Title: Tragedy
Fandom: Torchwood
Character: Owen, others mentioned
Rating: R
Spoilers: up through "Dead Man Walking"
Warnings: Owen dialogue
Prompt: small injuries

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." - Mel Brooks

It's the stupidest fucking thing.

He was writing, and who the fuck writes anything down anymore? Nobody writes on paper. That's why they have fucking computers everywhere. But no, Owen had to get a clipboard and a fucking pen because he was feeling nostalgic or some fucking thing, and now he's got a fucking paper cut.

It's not as debilitating an injury as when he sliced his hand open or broke his own bone. He doesn't have to worry about infection, and as long as he keeps it closed, he shouldn't have to think about parasites. (God, Jack brought up the parasite thing. Apparently his corpse gets nibbled on from time to time when he's dead long enough, why does Owen have to think about this shit now? Fuck.)

It's just a paper cut, a little flap of skin that will be separated from the rest of his fucking integument for the rest of fucking eternity. Superglue, sticky tape, staples, he can push the edges together, but they will never rejoin in a pale pink scar like the one he used to say was from a knife fight when he wanted to impress some bird. The words "Doctor, heal thyself" become yet another monumental fucking joke. He and Jack should take their act on the road: the man who can never die, and the man who can never live. They'll sell tickets, matinees on Sundays for the grandmas.

He looks at the offending paper, still on his clipboard, where he'd run his hand up the side all unawares. He wants to throw the fucking thing across the med bay, wants to scream until someone comes down here to see what's wrong. But Tosh will just get that crying look on her face, and Gwen will look all big-eyed and sorrowful, and Ianto will try not to show his pity, and God knows what Jack will do other than crack more fucking jokes and try to pretend this isn't his fault. And at the end, Owen will still have to finish this damn report.

The clipboard is mocking him.

He picks it up anyway, paper cut and all, and he goes back to work.


Title: Dear Bryce
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters: Tony Tyler/OMC (Jack/Ianto/Lisa mentioned)
Rating: G
Spoilers: none, part of the Rabbit Hole AU
Warnings: kidfic, deeply fluffy
Prompt: a year ago

Dear Bryce,

You're going to turn one year old in about two hours. Your Tad's asleep already, but you should forgive him for not staying up to watch you turn over the year. He's been planning your party for a couple of days now, and he's tired. You're stuck with me tonight.

It's weird, looking back. I can't count the number of nights I came in, when you were still a baby, and your Tad was stretched out on the bed beside you, wide awake and just watching you breathe as you slept. He'd just lay there, sometimes for hours, wearing nothing but his pants, his eyes so big and full of love for you. Between you and me, because I'm not showing this letter to you for a long, long time, and we'll both be past that? I think I was a little jealous. He loves me, but he's never looked at me quite like I was the centre of his world the way he always looks at you.

You're going to grow up hearing so many stories. The story of how your Aunty Isabelle just looked at us one day and said, "You know, you'd make great dads," and she said she wanted to help make that happen. I remember going to the clinic with her, and I remember when she called to tell us she was pregnant, and we were both so nervous we almost couldn't talk. Your Tad and I were in a meeting when she had her twenty week ultrasound - your Nan was with her, and she called. They said you were going to be a girl. We had names picked out and everything. A year ago tonight, we sat in the waiting room while your Nan was back with your Aunty Isabelle. Your Uncle Eddie brought her in, and paced as nervously as a new dad himself. Your Granddad was there in the waiting room with us (we've got pictures, he loved you very much), and your Grandpa Jack too. (Forgive him. Yes, he's always been like that. Yes, we love him anyway.) Your Aunty Callie came in, but she had to wait outside with us. And then the doctor came out and said your Aunty was fine, but there was some confusion. She'd said there was going to be an adoption, and they normally don't let families of the mum go back with the baby when there is, not at that hospital. And your Tad stood up, and his voice got deep in that way I know you're going to hear plenty when you're growing up and getting into mischief, and he told the doctor that he intended to see his daughter RIGHT NOW. And that's how I knew he loved you so much he could burst already, and he was ready to shoot anyone who got between you. Even if he'd never met you, and even though he didn't even know you were actually our son instead of our daughter.

I don't know where we'll all be when I show this to you. You'll probably be a teenager, and hate our guts. I was a menace to my parents back then. I wish you could meet them, but you should know that they'd both love you, too. Know that we both love you, that I love you completely, and that your Tad does too, and that we always have, and that no matter what, we always will.

Happy birthday.

Love,
Dad


Title: Home Is the Sailor
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Spoilers: none, part of the Intersections 'verse
Warnings: sap alert
Prompt: a long way from home

There were too many places in his past to think of one in particular as home, but Ianto found he missed them each in turn as he left. Like it was yesterday, he remembered the estate where he'd grown up, the little room that smelled of damp and the too-thin walls through which he could hear his parents fighting on one side, his sister's radio up too loud on another.

Three days after his dad died, a day after the funeral, he took every pound he'd scraped together from part time jobs and wherever else he could and he bought a train ticket to London. His first flat had been worse than his room back home, tiny and foul no matter how much bleach he used. The flat he'd shared too briefly with Lisa had pillowed him with her, perfumes and furnishings and colours too soft to meet his tastes, but loved because they were hers. His flat in Cardiff when he returned, tail between legs, was barely lived-in, forsaken first for a chair in a cold basement storage room, and later a warm camp bed. Rhiannon's house had never been home, as much as she'd said he was welcome there.

When he'd come to the future, he'd had only a place on the floor with a Jack who didn't know him, and home had never felt so far away. Then they'd shared a large red house on a planet with no-one but each other and the dogs and the sound of the wind in the trees for company. And now …

Every day on the Celes Tirra was different. He slept in a bunk not quite as small as the camp bed, and he rose in the darkness of space and slept every night between worlds. They docked, for an hour or a few days (or however time was marked in each system, by each species) and sometimes they spent a whole week on some world or another. Jack loved the ship, Ianto viewed it as a cherished necessity, but always they went back to her, and Jack would place his hand upon her side, and Jack at least was home.

Then Jack would turn to him, and give Ianto that smile, and that was home enough.


Title: Drabble: Curiosity
Fandom: Torchwood
Character: Ianto
Rating: PG
Spoilers: up through "Adam"
Warnings: see episode
Prompt: you're being followed

Too many things are out of place.

There's the missing two days, obviously, and the absent Retcon, and the warnings about prying. Your diary isn't where it belongs, and Jack will never stop teasing you about what he reads. But there's more. Your personal items aren't where they belong, lined up neatly to differentiate them from Owen's mess. You're uneasy, all the time, like you're being followed.

Rarely, out of the corner of your eye, you catch a flash of ginger hair. Worse, much worse, sometimes you think your can hear voices, just out of earshot. They are always screaming.


Title: It's Magic
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Jack
Rating: PG
Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Prompt: predictability

Jack liked to say that the weirder the alien tech, the more likely it was to be something familiar in a new package. Jack liked to say a lot of things, though, and Tosh had learned how to filter out the bullshit a long time ago. He was the main source of their information on what new artefacts were, and if that many things falling through the Rift were actually sex toys, she'd eat his coat.

This … was something else. It fit into her hand, uncomfortably large. She made notes with her other hand, how the size indicated species, perhaps they were of a scale slightly larger than human, perhaps their hands were large claws like the Slitheen.

"Now that," Jack said from right behind her, "is an interesting thing, and highly prized in some parts of the galaxy."

"Sex toy?" she asked, exasperated.

"Much better." And for him to say that was enough to pique her curiosity. He took the device from her. "Am I going to pull successfully tonight?" He gave it a squeeze.

The device hummed, and then Tosh felt the brush in her mind, as sure as day, that yes, Jack would certainly go home with someone tonight. His grin spread, and she knew he was just as pleased at the news.

"It knows the future?" The applications were endless, and intriguing.

"Sadly, no." He gave it back to her. "It assesses probabilities, looks at possible upcoming events. The closer the event, the better the accuracy, but more than a few days out, and you might as well be guessing. Fun party game, though." And with a smile, he left, and she noted that he didn't stay long afterwards.

When he was gone, and the Hub was silent, Tosh swallowed her disbelief and picked it up, thinking about the handsome young doctor Jack had hired a month ago. "Will he ask me out?"

Another hum, and then the strangest thought filled her: "Reply hazy. Try again later."