Torchwood: Fanfic: Laundry day

[m_findlow]

Title: Laundry day
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,053 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, Laundry day" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto finds something both expected and unexpected in the laundry hamper

Ianto hummed quietly to himself as he began pulling clothes out of the laundry hamper, sorting them for the wash. It was a habit he couldn't break, even whilst travelling the length and breadth of space.

There was no room aboard a small cruiser for enough water to do laundry. There was barely enough for keeping them stocked in drinking water, and the occasional treat of a real shower or bath. Everything else was cleaned using sonic technology. It was one thing he couldn't get used to. Nothing woke him up properly like a good hot shower in the morning, and the sonic version just wasn't the same. Undress, stand there, wait for seemingly nothing to happen, and job done. He preferred the good old fashioned soap and water that most planets still offered, though on some it was still considered a quirk of primitive travellers. And Jack always liked it better when he could bury his face in Ianto's hair, smelling the scent of apples from his shampoo. There was something so viscerally pleasing about scrubbing oneself clean.

Sorting the laundry was just one of those things that he probably didn't need to bother with. When there was no water involved, did it really matter if his red shirts ended up mixed in with Jack's white ones? Nor would it matter if he mixed their silk sheets together with socks and jocks? The sonic tumbler wouldn't care one way or the other.

Still, it made him feel better to go through the items and put them in some sort of logical order. It was also the last opportunity to check the hamper for anything that shouldn't go in there. You just never knew how something that wasn't clothing might react to the disturbances generated by sonic energy waves as it shook free even the most microscopic particles of dirt and grime. How they came out smelling clean though was still a mystery to him.

Jack had told him to stop being such a fusspot and just dump the whole lot in. At least that had been the case until Ianto had found a Grimble nesting in their hamper, asleep between layers of woolen jumpers and t-shirts. The tiny pink ball of fluff would not have fared well had it been sent for cleaning. Now he diligently checked every item in case they should be accidentally harboring some other small forms of life that enjoyed the relative safety and comfort of dirty laundry.

Ianto pulled a jumper back from inside out to right way in before adding it to the pile of clothes, then grabbed for the next item in the hamper: a pair of Jack's jeans. He shook them out and then plunged his hand into each of the pockets, checking for stray items. In the left back pocket he found three small, plastic discs, one each of red, yellow and green. Examining them and poking them around his palm with a finger, he suddenly remembered what they were. Annoyed, he shoved them into his own pocket whilst he finished the job. There'd be time afterwards to go and deal with them.

Once he had the sonic tumbler churning away on a week and a half 's worth of laundry, he went to find Jack.

Despite the size of the ship, small in comparison to most vessels, but still the equivalent size of the ferry that Ianto had often traveled on between Holyhead and Dublin, Ianto found Jack just where he expected him, up on the bridge.

'Laundry all sorted?' Jack asked.

He walked over and pulled the discs out of his pocket, holding them out for Jack to see.

'Want to tell me why these were in one of your pockets?' Ianto asked.

'Are you sure?' Jack asked, spotting the offending items. Ianto clipped him over the ear. 'Ow! What was that for?'

'I can't believe you'd be so desperate as to cheat!' He should have known better, really. Jack would cheat at almost anything. 'Did you think I wouldn't notice? The next time we opened up the box and went to set the game up, we'd be three pieces short. Or did you plan on putting them back in the box before then?'

'Ianto, I don't know if you've checked the rules for Chinese Checkers lately, but you can't win by removing pieces from the board.'

That was true, but it was also true that getting your own pieces from one side of the board to the other might be a whole lot easier if you could steal a piece that was in the way of making some triple or quadruple jump over ten other pieces. It also might not be all that noticeable if just one piece in each colour went missing when the game was played they way they did.

The board might have been designed so that six people could play simultaneously, but there was only two of them, and just playing one colour each had grown tiresome. They'd graduated to playing two colours each, and when that wasn't enough, they went to three each, turning it into a diabolical warfare of coloured pieces moving in every which direction. Taking a risk at stealing just one piece when Ianto was focused one completing his red corner, left his green corner exposed. And that was to say nothing of pieces that might be surreptitiously moved from one dot to another when he wasn't keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Jack's hands - both of them. Would he count the board after every move to make sure there were still ten of each colour? Unlikely. At least it had been up until now.

'You're so unbelievable,' Ianto said, rolling his eyes and sighing. 'Is there anything you won't do to win?'

Jack grabbed him hard and pulled him tight against his own body, his expression fierce, their noses practically touching. 'Nothing gets between me and what I want, Ianto Jones,' he growled.

'And what is it that you want right now?' Ianto asked, forgetting all about the stolen checkerboard pieces.

'You. Naked on the floor, begging me for more.'

Ianto let Jack pull him closer still, beginning to work on unbuttoning his shirt. Well, it was laundry day after all, he thought. What use did he have for clothes today?

Comments

[bk_forever]

You're only delaying the inevitable punishment, Jack. Ianto will get you back for cheating. Eventually.