Sickness and Health

Illness is inconvenient for everyone but the inconvenience of illness is even worse for Torchwood employees. Ianto can be the first to tell you that as he huddles down in a mound of blankets in front of his television, giving up on keeping the mucus inside his nose, instead stuffing tissues up his nostrils. That only lasted moments as he sneezed them both out. With a groan that made its way through his chest and came out in a gasping wheeze, he stood up, shuffling his way to the bathroom to splash water on his face and attempt to feel slightly more alive.

After that failed to help and his muscles decided that they didn’t want to hold him up anymore, Ianto made his way back to the couch and formed a new cocoon around himself, falling into an uncomfortable sleep.

It was an hour later when he was half-woken by a knock on his door followed the sound of heels clicking against the tile in his foyer. The clicking softened as they reached his carpet and he completely disregarded the almost inaudible ‘aww’ and clicking sound of a camera taking a picture.

Ianto groaned again as a hand was placed on his head and a concerned hum came from the familiar presence.

She walked away and Ianto sighed, snuggling back into his personal cocoon until the person returned and a cold flannel was rested on his head. His hissed slightly at the change in temperature and then welcomed it as his headache was soothed slightly. Tosh pulled back his blankets, making him groan and swat at her arms limply as she sighed at how wet they were from his sweat.

“Ianto, you poor thing. Let me get you some clean linen.”

And like that, his cocoon was taking from him and he sat up, flailing his limbs in search of his comfort.

“Calm down, Ian! I’ll bring you clean sheets.”

“I was comfy though,” Ianto mumbled, the sentence coming out as ‘I wuh commy doh’. Tosh managed to decipher the words of the sick man and patted his head.

“Lay back down. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Ianto did as he was told and readjusted the flannel on his face. Tosh came back and threw a clean duvet on him, tucking it under his sides. Ianto pulled it up to his chin and looked up at Tosh in what she could only describe as the cutest puppy eyes she’d ever seen. Tosh resisted the urge to ‘aww’ again and held a cup of water with a straw in it up to Ianto.

“Drink a bit. You’ve got to stay hydrated.”

Ianto hummed and rested back into the blankets, covering his eyes with the flannel. Tosh took the hint and packed up her things, leaving Ianto in peace.

---

“Up and at ‘em tea boy.”

Ianto groaned and sat up, glaring at Owen who bounded into his apartment with his medical kit.

“Nice jammies,” Owen teased, looking at Ianto’s matching flannel pajama set.

“Shuddup,” Ianto grumbled, suddenly glad he didn’t wear his giraffe footie pajamas (courtesy of Jack as a joke), as much as he was tempted to. Owen might have noticed the red tinting Ianto’s cheeks but the fever already made his face bright red. The rest of Ianto was pale as the moon and he was looking pretty peakish so Owen slipped into doctor mode.

“Alright Ianto, can you undo the first couple buttons?”

Ianto nodded, fumbling with the buttons on his night shirt and hissing when Owen put the stethoscope up to his chest, then pushed Ianto forward to listen to his lungs.

“Deep breath…and out. Again,” Owen tsk’d and put his stethoscope around his neck in typical doctor fashion, leaning forward to feel Ianto’s lymph nodes (swollen) and have a look at his tonsils (also swollen). His eyes were unfocused and his nose was full of grossness.

“I feel icky,” Ianto whined. Owen raised his eyebrow at him and Ianto blushed, knowing he’d get teased for that later.

“Right,” Owen replied, sticking a thermometer in Ianto’s mouth and pulling out a blood pressure sleeve. Ianto just let himself be manhandled until Owen was content.

“Take these.”

Ianto swallowed the pills along with almost an entire bottle of water. He even ate some of the crackers that were force fed to him.

“For the love of god, you need to change your pajamas and take a damn bath. It smells like rancid ass in here.”

With that, Owen was gone.

---
It was two hours later when Ianto was feeling slightly better, sitting up on the couch watching crappy daytime television when there was a knock on his door.

“Who’s there?” he tried to yell, finding that his voice was gone. “Fuck,” he whispered, standing and ignoring the cracking in his muscles. He opened the door for Gwen and gave a smile.

“You could’ve used your key,” his whispered.

“I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Nobody else minds,” Ianto replied, giving a small smile to show he was joking as he led her into his living room.

“Did you lose your voice?”

“Apparently,” he whispered again.

Gwen nodded and then made a face.

“Ianto, I don’t mean to be rude but it smells horrible in here.”

“Yeah, Owen kindly pointed that out. I’m sort of afraid to take a shower. I feel like I’m going to pass out at any moment so I’d prefer not being in water if it happens.”

Gwen nodded.

“Anyway, Owen insisted that you eat some protein so I went to that little café down the street and got you some chicken soup. I’m sorry Ianto, but I’ve got to go. The rift is being crazy. Jack told me to tell you he’d stop by in a few hours. We’ll call to check up on you later.”

“Thanks, Gwen. Give everyone else my thanks too.”

They gave each other awkward smiles and Gwen hurried from the apartment. Ianto didn’t understand what the big deal was. His house didn’t smell that bad.

---
Ianto spent the following 6 hours on his own going from a drug induced coma to feeling restless. He would get up, walk into his bathroom and splash water on his face and then head back to the couch and sleep for another 45 minutes. The TV was playing some soap opera and Ianto must have rolled on the remote and changed the language to Italian because he couldn’t understand the language in his dreams. In one of them, Owen turned into a weevil and drove away in a limo, promptly crashing it into a lamppost that ended up being an alien that swallowed the car, and Owen the weevil, whole.

His dreams got weirder and weirder through the day but he still had trouble at times knowing when he was sleeping and when he was awake.

In his haze, he knew he threw up (he wasn’t sure where) and he knew he accidentally urinated in his pajamas. He stripped them off and rolled back over, falling back into his dream.

His hours of delirium slowly came to a close as warm arms wrapped under his arm pits and lifted him off the sofa and carried him into his bright bathroom. He blinked, nuzzling his face into the neck of the being carrying him. It smelled so wonderful and all Ianto wanted to do was crawl inside of them and sleep forever.

“Steady,” a voice said quietly, placing Ianto on the toilet seat as the faucet of the bath tub started. Ianto tried to ignore the room spinning around him and focused on the sounds of the comforting presence moving around his bathroom gracefully.

“Come on, Ianto, all the team has been saying is how terrible you smell and I’m beginning to see their point.”

That’s when Ianto began to come to, blinking as the lights hurt his head and then down at himself. He was naked from the waist down and the bottom of his pajama shirt was wet at the hem. He turned his head to the mirror to see his hair curled and stuck to his forehead in sweat and his shirt stuck to his body. His eyes had dark circles under them and if there was such thing as zombies (which Ianto would never rule out) he definitely could match the description of one.

“I look like hell,” he rasped out.

“Shh, don’t talk.”

Ianto nodded and let Jack strip him of his pajama top and then lift him into the now full and steaming bath tub. He sighed as the warm water soothed his muscles and his headache started to subside slightly. Jack closed the bathroom door so the steam would remain in the bathroom, soothing Ianto’s sinuses.

Jack entered Ianto’s flat at 9pm after a long day of rift activity and paperwork. They’d called his cell phone repeatedly during the day and everyone was responded by a sleepy, irritable, obviously not there mentally, Ianto. One of Jack’s calls included Ianto mumbling “I just pissed myself, it smells,” and rustling as Ianto removed his trousers. Jack knew he should’ve had someone go over and take care of Ianto but they were so busy that afternoon and evening that there was no time for it. Jack instructed Ianto to drink some water and stay on the couch and Owen made two more trips to Ianto’s flat, both of them ending with Owen considering bringing Ianto to the hub. Both times he decided not to as the trip would cause him more harm them leaving him alone. He threw Ianto’s dirty trousers and the duvet into the laundry and dragged another raggedy blanket out of the closet.

All day, Jack’s stress levels were skyrocketing even more than usual on a busy day. Not only were they down a team member, but Jack was coming to the realization that he liked Ianto a lot more than a shag. He was genuinely worried for him—even more than he would for the rest of the team, although he’d never admit that out loud.

He tried to do his paperwork but gave up, deciding to take it with him to Ianto’s as he took care of his ill lover, but it quickly took the backburner when Jack saw Ianto’s state for himself.

He filled the bathtub just enough to cover Ianto but not so much that Ianto could pass out and drown and left Ianto in there as Jack went to the living room, taking the covers off of the couch cushions and pillows Ianto had, returning the TV’s language to English and starting a load of laundry before going back into the bathroom to find Ianto resting in the bath tub with his eyes closed.

“Come on, the water’s probably getting cold,” Jack stated. Ianto shivered at that moment, proving what Jack already assumed. He reached in the tub and pulled his poor, poor love out, carrying him to the bedroom, dressing him in the giraffe footie pajamas (ignoring how embarrassed/angry Ianto would be when he was back to normal), and placed him on the bed.

“Cold,” Ianto mumbled, holding his arms out to Jack. Jack grinned and took Ianto into his arms, curling the freshly laundered duvet around the two of them, allowing Ianto to curl into him for warmth and giving a sweet kiss on his head and letting the sound of his lover’s steady breaths lull him to sleep.