Title: Memories Made Flesh
Rating: PG-13
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Ianto, Jack, Tosh, Gwen, Owen; Jack/Ianto
Summary: Ianto's scars are records of their lives in Torchwood.
Disclaimer: If I owned Torchwood, the boys would have had more screentime together, more sex, and Ianto would still be alive.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
~The Time Around Scars, Michael Ondaatje
There is a scar on Ianto's knee, a small, received from a nasty fall on the hard tarmac of London, running from a dog with horns and a pair of legs too many. It's his first encounter with Torchwood. He finds himself cornered in an alley, when three people with guns turn up and shoot the dog dead. Which Ianto is now pretty sure isn't really a dog.
For special ops people they look rather normal, except for their guns and the light armored vests they have over their clothing. One of them, a girl with short red hair, buys him a cup of tea and gives him a painkiller, though he doesn't really need one. He wakes up the next morning in his bed, starting from a dream in which he is ripped to pieces by an alien dog. The name 'Torchwood', engraved on the guns and headsets of his rescuers, is stuck in his head. He makes enquiries for about a month, then they find him. They threaten to kill him before they offer him a job. It's like nothing he's ever dreamed of. He accepts.
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There is a scar on his left thigh, the finest of lines, caused by a jagged edge of metal tearing across his skin as he stumbled down the burning corridors of Torchwood One. They call it the Battle of Canary Wharf and well, it is, between the Daleks and the Cybermen. But in term's of human loss it's a massacre. It's stupid really, because they weren't even the focus of the battle. Just idiotic bystanders caught in the middle.
He finds Lisa in one of those plastic shrouded conversion units, screaming in pain, with fires licking at the edges of the room. The smell of melting plastic, and blood, and burning flesh makes him sick, but he chokes back the bile rising in his throat. The frame of the conversion unit is hot and the edges ragged for where parts of it's been destroyed, but adrenalin blocks out the pain as he drags her slowly down the hallway.
His hands look pale and soft on the outside, but his palms still bear the lines and blotches of those scars, calluses that Jack loves to feel against his cock.
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Three months and Torchwood Three has finally left it's physical brand on him. It's about time, he thinks as inspects his throat in the bathroom mirror, two days after encountering the cannibals in the Brecon Beacons. It's a thin line, already crusting over, a souvenir he doesn't want that Owen is sure he will keep.
But for all the nightmares and paranoia, feeling sick at the smell of meat, starting at loud noises, at least he has the team again. He's surprised at Owen's attention to his injuries, insisting on daily checkups to see how his ribs and bruises and doing, and Gwen who, despite her own injury, asks him just as often how he is. Tosh is abjectly grateful, and it is almost embarrassing, but he greatly appreciates her help with distributing the coffee, saving him the painful trips up and down the stairs.
And Jack, Jack seems to trust him again. Enough to invite him for a drink or two in his office after work, enough to invite Ianto back into his bed. The first time they have sex after the incident with Lisa, it's like they're both rediscovering each other. Something inside Ianto clicks. For the first time in months, pleasure doesn't feel like betrayal. Funny really, that shagging his boss should give him such a sense of normalcy.
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Three for Torchwood. The scar on his chest, three parallel claw marks from an enraged Weevil mark the period of Jack's absence from the team. It's his fifth time out in the field, on a call with Gwen. They've all had lucky escapes the past few months, but this time the bull Weevil is confused and enraged and too wild for the two of them to take on, and Ianto's simply too worn out, too slow. Gwen empties a clip into its head before it rips his throat out. They stop using the sprays after that. It's just too much effort. They become closer, during those three months, more efficient. The little bits of ruthlessness sneak in unnoticed.
For Jack, the scar is a reminder of the Year that Never Was. He doesn't regret running after the Doctor, despite what he had been forced to suffer at the hands of the Master, but he does wish he could at least have left his team a message before he'd gone. Especially Ianto. Jack knows the pain of abandonment all too well. He returns to the scars often when they are in bed, licks across the pink raised lines, sucks at the nipple that punctuates the middle one. Like he can suck the memory and pain of the injury out of Ianto's skin.
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These aren't visible scars. They've healed, but they're still there. New cells have grown over and knitted the ends together, but there is still the shadow of the break. Running from a slavering khatran, it's like his first encounter with Torchwood. Falling down the stairs and breaking his arm, deja vu. But this time he has Jack to slay the beast and save his ass, and there's no shitty coffee and Retcon after that. Instead, Jack later sucks him off in the medical bay, reassuring himself with Ianto hot, pulsing and alive in his mouth, while Ianto gasps on the cold table and tries to remember not to move his injured arm too much.
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Alien hunter on the loose. Ignorant public (read=prey). Never a good combination. Usually Jack's the one who plays hero, but he's too busy dying with Gwen in an alley, so it's Ianto who pushes the intended prey out of the way of the spear. He's fast enough to avoid being impales, not fast enough to get completely out of its way.
The jagged head brushes his shoulder, ripping through skin and flesh. Only a flesh wound, he thinks, but finds that he has to sit down. And that he couldn't care less about the alien stalking towards him, a knife as long as his thigh in its fist. The world just... floats, and he floats along. The last thing he sees is Tosh with the big gun.
It's a race to save both him and Gwen from brain damage caused by the poison in their systems. They'll both have scars though, Ianto on his shoulder and Gwen across her forearm, and Jack holds both their hands as Owen stitches them up. Later Rhys rants for a few minutes after he's been called to pick up his fiancee, and both Gwen and Ianto, still suffering from the lingering aftereffects of the poison, laugh their heads off at the look of surprise on his face when he spots Jack cuddling Ianto on the sofa.
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As Ianto sleeps, Jack runs his gaze over the marks and blemishes on his lover's body. Imperfections, but that's Torchwood. Jack has his own. He kisses the pucker of a gunshot wound near Ianto's hip. They are memories made flesh, and as Torchwood's Archivist, it feels fitting that Ianto carries them on his body. Just another record of their lives.
Fin