Gen fic: Tiny Livestock
sg_fignewton is looking for Gen fic, so I thought I'd contribute. I don't write a lot of gen fic, but I dabble here and there. I wrote this a long, long time ago and never finished it. Don't know that I ever will. It was just one of those things that hit me after viewing Broca Divide. It's humor, but unbeta'd and without any real ending, though you can easily fill it in yourself.
SG-1 emerged from the event horizon none to soon, in Daniel’s opinion. After his brief tenure as one of the ‘Touched’ and his subsequent miraculous cure in front of the leaders of the Land of Light, he wanted nothing more than a long, hot shower. Quite frankly, he stank. His teammates, good friends that they were, didn’t so much comment as they gave him wide berth. Even Teal’c didn’t want to be downwind of him just now. To make matters worse, he itched all over. His head, his armpits, even his crotch, though he took pains not to scratch there when anyone was looking. Assuming it was his allergies, he reminded himself to ask that new doctor, Dr. Fraiser, for something to stop the itching.
As fascinating as studying the pre-human condition of the Touched might be from an anthropological standpoint, he certainly hadn’t planned to become one of them. Not to mention that he really couldn’t remember much of anything after the transformation began. Before that, there had just been a lot of fighting over the girl and kicking the crap out of him. He’d been happy to note however, that while they had been fighting over her, no one had been inclined to initiate sex with her as long as she was unconscious.
Dr. Janet Fraiser stood at the base of the ramp and cast a critical eye over the members of SG-1. She was pleased to see Dr. Jackson with them and moving under his own steam, even if he did look a bit worse for wear. His clothes were filthy and shredded, a few livid bruises and contusions showing through the gaps. Dr. Jackson scratched at the dirty, matted hair at the back of his neck. ‘I’ll bet he itches,’ she thought, ‘hell, he makes me itch just to look at him.’ As much as she preferred a clean patient, though, she really needed to check him out before she released him to shower. Janet bit her lip. ‘Perhaps I’d better rephrase that. I need to make a medical assessment first.’
Dr. Jackson’s pungent aroma preceded him to the base of the ramp. Dr. Fraiser stifled the urge to cover her nose.
“Welcome back Dr. Jackson. If you’ll accompany me to the infirmary…” she began.
“Do you think I could take a quick shower first? I’m, uh, a bit…” he trailed off, scratching idly under one arm.
Janet smiled to herself. ‘Let him think I’m being magnanimous.’
“How about a compromise? Let’s get you out of those clothes and I’ll do a quick assessment, then you can shower and come back for treatment. How does that sound?” she offered.
Daniel scratched at his other armpit and tried not to think about the other places that itched. Getting out of these clothes should at least cut down on the stench.
“Okay… I guess,” he answered.
He really didn’t want to face Dr. Fraiser smelling like a goat. Or worse. But he supposed it made sense. He allowed himself to be led to a bed where a gown had already been laid out for him along with a red plastic biohazard bag. Oh yeah, these clothes definitely qualified as a biohazard. The nurse pulled the privacy curtain around the bed and Daniel wasted no time in getting out of his clothes and stuffing them in the bag. Giving his groin a long, satisfying scratch, he twisted the bag shut. A puff of air escaped and hit him in the face, making his eyes water in spite of the glasses. God, what a stink! He threw the bag on the floor and kicked it as far away as he could. Sticking his arms into the hospital gown, he tied up the back and sat on the edge of the bed, scratching behind his left ear.
“Ready Dr. Jackson?” Janet called from the other side of the curtain.
“As I’ll ever be,” came the subdued reply.
She really couldn’t blame him and resolved to make this just as quick as possible. They’d both be more comfortable with an examination once he was clean.
“I know you’re anxious for that shower, so I’m just going to take some blood, check your vitals and take a look at your injuries, okay?” she gave him an encouraging smile.
He nodded and held out his arm for her to stick. So far, Dr. Jackson was proving to be one of her more agreeable patients. Even after all the blood tests she’d subjected him to before he went back to the planet, he didn’t protest her sticking him yet again. She lifted her eyes from the tube filling with his blood to find him looking at her. He scratched under his arm with his free hand.
“Are you itchy? I’ve noticed you’re scratching a lot,” she asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s my allergies or bug bites,” he answered.
“Where?”
“Everywhere… all over. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so dirty,” he said.
Janet was starting to have a sneaking suspicion and finished up with his arm.
“I’ll be right back. Stay right there,” she ordered, her face serious.
Daniel watched her leave with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tried to reassure himself that it couldn’t be all that bad, could it? Yeah, he was a bit banged up, but nothing all that serious could be wrong with him.
Dr. Fraiser returned a few minutes later with some vials, forceps and a comb. Positioning herself on one side, she began combing through the dirty hair around his ear. He was so shocked at this bizarre behavior it took a few moments before he knew what to say.
“Uh, can I ask what you’re doing?” he finally asked as gently as he could. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had combed his hair for him.
In the meantime, Janet had found exactly what she had feared.
“Dr. Jackson, you seem to have brought some friends home with you,” she said, depositing something into one of the vials and handing it to him.
“Excuse me?” he said, holding the vial up and squinting at the single, tiny occupant.
“Lice, or a close cousin, I think,” she said, dropping another speck into the vial. “You probably picked them up from the Touched while you were lost on the planet.”
“Oh crap. Lucky me,” he sighed. “So how do I get rid of them?”
Janet decided to tease him just a little bit. After all, external parasites really weren’t exactly life threatening. She continued to collect lice from his scalp until she had a number of them in the vial, then capped it.
“Well, my grandmother would have shaved your head,” she answered, watching his face.
She didn’t have to wait long for his response.
“Shave my head?” his eyes slid to meet hers.
“Along with any other… affected areas,” she said with a straight face.
Daniel’s eyebrows crawled towards his hairline. The implication hadn’t been lost on him. Speaking of eyebrows… She took off his glasses, handed them to him and began a new search.
“Dr. Fraiser, please tell me medical science has progressed since your grandmother’s day,” he said, his eyes rolling up trying to watch what she was doing.
Janet struck pay dirt, plucking another bug from an eyebrow and dropping it into a new vial.
“We have. But since these little guys aren’t exactly the domestic variety, we need to determine which treatment will work best,” she said, continuing to collect creatures from his eyebrows.
“Okay, how do we do that?” Daniel was practically cross-eyed from trying to watch her hands.
“Well, I’m going to collect lice from each affected area. The earth variety is very specific. Head lice are one type, body lice another. Either these alien lice are less choosy or you’re infected with several different varieties,” she capped the vial of eyebrow lice and set it aside.
“Great. Then what?” Daniel was clearly not happy.
“I need you to slip this arm out of the gown, Dr. Jackson,” she tapped the arm in question.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let me take a shower first, before…” he looked positively ill at the prospect of her putting her face anywhere near his armpit.
“Sorry, but no. We need to know what we’re dealing with here first. I can’t have you spreading this all over the base,” she apologized, looking into those wide blue eyes.
He still made no move to comply with her request, so she untied the gown at the back of his neck herself.
“Besides, I think the clothes were the worst of it. You’re a little… ripe, but believe me, I’ve smelled worse,” she said.
Daniel gave a little groan and slipped his arm out of the gown. Dr. Fraiser guided his arm over his head and he let it rest on his head. He felt his face heat. What a way to impress the new doctor. She’d remember him forever as the “Guy with lice” complete with memories of his smelly body. He couldn’t bear to watch as she went to work on his armpit with comb and forceps, dropping the offensive little beasts into yet another vial.
“Dr. Jackson, I want to warn you about where I have to go next. Give you time to prepare yourself,” she said, glancing at his face.
He closed his eyes and dropped his head to his chest in a gesture of abject misery.
“Don’t tell me, I can guess,” he mumbled.
While Daniel wasn’t profoundly modest, it certainly didn’t extend to a certain pretty doctor examining his pubic area with comb and forceps. Hell, he didn’t think he’d be comfortable with anyone doing that. Just how was he supposed to prepare himself for something like that?
“I’m sorry. I know this is… uncomfortable for you, but I promise, I’ll be just as quick as I can,” she said, finishing up and indicating that he could drop his arm.
He shoved his arm back into the gown and left it untied. They looked at each other for a long moment before Janet spoke.
“Come on, let’s get it over with. Lie back, think pleasant thoughts and it’ll be over before you know it,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arm.
Daniel sucked in a breath, swung his legs up on the bed and lay back. ‘Pleasant thoughts my ass’ he said to himself. At this point pleasant thoughts could only make things worse. He felt cool air on his genitals as the doctor (right now he would not think of her as a woman) flipped up the gown. Her hands were cool, professional and efficient as they moved over his groin. He crossed his hands over his stomach and bit his lip. Damn, what was she doing? Lifting his head, he looked down his body to see her dark head bent over his crotch. Daniel dropped his head back with a groan. God, that was the wrong visual at the moment.
“Something wrong, Dr. Jackson?” came her voice.
“No, no. It just sort of… tickles,” he said, doing his best to put it all out of his mind.
Janet tried to work quickly. Problem was, down here where it was nice and warm and dark, the little bastards moved fast. And yeah, it probably did tickle. She finally caught enough of the beasts to test on. She nudged his penis with the back of her hand to take a look at his scrotum. Satisfied, she straightened up and recovered him with the gown.
“Well, I have some good news at least,” she started, moving towards the head of the bed so she could lower her voice.
“They haven’t migrated to your scrotum yet. Probably because it’s slightly cooler there,” she said.
Daniel sat up, “That’s…something, I guess.”
“Oh, it’s more than something, Dr. Jackson. Believe me,” she decided to give him the rest of the news now, rather than springing it on him later.
“Okay, here’s what we do. I’m going to use these,” she indicated the lice she’d collected from his body, “to test the different insecticidal shampoos we have available to us. Hopefully at least one of them will kill them. You can use the infirmary shower to use it precisely as directed.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed, delighted at the prospect of a shower in the near future.
“I’m also going to give you some conditioner, which you’ll apply to your hair, but won’t rinse out. We have to use a special comb to remove all the nits in your hair. Nits are lice eggs. They hatch in about a week and we don’t want that. The conditioner will make it easier to comb through your hair and maybe even loosen the nits that are sort of glued to the hair shafts.”
Dr. Jackson nodded unhappily, but seemed resigned and Janet went in search of the insecticidal shampoo.
Daniel put his glasses back on and covered his bare legs with the blanket at the foot of the bed, drawing it up to his waist. Just in time, it turned out, since only a few minutes later, the rest of SG-1 trooped into the infirmary looking for him. It wasn’t long before Jack poked his head inside the privacy curtain.
“What’s up? How come doc hasn’t sprung you yet?” Jack asked then noticed his unwashed state. “You haven’t showered yet? Geez!”
“Uh, there’s a… a complication,” Daniel said as Teal’c’s head appeared next to Jack.
“Are you injured Daniel Jackson?” the big man asked, clearly still feeling guilty for losing the archeologist on the ‘dark side’ of the planet.
“No, Teal’c, I’m… fine. Basically. It’s just…” Daniel broke off as Jack came to stand right next to the bed.
“What is it Daniel?” Jack leaned up against the bed.
“Well, as Dr. Fraiser put it, I brought back some ‘friends’ with me,” he finally managed.
“Friends? What kind of ‘friends’?” Jack looked concerned.
“She thinks they’re lice. Alien lice,” Daniel said quietly.
Jack let that sink in for a minute then jumped away, “Whoa, you got crabs? Alien crabs?”
“Geez, Jack, I don’t think they heard you up on level 22. Could you say it any louder?”
Teal’c looked closely at Daniel, “I see no crustaceans. To what are you referring?”
“In those little tubes, Teal’c. Take a look,” Daniel answered him, indicating the labeled vials on the tray.
Teal’c went over and examined the contents of the vials.
“These are unclean creatures,” he said, positively radiating a level of disgust he normally reserved only for goa’uld.
“Daniel Jackson, you must undergo the cleansing ceremony immediately,” Teal’c ordered, looming over the bed.
Daniel looked up at him, “Dr. Fraiser is, uh, getting the stuff now, Teal’c. It’ll be okay.”
“What is this ‘cleansing ceremony’ anyway?” Jack’s curiosity got the best of him.
“The entire body is shaved and a layer of skin removed by rubbing with a combination of sand and salt,” Teal’c answered, “It is very effective.”
“Oh yeah, well, that would do it,” Daniel said, pulling the blanket up to his chest with one hand while scratching at his scalp with the other.
He resolved not to complain about anything the doctor put him through in the next few hours. Anything would be better than the Jaffa method of pest control.
Dr. Frasier poked her head into Daniel’s curtained off cubicle and seeing that her patient was not only decently covered but entertaining visitors, she pushed the curtain aside. Sam stepped forward from wherever she’d been hiding.
“Daniel’s got crabs,” Jack told Sam.
Daniel merely shot a disgusted look at the team leader.
“Yeah, I… uh, heard,” Sam replied, trying to give Daniel an encouraging smile while not venturing too close.
“Can I do anything to help, Dr. Fraiser?” she offered, turning to the doctor.
The doctor waved her over and together they set up a number of dishes containing the various remedies and proceeded to drop the offending beasts into the solutions.
Daniel watched from his place on the bed, while Jack and Teal’c stood back and observed. Teal’c seemed particularly fascinated with the tests.
“So, what’s it doing?” Daniel finally asked, hoping that someone would update him.
“The backstroke, I think,” Sam said with no small amount of disgust.
... and that where it ends. We can assume Daniel did manage to lose his freeloaders, but not before losing more of his dignity.
SG-1 emerged from the event horizon none to soon, in Daniel’s opinion. After his brief tenure as one of the ‘Touched’ and his subsequent miraculous cure in front of the leaders of the Land of Light, he wanted nothing more than a long, hot shower. Quite frankly, he stank. His teammates, good friends that they were, didn’t so much comment as they gave him wide berth. Even Teal’c didn’t want to be downwind of him just now. To make matters worse, he itched all over. His head, his armpits, even his crotch, though he took pains not to scratch there when anyone was looking. Assuming it was his allergies, he reminded himself to ask that new doctor, Dr. Fraiser, for something to stop the itching.
As fascinating as studying the pre-human condition of the Touched might be from an anthropological standpoint, he certainly hadn’t planned to become one of them. Not to mention that he really couldn’t remember much of anything after the transformation began. Before that, there had just been a lot of fighting over the girl and kicking the crap out of him. He’d been happy to note however, that while they had been fighting over her, no one had been inclined to initiate sex with her as long as she was unconscious.
Dr. Janet Fraiser stood at the base of the ramp and cast a critical eye over the members of SG-1. She was pleased to see Dr. Jackson with them and moving under his own steam, even if he did look a bit worse for wear. His clothes were filthy and shredded, a few livid bruises and contusions showing through the gaps. Dr. Jackson scratched at the dirty, matted hair at the back of his neck. ‘I’ll bet he itches,’ she thought, ‘hell, he makes me itch just to look at him.’ As much as she preferred a clean patient, though, she really needed to check him out before she released him to shower. Janet bit her lip. ‘Perhaps I’d better rephrase that. I need to make a medical assessment first.’
Dr. Jackson’s pungent aroma preceded him to the base of the ramp. Dr. Fraiser stifled the urge to cover her nose.
“Welcome back Dr. Jackson. If you’ll accompany me to the infirmary…” she began.
“Do you think I could take a quick shower first? I’m, uh, a bit…” he trailed off, scratching idly under one arm.
Janet smiled to herself. ‘Let him think I’m being magnanimous.’
“How about a compromise? Let’s get you out of those clothes and I’ll do a quick assessment, then you can shower and come back for treatment. How does that sound?” she offered.
Daniel scratched at his other armpit and tried not to think about the other places that itched. Getting out of these clothes should at least cut down on the stench.
“Okay… I guess,” he answered.
He really didn’t want to face Dr. Fraiser smelling like a goat. Or worse. But he supposed it made sense. He allowed himself to be led to a bed where a gown had already been laid out for him along with a red plastic biohazard bag. Oh yeah, these clothes definitely qualified as a biohazard. The nurse pulled the privacy curtain around the bed and Daniel wasted no time in getting out of his clothes and stuffing them in the bag. Giving his groin a long, satisfying scratch, he twisted the bag shut. A puff of air escaped and hit him in the face, making his eyes water in spite of the glasses. God, what a stink! He threw the bag on the floor and kicked it as far away as he could. Sticking his arms into the hospital gown, he tied up the back and sat on the edge of the bed, scratching behind his left ear.
“Ready Dr. Jackson?” Janet called from the other side of the curtain.
“As I’ll ever be,” came the subdued reply.
She really couldn’t blame him and resolved to make this just as quick as possible. They’d both be more comfortable with an examination once he was clean.
“I know you’re anxious for that shower, so I’m just going to take some blood, check your vitals and take a look at your injuries, okay?” she gave him an encouraging smile.
He nodded and held out his arm for her to stick. So far, Dr. Jackson was proving to be one of her more agreeable patients. Even after all the blood tests she’d subjected him to before he went back to the planet, he didn’t protest her sticking him yet again. She lifted her eyes from the tube filling with his blood to find him looking at her. He scratched under his arm with his free hand.
“Are you itchy? I’ve noticed you’re scratching a lot,” she asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s my allergies or bug bites,” he answered.
“Where?”
“Everywhere… all over. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so dirty,” he said.
Janet was starting to have a sneaking suspicion and finished up with his arm.
“I’ll be right back. Stay right there,” she ordered, her face serious.
Daniel watched her leave with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tried to reassure himself that it couldn’t be all that bad, could it? Yeah, he was a bit banged up, but nothing all that serious could be wrong with him.
Dr. Fraiser returned a few minutes later with some vials, forceps and a comb. Positioning herself on one side, she began combing through the dirty hair around his ear. He was so shocked at this bizarre behavior it took a few moments before he knew what to say.
“Uh, can I ask what you’re doing?” he finally asked as gently as he could. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had combed his hair for him.
In the meantime, Janet had found exactly what she had feared.
“Dr. Jackson, you seem to have brought some friends home with you,” she said, depositing something into one of the vials and handing it to him.
“Excuse me?” he said, holding the vial up and squinting at the single, tiny occupant.
“Lice, or a close cousin, I think,” she said, dropping another speck into the vial. “You probably picked them up from the Touched while you were lost on the planet.”
“Oh crap. Lucky me,” he sighed. “So how do I get rid of them?”
Janet decided to tease him just a little bit. After all, external parasites really weren’t exactly life threatening. She continued to collect lice from his scalp until she had a number of them in the vial, then capped it.
“Well, my grandmother would have shaved your head,” she answered, watching his face.
She didn’t have to wait long for his response.
“Shave my head?” his eyes slid to meet hers.
“Along with any other… affected areas,” she said with a straight face.
Daniel’s eyebrows crawled towards his hairline. The implication hadn’t been lost on him. Speaking of eyebrows… She took off his glasses, handed them to him and began a new search.
“Dr. Fraiser, please tell me medical science has progressed since your grandmother’s day,” he said, his eyes rolling up trying to watch what she was doing.
Janet struck pay dirt, plucking another bug from an eyebrow and dropping it into a new vial.
“We have. But since these little guys aren’t exactly the domestic variety, we need to determine which treatment will work best,” she said, continuing to collect creatures from his eyebrows.
“Okay, how do we do that?” Daniel was practically cross-eyed from trying to watch her hands.
“Well, I’m going to collect lice from each affected area. The earth variety is very specific. Head lice are one type, body lice another. Either these alien lice are less choosy or you’re infected with several different varieties,” she capped the vial of eyebrow lice and set it aside.
“Great. Then what?” Daniel was clearly not happy.
“I need you to slip this arm out of the gown, Dr. Jackson,” she tapped the arm in question.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let me take a shower first, before…” he looked positively ill at the prospect of her putting her face anywhere near his armpit.
“Sorry, but no. We need to know what we’re dealing with here first. I can’t have you spreading this all over the base,” she apologized, looking into those wide blue eyes.
He still made no move to comply with her request, so she untied the gown at the back of his neck herself.
“Besides, I think the clothes were the worst of it. You’re a little… ripe, but believe me, I’ve smelled worse,” she said.
Daniel gave a little groan and slipped his arm out of the gown. Dr. Fraiser guided his arm over his head and he let it rest on his head. He felt his face heat. What a way to impress the new doctor. She’d remember him forever as the “Guy with lice” complete with memories of his smelly body. He couldn’t bear to watch as she went to work on his armpit with comb and forceps, dropping the offensive little beasts into yet another vial.
“Dr. Jackson, I want to warn you about where I have to go next. Give you time to prepare yourself,” she said, glancing at his face.
He closed his eyes and dropped his head to his chest in a gesture of abject misery.
“Don’t tell me, I can guess,” he mumbled.
While Daniel wasn’t profoundly modest, it certainly didn’t extend to a certain pretty doctor examining his pubic area with comb and forceps. Hell, he didn’t think he’d be comfortable with anyone doing that. Just how was he supposed to prepare himself for something like that?
“I’m sorry. I know this is… uncomfortable for you, but I promise, I’ll be just as quick as I can,” she said, finishing up and indicating that he could drop his arm.
He shoved his arm back into the gown and left it untied. They looked at each other for a long moment before Janet spoke.
“Come on, let’s get it over with. Lie back, think pleasant thoughts and it’ll be over before you know it,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arm.
Daniel sucked in a breath, swung his legs up on the bed and lay back. ‘Pleasant thoughts my ass’ he said to himself. At this point pleasant thoughts could only make things worse. He felt cool air on his genitals as the doctor (right now he would not think of her as a woman) flipped up the gown. Her hands were cool, professional and efficient as they moved over his groin. He crossed his hands over his stomach and bit his lip. Damn, what was she doing? Lifting his head, he looked down his body to see her dark head bent over his crotch. Daniel dropped his head back with a groan. God, that was the wrong visual at the moment.
“Something wrong, Dr. Jackson?” came her voice.
“No, no. It just sort of… tickles,” he said, doing his best to put it all out of his mind.
Janet tried to work quickly. Problem was, down here where it was nice and warm and dark, the little bastards moved fast. And yeah, it probably did tickle. She finally caught enough of the beasts to test on. She nudged his penis with the back of her hand to take a look at his scrotum. Satisfied, she straightened up and recovered him with the gown.
“Well, I have some good news at least,” she started, moving towards the head of the bed so she could lower her voice.
“They haven’t migrated to your scrotum yet. Probably because it’s slightly cooler there,” she said.
Daniel sat up, “That’s…something, I guess.”
“Oh, it’s more than something, Dr. Jackson. Believe me,” she decided to give him the rest of the news now, rather than springing it on him later.
“Okay, here’s what we do. I’m going to use these,” she indicated the lice she’d collected from his body, “to test the different insecticidal shampoos we have available to us. Hopefully at least one of them will kill them. You can use the infirmary shower to use it precisely as directed.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed, delighted at the prospect of a shower in the near future.
“I’m also going to give you some conditioner, which you’ll apply to your hair, but won’t rinse out. We have to use a special comb to remove all the nits in your hair. Nits are lice eggs. They hatch in about a week and we don’t want that. The conditioner will make it easier to comb through your hair and maybe even loosen the nits that are sort of glued to the hair shafts.”
Dr. Jackson nodded unhappily, but seemed resigned and Janet went in search of the insecticidal shampoo.
Daniel put his glasses back on and covered his bare legs with the blanket at the foot of the bed, drawing it up to his waist. Just in time, it turned out, since only a few minutes later, the rest of SG-1 trooped into the infirmary looking for him. It wasn’t long before Jack poked his head inside the privacy curtain.
“What’s up? How come doc hasn’t sprung you yet?” Jack asked then noticed his unwashed state. “You haven’t showered yet? Geez!”
“Uh, there’s a… a complication,” Daniel said as Teal’c’s head appeared next to Jack.
“Are you injured Daniel Jackson?” the big man asked, clearly still feeling guilty for losing the archeologist on the ‘dark side’ of the planet.
“No, Teal’c, I’m… fine. Basically. It’s just…” Daniel broke off as Jack came to stand right next to the bed.
“What is it Daniel?” Jack leaned up against the bed.
“Well, as Dr. Fraiser put it, I brought back some ‘friends’ with me,” he finally managed.
“Friends? What kind of ‘friends’?” Jack looked concerned.
“She thinks they’re lice. Alien lice,” Daniel said quietly.
Jack let that sink in for a minute then jumped away, “Whoa, you got crabs? Alien crabs?”
“Geez, Jack, I don’t think they heard you up on level 22. Could you say it any louder?”
Teal’c looked closely at Daniel, “I see no crustaceans. To what are you referring?”
“In those little tubes, Teal’c. Take a look,” Daniel answered him, indicating the labeled vials on the tray.
Teal’c went over and examined the contents of the vials.
“These are unclean creatures,” he said, positively radiating a level of disgust he normally reserved only for goa’uld.
“Daniel Jackson, you must undergo the cleansing ceremony immediately,” Teal’c ordered, looming over the bed.
Daniel looked up at him, “Dr. Fraiser is, uh, getting the stuff now, Teal’c. It’ll be okay.”
“What is this ‘cleansing ceremony’ anyway?” Jack’s curiosity got the best of him.
“The entire body is shaved and a layer of skin removed by rubbing with a combination of sand and salt,” Teal’c answered, “It is very effective.”
“Oh yeah, well, that would do it,” Daniel said, pulling the blanket up to his chest with one hand while scratching at his scalp with the other.
He resolved not to complain about anything the doctor put him through in the next few hours. Anything would be better than the Jaffa method of pest control.
Dr. Frasier poked her head into Daniel’s curtained off cubicle and seeing that her patient was not only decently covered but entertaining visitors, she pushed the curtain aside. Sam stepped forward from wherever she’d been hiding.
“Daniel’s got crabs,” Jack told Sam.
Daniel merely shot a disgusted look at the team leader.
“Yeah, I… uh, heard,” Sam replied, trying to give Daniel an encouraging smile while not venturing too close.
“Can I do anything to help, Dr. Fraiser?” she offered, turning to the doctor.
The doctor waved her over and together they set up a number of dishes containing the various remedies and proceeded to drop the offending beasts into the solutions.
Daniel watched from his place on the bed, while Jack and Teal’c stood back and observed. Teal’c seemed particularly fascinated with the tests.
“So, what’s it doing?” Daniel finally asked, hoping that someone would update him.
“The backstroke, I think,” Sam said with no small amount of disgust.
... and that where it ends. We can assume Daniel did manage to lose his freeloaders, but not before losing more of his dignity.