Slashthedrabble Challenge 450/128 - Bending the rules

[m_findlow]

Title: Bending the rules
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 450 - Past Challenges Revisited & Challenge 128 - Rules at slashthedrabble
Summary: Rules have their place

Jack was beginning to wonder if Ianto truly had a rule for everything. It seemed there was nothing he could do that didn't ultimately end up bumping up against one of the many immutable laws that Ianto had set down for him. Everything from rules about how the dishwasher was to be stacked, and when it should be turned on and emptied; rules for when Jack's clothes should be deposited into the laundry hamper and when they should simply go in the incinerator; rules for accessing items from the archives, which forms needed to be filled out, and the correct protocol for returning said borrowed items. Jack was starting to think that perhaps he wasn't the leader of Torchwood after all, and that somewhere along the way, some gods had appointed Ianto as chief overlord of all things hub related.

Having said that, whether it was unintentional or by design, Jack had  nasty habit of breaking Ianto's rules. He didn't believe in rinsing dishes before they went in the dishwasher. Wasn't that the whole point of a dishwasher, so you didn't have to wash them? His idea of what clothing was salvageable after any messy incident was more lax than Ianto's, though they both agreed that anything and everything should be done to save Jack's coat. That didn't get incinerated, not ever. And Jack was a serial offender of just taking stuff from the archives when he felt like it, world possibly ending and all, and then simply leaving it on Ianto's desk for him to put away when he was done with it. After all, Ianto would be better at making sure it went back in just the right spot, anyway.

Ianto had a healthy respect for rules, and Jack didn't always disagree with him on that front, having set down many of his own over the years: don't mess with the rift, don't take alien stuff home, don't go out on your own. They were rules to abide, to live by, and most importantly to keep each other safe.

There was one place however, that Jack found blissfully rule free. What happened after hours wasn't always strictly by the books, but as soon as the day was done, and the two of them stepped down into the narrow bunker beneath Jack's office, every possible rule flew out the window. Ianto might have been a stickler for regulations, but as soon as Jack's hands and lips found his, the rules could take a hike. There was nothing better than letting Jack take over, breaking each and every rule in the book, tearing buttons tear off, propriety disintegrating and self control completely forgotten. Convention and restraint had no place between the sheets, and Ianto was happy to let Jack break every rule he'd ever made only to hear Jack make those noises again. He'd had to break a few rules himself to get to where he was right now, and when he looked back on it, he didn't regret breaking them one bit.