Torchwood Advent Challenge - 20th December

[m_findlow]

Title: Hide and Jinks
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Owen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,977 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Hijinks"
Summary: Owen wants an end to the frivolity, but he'll have to play hard to win it.

'Teaboy,' Owen yelled. By the time Ianto had arrived, he didn't have to ask Owen what was wrong, seeing it plainly for himself.

'Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry,' Ianto apologised as Owen stood by the microwave, holding the pair of underpants on the tip of a spoon. Funny how though he was saying the words, that he didn't actually sound overly apologetic.

'Jack! I found your pants!' Ianto yelled. Once upon a time he'd have gone red from head to toe, grabbed them hastily off Owen and slunk away to the darkest corners of the archives, praying that they never spoke of it again.

'Where were they?' he yelled back.

'In the microwave!' Ianto yelled, announcing it to all the world.

'Oh, that's right!'

Owen growled and flicked the spoon at Ianto, sending the offending item straight at his chest where he clutched it as Owen stormed off, his semi cold coffee forgotten.

 

'I'm sick of all your hijinks!' Owen yelled at Jack as he swept into the boardroom, late as always, hijacking the start of their scheduled briefing. 'I don't care if you are the boss. The rest of us shouldn't have to put up with it.'

Jack looked nonplussed by his medic's overreaction. 'It's just a bit of dirty laundry, Owen. Don't tell me your apartment doesn't have socks and jocks hanging off the end of the sofa.'

'It's my place,' Owen replied. 'I'm allowed to leave them where I like.'

'And this is my place,' Jack countered. 'And Ianto's - most of the time. Besides, it's not as if they were left there intentionally. They were just-'

'Forgotten,' Ianto interjected, before Jack could infer that he'd had other priorities at the time.

'Yeah, but the rest of us have to work here. You can't just treat it like your personal shag pad.'  

'What we do after hours,' Jack began.

'Is still in evidence the next morning,' Owen finished for him.

'Owen, is this really the place to discuss this?' Gwen said, feeling somewhat mortified. She wasn't about to confess what she and Rhys sometimes got up to when she was stuck here on long boring nights of rift duty. She'd somehow managed to extract the basic rules of naked hide and seek from Ianto, bit by bit. At first she thought she'd gotten away with it, but Jack had given her one of those knowing grins one morning after asking her if it had been a quiet night. Somehow she just knew that he knew, even after she'd wiped the CCTV. She'd never admit it to his face, but it was actually quite a lot of fun. But similarly, she was going to make double sure they didn't leave behind any other evidence of it

'I don't wanna go to the supplies closet for more gauze bandages and find you two shagging in there,' Owen complained.

'Don't be stupid, Owen,' Ianto replied. 'I don't keep any of your supplies in that closet.'

'And what about the time Teaboy here rang me and told me I needed to rush down to the cells because Janet had escaped, only she hadn't. Just another excuse to keep me away from your office.'

'My hair got caught in Ianto's zipper. You really didn't wanna see that. He did you a favour.'

'See, this is what I'm talking about,' Owen ranted. 'We're supposed to be professionals.'

'Oh and because you've never done anything you shouldn't have,' Jack retorted.

'That's different.'

'No, it's not.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Isn't.'

'Is.'

'Isn't.'

'Is.'

'Alright, shut up both of you,' Ianto said. 'I think we can all agree that we need to be more mindful of our fellow coworkers, given how much time we all spend here,' he answered diplomatically.  

'Pot meet kettle,' Owen grumbled.

'We'll agree to keep much stricter boundaries around working hours, and try to ensure that our private lives after hours stay just that; private.'

'Thank you.'  

'On one condition,' Jack added. He leaned forward over the table, fingers steepled. 'You beat us at naked hide and seek, and office hours playtime goes away for good.'

'No way,' Tosh said, going red at suggestion.

'Jack, I don't this that's a good id-'

'Done,' Owen said. 'You and Teaboy against me and Tosh.'

'I'm staying well out of this,' Gwen said before she and Rhys got roped into to as well.

'Tosh, you don't have to do this,' Ianto said to her, glaring daggers at Jack. 'In fact, I insist. And I recuse myself from this ridiculous bargain as well.'

'Sounds like loser talk,' Owen said.

'Do you even know how to play?' Ianto asked.

'Course we do. Sod all boring here at night.'

'Owen!' Tosh hissed, going bright red and sinking down in her chair as far as was possible.

'Don't be embarrassed, Tosh,' Jack said. 'Gwen and Rhys play all the time as well.'

'Bloody hell,' Owen swore. 'Should've known you two couldn't keep your hands to yourselves.'

'Is there any time when we're not erasing the overnight CCTV?' Ianto asked. Well, Jack didn't delete theirs, and nothing was ever truly deleted around here...

'It's not all the time!' Gwen cried, trying to spare her own blushes.

Jack grinned. He wasn't  a complete dunce with computers; it was just that Toshiko was much better. That and Gwen hadn't done the world's best job of deleting footage from all of the cameras. There was no way Rhys was coming to the hub overnight just to watch Gwen fill out paperwork and play solitaire. A shame he hadn't yet found any footage of Tosh and Owen having a go, though.

'Okay, Owen,' Jack said. 'You and me tonight after work. You win, you get to dictate when and where we can have some alone time. I win, we go back to status quo.'

'Deal.'

Jack leaned back in his chair. 'What makes you so sure you're in with a chance at winning, anyway?' he asked. 'After all, I am the master of naked hide and seek.' Ianto made a small scoffing sound at that.

Owen grinned. 'Because Teaboy is gonna be here to make sure you don't cheat.'

'I don't cheat, and even if I did, who says he's not going to help me cheat? There's just as much riding on this for Ianto.'

'I can't believe I'm getting roped in to being involved in this,' Ianto muttered. Tosh put a placating hand on his arm.

'Owen just wants an excuse to see me naked,' Jack said.

'Please,' Owen replied. 'As if you don't provide more than enough opportunity for everyone to see that. I'm willing to risk it jut to put an end to it. Teaboy's too much of a goody two shoes to let you cheat.'

'Fine, but I want Toshiko here making sure that you don't cheat either.'

'Bugger,' Tosh groaned, and this time it was Ianto who tried to placate her.

'Sounds like we've got ourselves a challenge,' Owen said, grinning. 'You've just enjoyed your last little bit of afternoon delight, Harkness.'

'Don't count your chickens, Owen,' Jack warned.

 

Gwen made sure to make herself scarce come six o'clock, sparing Tosh and Ianto only the barest of sympathetic looks as she skipped out the door. There was no way she was going to choose sides or bear witness to the ridiculous hijinks that her coworkers insisted on, just to settle the matter.

There was so much intensity in the expressions of the two men that it was all Tosh and Ianto could do to sigh and accept that this was really going ahead.

'Come on then,' Owen said pushing past them. 'Time to put an end to things.'

Ianto rolled his eyes as he watched them, standing there fidgeting like a pair of nervous athletes before a race.

'To reiterate the rules, and ensure a level playing field,' Ianto said, giving them both the eye in turn, 'you have one hundred and twenty seconds to divest your clothes and to hide them in as many different places as possible, before also hiding yourself. Once the hundred and twenty seconds is up, the seeker will have twenty minutes in which to find the hider and as many of their clothes as possible. Any clothes found before finding the hider are permanently removed from play, thus it is important to find clothes in order to win the game, but also to leave enough time to find the hider. If you fail to find the hider within the alloted time, the seeker loses a piece of their own clothing for the next round. There are no restrictions on the hider moving once the seeker has finished counting, and they are permitted to re-hide items during the twenty minutes. The first person to have all of their clothes confiscated, wins.'

Ianto paused for a moment and cleared his throat awkwardly. 'Obviously, the usual prize for winning is in this case not applicable.'

'Spoilsport,' he heard Jack mutter, not because he was disappointed, but simply because he knew that it would irk Ianto to think he wanted to take Owen as his prize.

'Tosh and I,' he paused and sighed again, 'will be monitoring each of you.' Suddenly he was grateful that Jack had roped Tosh in as well. He didn't fancy having to follow a naked Owen around the hub on CCTV. 'Are there any questions?'

The gritted teeth and determined looks answered the question for him. He flipped a coin, letting Owen call heads and losing out, making Jack the first person to hide. He also made a note of which areas of that hub were strictly out of bounds, which was particularly apropos after Jack had locked himself in Ianto's car boot in the car park under the Millennium Centre not two months ago. Some places were just too dangerous to hide.

Before Jack could get started, he found Ianto cutting him off, standing in his path. 'Hand it over, Jack.'

'What?'

'You know what. I know you use it to cheat.'

Jack growled, tugging off his wrist strap and rolled his eyes as Ianto slipped it neatly into his breast pocket. 'You can have it back after.'

'You know, some might think you're on Owen's side and that you don't want us to be able to have a little cuddle in the afternoon when it's quiet.'

'Imagine all the work we'll get done,' Ianto teased. He wasn't sure he wanted Owen to win either, but he deserved a fair chance either way. 'Besides, where's that cocky "I can't lose" attitude gone? You never think I can beat you . What makes you think Owen stands a chance?'  

'I never said I couldn't win. I'm merely questioning your loyalties.'

'I think we both know where I stand on the matter. It's just a shame I have watch you strip Owen, first.'

'Trust me,' Jack replied, when I win, you'll be the very next thing that gets stripped.'

'Promises, promises.'

 

As Owen began counting loudly, Ianto and Tosh settled themselves in Jack's office, sat either side of his desk as they watched the CCTV tracking Jack as he dashed off, topless before he'd even reached the doorway out of the main area of the hub. Ianto followed his movements as he stuffed his shirt in a side closet, slipped a shoe under the boardroom table wedged between two chairs, and another in a very bushy plant in the hothouse. Once the pants disappeared, Tosh stopped watching, keeping an eye in Owen on her PDA as he finished counting and began hunting for items.

It was a bad start as he failed to find any of Jack's clothes, nor the man in question within his alloted time.

'I want your sock,' Jack said, once they'd reconvened.

'Come again?' Owen said.

'I win, which means you lose a piece of clothing. I want your sock.'

'Oi, Teaboy! Since when does he get to decide?'

'All in the rules, Owen,' Ianto replied, liking Jack's cleverness. You always picked the smallest piece, because it was the easiest to hide.

'Bollocks to your rules,' Owen muttered, but surrendered the sock anyway.

His own attempt at hiding didn't go well either. Jack uncovered his jacket in Gwen's bottom drawer, and a shoe in a cupboard under the sink. Owen was similarly discovered, lying in one of his own autopsy trays.

'You're gonna have to do better than that,' Jack smirked, holding up the items for display.

After a false start, the next couple of rounds ended in stalemate, with only one or two pieces of clothing uncovered between the two of them, but both managing to stay hidden the entire twenty minutes.

'He's doing better than I expected,' Ianto said, watching Owen stalking around the hub. 'Do you really play this when  we're not here?'

Tosh blushed furiously. 'It was just a couple of times.'

'It's like I hardly know you,' Ianto joked.

'The first time Owen suggested it, I honestly thought he was joking.'

'It's fun though,' Ianto replied.

'More than I thought,' Tosh agreed.

Ianto grinned at the comment and sipped his coffee. 'I applaud your efforts to wipe the CCTV. I should have known you wouldn't leave any trace. Gwen always forgets about the camera in corridor twelve C. In her defence, Jack tells me Rhys gets lost half of the time and she ends up having to go look for him. After that I suppose you can be forgiven for overlooking it.'

'I nearly missed that one too,' Tosh confessed. 'It's so tucked away you never think it's there.'

Ianto laughed. 'Who'd have ever thought we'd be comparing notes on naked hide and seek?'

'Jack hasn't been watching it, has he?' Tosh asked, sounding worried. Having to get naked was a hazard of the job, but knowing someone was watching you in your private moments was something else altogether.

'I did ask him about that,' Ianto said, annoyed that Jack had kept this particular news to himself up until today. 'He assured me he uncovered Gwen and Rhys by accident when he was trying to prove that there was a small furry creaturee stalking the hub at night keeping him awake.'

'And was there?'

'Furry, yes. Small, not so much. His name is Gerald. He's very shy and lives in one of the lesser used corners of the archives.'

'How come I didn't know about this?'

'Like I said, he's very shy. I've only seen him twice since we uncovered his existence. He came up looking for food. It turns out he has a penchant for chocolate hobnobs, so now I leave a couple every so often down in the archives for him to find, so that he doesn't have to leave the safety of archives. He seems to quite like it down there.'

'And he's been down there for how long? He must be eating something.'

'Nobody knows. It could be two months or two years, or longer still. I haven't noticed anything going missing down there, so I assume it's just the vermin he's snacking on. He doesn't bother us and we don't bother him.'

'Torchwood is a strange place,' she said.

'Yeah, it is.'

Their conversation was ended as Owen was finally found by Jack, a loud yell of glee emanating from the older man.

'Ah, that was a mistake,' Ianto said. After a few rounds of not making much headway, both of them had grown bolder, trying to re-hide articles of clothing. Owen was in the process of tucking away his jeans in the armory, where Jack had been not five minutes earlier, only to be caught in the act. 'Jack will double back if he thinks you're watching him,' Ianto said. 'I've been busted that way more than once.'

'I'm learning that there's a lot more tactics to this than meets they eye,' Tosh said.

'Only when you play with someone as conniving as Jack,' he replied. 'Credit to Owen, though, the night could still go either way.'

'Owen will be insufferable if he wins,' Tosh said, knowing how much Owen adored being in the right. As much as she loved him, he could be an obnoxious twat sometimes.

'Owen will be insufferable if he doesn't win, too,' Ianto replied. He turned to face Tosh.  'We're not really that bad, are we?' he asked. 'I mean, I know sometimes I forget and just let Jack do whatever compels him at the time. After years of fighting it, I've learned it's just easier to go with the flow.'

'No. I once found one of your ties in my top drawer and didn't think much of it at the time. I kinda wondered how it got there, but it took ages for the penny to drop. This is just Owen being...'

'Owen,' they both finished.

'I really do try to make sure Jack's things aren't left all over the place, but some nights it's just so late that I fall straight asleep. Most times he wins anyway, so it's not an issue. It's only when he gets distracted halfway through.'

'I don't understand why Owen is making such a fuss,' Tosh admitted. 'You both work so hard, and you're trying to hold together a working relationship and a romantic one simultaneously. The two are bound to collide every now and then. We don't exactly keep to normal hours.'

'True. But maybe we should try to get out of the hub more and out some distance between work and everything else.'

'Balance is good,' she agreed.

'And it helps to keep focused in boardroom meetings if you're not picturing what you were doing on the table the night before.'

Tosh was about to comment when she spotted Owen slip from one camera to the next. 'He's getting close,' she said, watching him pad quietly down the hall that lead towards the cells. She wanted to laugh at herself. When had her life become so insane than she was spending the night watching her boyfriend alternating between half naked and fully naked? Even now he was in jeans and t-shirt, but than was it. Jack had won all of his other clothes, including his underwear, forcing him to search commando. If Owen found him in the next ninety seconds, Jack would be reduced to two of his three remaining items, t-shirt, boxers and a sock. Some naughty part of Ianto hoped Owen picked the boxers, forcing him to play the next round as seeker without them.

'Gotcha!' They heard Owen cry over his comms, spotting Jack lying as tightly as possible under the low stone shelf in one of the cells. He'd even closed the door behind him to make it look genuine.

'I'll take that,' Owen said, pointing at Jack's t-shirt, once he'd returned and gathered up what was left, donning it before coming back to their starting point in Jack's office.  

Jack good naturedly tugged it off. 'Like what you see?' he said. He winked across at Ianto, knowing at the very least he'd be enjoying the view.

'I'll like it better when I see a whole lot less of it in future.'

'You still gotta win first.'

 

The pace of the game increased noticeably as the stakes grew higher, and the contestants grew more tired, the hours slipping away into the dead of night. Jack scored Owen's t-shirt stuffed in a laundry basket, but failed to find Owen himself, who outwitted him by returning to his first hiding place in the autopsy bay, figuring it was now too obvious a place to look. He claimed Jack's last sock as a prize.

Things in Jack's a office were getting equally tense as the two other halves had forgotten their coffees, watching intently as the final round played out. Their earlier yawns were forgotten despite the now very late hour.

'If Owen finds Jack's boxers, he'll win,' Ianto said.

'Yeah, but if he doesn't and he doesn't find Jack, then Jack will win.' That much was clear from the rules. Without a piece of clothing left to hide, the game was officially over.

There was a sudden movement from  the corner of his eye, and Tosh nearly yelped out in fight when suddenly Jack was right there behind her, sparing her the worst of his appearance. Ianto berated himself for not paying attention to the cameras and giving Tosh a heads up.

'What are you doing?' Ianto hissed.

'Hiding? What's it look like?' he said, coming up next to him and squeezing into the narrow space under his own desk, jostling Ianto's legs as he crawled underneath.

He had to hand it to Jack, the idea was quite ingenious. Owen would never think to look there, right where he and Tosh were sat.

'It's cold,' he heard Jack complain, wedged in the small space.

'It usually is when you're not wearing anything,' he replied. He felt Jack press up against his leg under the desk.

'You're nice and warm though,' he said, pressing closer.

'You can stay there so long as you behave yourself,' Ianto warned him, feeling Jack's head lean into his knee. He absently stroked Jack's hair whilst they waited.

'Fives minutes to go,' Tosh warned Owen, who began frantically running around the hub. He knew the stakes if he didn't find one of both of Jack and his clothes, and right now, Jack seemed like the easier of the two to find. He must have covered two miles of hub in his last attempts to uncover his quarry, and was completely out of breath by the time Tosh called time. Being down in the archives forced him to stagger breathlessly all the way back to Jack's office.

'Alright,' he said, still sounding out if puff, 'I'm utterly shagged. I've searched this place top to bottom and he's not here.'

Ianto waited for Jack to make his big reveal, crawling out from under the desk, knowing how upset he'd be if either he or Tosh spoiled it, but it didn't come. Ianto leaned over and peered under the desk, only to discover Jack had fallen asleep against his leg whilst they'd been waiting.

'He's here,' Ianto said, pointing and using a low voice so as not to wake Jack.

'That bastard cheated,' Owen said, ignoring any courtesy of volume. 'This place was off limits. You said so.'

'No, I said Jack's bunker beneath his office was out of bounds. His office was fair game.'

Owen grabbed his pile of clothes from next to Tosh, angrily pulling his t-shirt back on. 'This is bollocks,' he grumbled adding sneakers and his jacket, but ignoring the socks and the fact that he still had no underwear. 'This whole thing was rigged from the start. Come on, Tosh, we're going home. You can tell Harkness that then next time I catch either of you up to anything, I'll take my scalpel and remove the offending body parts.'

Tosh looked apologetically at her best friend, watching Owen striding off without her.

'Goodnight, Ianto,' she said, hurrying after Owen.

Ianto sighed and cast another look down at Jack, snuggled against him. He had half a mind to leave him there, but it was quite cold as Jack had said, and he didn't want him getting a chill all night whilst Ianto was tucked up warm in bed.

'Jack?' he said, gently shaking his shoulder.

'Wha?' came the confused reply. 'Is it over?'

'Yes, it's over.'

'Did I win?'

Ianto could do nothing to stop the enormous yawn that escaped him. 'Can we go to bed and discuss whether anyone won anything in the morning?'

'So, I did win?'

'In a manner of speaking.'

'Can I have my usual reward for winning, now?'

'No. I'm going to bed. The only one who's interested in your valuables right now is Owen, and trust me when I say that's not a compliment.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

Bravo Jack! Owen is a sore loser, as expected. He will have to accept the terms of the original wager in the end though. If he doesn't, the rest of the team, including his girlfriend, might gang up on him.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

I'm still amazed Owen agreed to the challenge. Poor Ianto and Tosh having to keep track and pretend that this was totally normal! Naked hide and seek is going to go global at this rate!