posted to housefic, gate_house, and sick_wilson

Title: Five Times James Wilson Was Sick Freshman Year (And a Couple of Times He Wasn’t), Part 2 of 6
Author: Dee Laundry
Pairing: Wilson/OFC (this part), Wilson/Other Male Character (later parts)
Rating: R
Words: 954
Notes: Includes crossover character from Stargate Atlantis in later parts. Set in late 1980s (as was my US college experience). Many, many thanks to mer_duff and topaz_eyes for providing Canadian expertise, and daisylily for beta. Warning for teen drinking, if that kind of thing disturbs you. Written as a Secret Santa present for samaurai_pyoko.

Part One

ii. Phthiriasis pubis

The hot water beat across the crown of James’ head, across his shoulders and down his neck and back. He sighed explosively, feeling all tension melt away.

Two p.m. on Tuesdays was the best time for a shower. Almost everyone on his floor was in class, and the rest were generally napping or watching Tom and Jerry reruns, so the bathroom was blissfully empty. The hot water heaters had recovered from the morning rush and were running at full capacity. This time of year, even the light was awesome – sunlight would hit the high frosted windows at the perfect angle to fill the room; no horrible fluorescents needed.

James grabbed for the shampoo with his right hand and scratched himself lazily with his left. The past few days, since around the time he’d started swimming for exercise, he’d been feeling a little itchy. Probably a reaction to the chlorine in the campus pool; they no doubt over-chlorinated it to wipe out whatever germs the hundreds of students who used it might be carrying.

He was bringing his left hand up to squirt shampoo into it when he realized there was a strange tickling sensation on one fingertip. He brought his fingers close to his eyes, expecting to see a pink patch of skin or nothing at all.

“Holy crap!” he shouted and dropped the shampoo.

A bug! There was a wiggling, live bug like a flea or tick on his finger. Maybe not, maybe he was wrong… He looked closer. Crap! Not wrong! Bug!

He whipped his hand away, trying to fling the thing off, but didn’t even look to see if it worked, just immediately turned the hot water up as far as it would go.

Hot! Shit! Ow! For a second, he turned it back down, and then he thought bug!, and turned it back to scalding again.

He grabbed the shampoo from the floor – hot water on his butt, ow – and poured out as much as would fit into his hand. Slathering it around as quickly as he could, he scrubbed every inch of his pubic area, from belly button way back to his hole, scraping with his fingernails, and feeling that creepy bug wiggling every second.

Bugs! On his – Fuck! His penis was practically in flames with how hot the water was, but it was the only thing he could think to do. Hot water and soap – drown, burn, sanitize the creepy crawlies, and then – then he didn’t know. Bugs!

When he couldn’t stand it any more – when he thought there might be permanent damage to his skin if he stayed in any longer – he shut the water off and fled, towel barely wrapped around him, all his supplies still in the stall.

He’d never made it back to his room quicker.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, towel tucked tighter around him, water dripping from his hair and back, he tried to think. It was probably OK, probably not deadly, just an insect, just a little bitty insect that had wandered in from somewhere, and probably that was the only one, except he could feel them now, feel them crawling through his pubic hair, tickling and itching, not one, not a couple, but hundreds. Crawling and biting and poisoning him, and oh GOD, he was on his feet and in his clothes and halfway across campus before he even knew it.

He bounced while signing in at Student Health Services, and refused to sit. He was diseased, crawling with bugs, and the only decent thing to do was not let the bugs crawl on anyone else.

In the exam room, he took off his clothes when the nurse asked him to but he wouldn’t take off his underwear because then she’d see, and she was pretty and unspoiled and oh God, his mother was going to disown him.

The second nurse who came in was in her fifties, and nothing like his mother, and extraordinarily businesslike and brisk. “Shorts off; let’s go,” she ordered, and he reluctantly complied. There were gloved hands on his private parts, and he closed his eyes because this was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

“Pubic lice,” the nurse said, and he felt heat rise in his face. “Acquired through genital to genital contact,” she continued, and he wanted to fall through the floor. He was never going to have sex again, ever in his entire life.

She applied a cream to his pubic hair, drew some blood to test for other sexually transmitted diseases, and then washed the cream off. James said nothing, did nothing, simply tried to concentrate on not dying from embarrassment.

The canned lecture about the dangers of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia was almost an anti-climax. He probably should have expected the subsequent demand to name all his sexual partners over the past thirty days, but it threw him: a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. He refused to reveal the one name on his list, thinking he was protecting her reputation, until the nurse explained how it was in the girl’s best interest to know and be treated. The fact that Health Services would make the call so he wouldn’t have to was, he admitted to himself, a small influence on his decision. He’d have to live with the guilt of not confessing that he’d laid this curse on her, but his manly pride only went so far.

It wasn’t until he was almost all the way back to his dorm, follow-up appointment reminder clutched shamefully in his hand, agonizing over spreading the scourge of VD, that he realized the true implication of only having one person on his list.

Sheila Esterbrook had given him crabs.

Part Three