here.”
Gwen shook her head, and flustered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “No, I had some stuff to finish.” She waved her hand about as she tried to say something. She finally alighted upon his fresh wound. “How did that happen?”
“Courtesy of Janet’s cousin. Probably in-bred.”
“Oh.” Gwen bit her lip. “It looks awful. Did you.. did you..”
“Die?” Jack finished the sentence for her, and nodded. “Yeah. But I was up again soon and caught it, don’t worry. No more Dracula bites for that one. Perhaps we’ll get Owen to wear down its teeth.”
“Yeah.” Gwen cocked her head. “Did it hurt, Jack?”
Jack blew out his cheeks, as he assessed how great the pain level had been. “Oh, I would say so.”
“Does it still hurt?”
Jack shook his head in a non-committal way, ever the modest hero. “When I move, I guess. It’ll be gone soon.”
Gwen gave the marks a rueful look. “You ought to have them bandaged up though.” She took comfort in the authority this gave her, allowing her to cover up her embarrassment. “I’ll get Owen’s kit.”
“Aw, Gwen, don’t make a fuss, I’ll be fine,” Jack whined, but it was no point, as Gwen had already turned on her heel and was hurrying towards Owen’s medical supplies.
She returned a few minutes later, and instructed Jack to sit down on his desk. “With pleasure, Nurse Cooper,” he wise cracked back, with a glint in his eye, and Gwen rolled her eyes.
“I don’t intend playing doctors and nurses with you, Captain Harkness.” She pulled out some bandages, and checking that Jack had sterilised the wound properly with his vodka earlier, motioned for him to raise his arms.
Obeying, Jack winked at her. “Aw, come on, I bet you’d love to wear a nurse’s uniform.”
Gwen ignored him, carefully winding the bandage around his chest. “You ought to take more care of yourself, Jack.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point, I’m immortal anyway. I might as well put myself in danger instead of you lot. Ow!” He winced, and Gwen gave him an apologetic glance.
“Sorry” she muttered, going more carefully this time, taking care not to apply too much pressure as she wrapped him up.
Jack looked down at her, and smiled. He loved the look of concentration she so often got on her face; it made Gwen look so serious. She was biting her tongue between her teeth as she thought hard, and her brow was furrowed. He grinned to himself.
“There, all done.” Gwen sighed and stood back, admiring her handiwork.
Jack leant forwards towards her and with dark eyes, asked “Kiss it better?”
Gwen looked up sharply at him, and his eyes seemed to be telling her that he knew she had been watching him all that time as he undressed. Her heart leapt, and she was filled with the urge half to obey his request and half to run away and bury her head in paperwork for the next few days. However, his blue eyes were burning with electricity, and she couldn’t look away.
Kneeling down beside him, and inclining her head towards his chest, she parted her lips, and moving infinitely slowly, pressed them against the tender, tawny skin, just below the bandage. His skin was hot, and still wet from the rain, yet ever so soft, just like his hands. Her eyes closed.
There was a bang, and Gwen pulled away from him in an instant. They spun around to see Tosh and Owen bursting into the Hub, chattering loudly to each other.
“Gwen? Gwen, you still here? Look, you’re not staying here anymore, you’re coming home with us.”
Jack and Gwen hurriedly got to their feet, and Gwen went out to them, as Jack pulled on his shirt once again.
“I really need to finish this -”
“Gwen, Jack won’t give a damn if you don’t get that in by tomorrow. Oh, you’re back, Harkness - tell Gwen she can have the night off, Jack!”
Gwen turned round to see Jack standing in the doorway of his office, looking down on them. He shook his head, dismissing the topic. “Just get it in as soon as you can.”
Gwen opened her mouth to protest, but Tosh and Owen had seized her by the arms and were dragging her towards her desk, where Tosh threw her coat at her, and they then steered her towards the door.
“See you tomorrow, Jack!”
“Yeah, bye!”
Jack nodded at them, one hand in his pocket, and the other raised in farewell as they left the Hub. Gwen was able to sneak one last glance at him before the cog door closed behind her. Jack was staring straight at her, a smug look on his face, and a sparkle in his eye. Then he turned, and went back into his office. Gwen closed her eyes for a moment, as she recounted the seconds before Tosh and Owen’s impromptu arrival. This was not good. She could not be having such thoughts about Jack. She was engaged to Rhys, wasn’t she!
As Gwen went to sleep a while later, back at her flat, she listened to Rhys snoring and turned on her side. Images of Jack pulling off his shirt raced through her mind. She shook her head. The chances were slim of her getting any sleep that night, with a half naked Jack wandering through her dreams. She banged her head against her pillow in frustration, wondering why on Earth it was that she had such a handsome man as her boss.
Jack, on the other hand, was sitting back in his office chair, his arms folded across his chest and chuckling to himself, wondering if he could get away with calling Gwen to his office the next day and asking for her to change his bandages.
After all, “Nurse Cooper” suited her very well.