This little snippet isn't set anywhere in particular, but requires a familiarity with Greeks Bearing Gifts. Hope you enjoy.

Gwen perched gloomily on the examination table, trying not to twitch while Owen worked on the series of scratches and bites spiralling up both of her legs. Even with his head bent, she could feel the smirk on his face, and her palms itched to slap it off.

When Owen looked up, his face was carefully blank, as though he'd taken warning from the hands clasping the edges of the table. "I'll need to get at the back now," he informed her, in a voice which matched the face but didn't compensate in the slightest for the amusement glittering in his eyes.

Gwen sighed and moved as directed, ending up lying face down on the exam table where no-one would notice if the gathering tears of frustration escaped. Nor would she have to see the pitiful bundle of what used to be her brand-new designer jeans, cut in an oh-so-flattering bootleg, now cut into shreds and lying where they'd fallen when Owen had finally cut through the remains of the waist band.

The worst of it was that Gwen knew she ought to be grateful, not angry - or at least more grateful than angry. The hilarity was perfectly understandable, after all. She must have looked ridiculous, running around in circles shrieking while those miniscule mousy-looking creatures picked a leg each and swarmed up. Gwen would have laughed too, had it been anyone else, and it was a fair chance that she wouldn't have recovered quickly enough to respond as her team mates did. Well, not all of the team. Tosh was doubled over with laughter and Jack still clinging onto a pole to hold himself upright, when Owen and Ianto sprang into action. Though to be fair, because she was trying to be, Jack had grabbed her arm as she ran past, holding her still so that the other men could work on her.

Gwen shuddered. If Owen hadn't been so quick at slashing the jeans off her legs, hands steady despite his shaking shoulders, then Ianto wouldn't have been able to see past his tears of mirth to the scuttling parasites, so as to stun them before they reached their intended destination. Her femoral artery, apparently, whence they would inject their larvae into her bloodstream. Or so Jack explained after Ianto had glared him back into a semblance of composure.

In which case, she'd have far more to be stressed about than ruined jeans, however trendy, however flattering, even if they had accounted for the majority of her last Torchwood pay-check. As it was, Gwen didn't even have to worry about her bum flashing the Hub through the gap in her surgical gown. The mice-lice - as Ianto had dubbed them – were halted midway up her thighs, allowing her the dignity of retaining both T-shirt and underwear. She hadn't even worn a thong today, so there was another blessing to count.

Jack had leered at her lace knickers, which Gwen was desperate enough to consider a positive.

Tosh, though, Gwen thought, as she shifted so Owen could get at the inner side of her calves. Tosh had been totally useless. Jack had had to drag her upright and thump her on the back before she could even stand unassisted. Not that the mice-lice had gotten anywhere near Tosh's skin, no, not so much as a nip.

When Gwen eventually made her way up to the Hub, wearing the spare pair of trousers which Ianto had retrieved from her locker, all eyes were carefully averted. Assuming you didn't count the sideways glances, of course. Behind her, Owen wheezed his repressed mirth into a surgical cabinet, which Gwen was generously prepared to ignore given that he'd refrained from laughing in her face or even making his usual snarky comments while he dressed her wounds.

As Gwen lowered herself carefully into her chair, Ianto placed a coffee on her desk, then moved swiftly to intercept Jack, steering the grinning Captain firmly back towards his office.

Tosh's eyes were fixed on her screen, but she was biting the inside of her cheek, Gwen just knew it. After a few moments of awkward silence, during which Tosh progressed to biting her lip as well, Gwen uttered a sign of resignation.

"Go ahead and say it," she invited wearily. "I know you're dying to. Hell, I would in your place. Just get it out of your system, go on."

Jack's door cracked open. Footsteps creaked on the stairs from the med bay.

Tosh spun to face Gwen. Spun, quite deliberately on her tall chair, swinging legs clad in all their impenetrable denim-and-leather glory.

"Oh sweetheart," Tosh obliged, her voice too gleeful to be truly offensive. "The jeans in the boots thing has really kind of had its day."

Gwen tried to smile, she really did.

"And," Tosh concluded, spinning back to her terminal in a joyous swirl of leather. "It was today."

This silly idea pounced on me after reading Aviv B's drabble 'A short introduction to Cooper's rules,' and I was so happy to have the muses ambush me again that I had to post it before they changed their minds.

Thanks for reading.