Torchwood: Fanfic: Safe and sound

[m_findlow]

Title: Safe and sound
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 829 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for mirrored_illusions's prompt "Any, any, making a "safe" by cutting out part of a book to hide small objects in" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto has found the perfect place to keep his diary.

Ianto grinned at his own deviousness, operating the small laser saw with the utmost care. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally slip and put a hole right through his desk, or worse, lose a finger.

This would teach Jack a lesson, he thought. He'd been threatening to turn the hub upside down in order to find Ianto's diary. Admittedly, he probably had only himself to blame for Jack's determination. He'd let slip that he kept a diary one night after they finally collapsed in a heap in bed, telling Jack that what they'd just done was definitely one for the diary. That had intrigued Jack, sounding surprised as he asked Ianto if he kept a diary.

'What else is in it?' Jack asked.

'Oh, all sorts of things,' Ianto had coyly responded.

It was that teasing answer that had stuck in Jack's mind. Now he was convinced that Ianto's diary was nothing more than a chronological recollection of pornographic moments. It was far more than that of course, though some entries were almost as steamy as the acts themselves had been. It wasn't his fault he had an eidetic memory, able to recount everything in perfect detail. He couldn't even quite be sure what possessed him to write it all down. What if someone found it, which was precisely his current dilemma. He could almost live with the embarrassment of Jack reading those entries, but the thought of anyone else seeing them made him go red from top to toe.

This was a solution that would solve both problems. He changed the angle of the laser saw, cutting at right angles until he had a rectangular shape, about an inch deep. He switched it off and gently prised out the massacred pages. Cutting a hole inside a book had been a spark of genius. There were hundreds of them down in the archives, and a whole wall full of shelves that lined one side of his office space, covering all manner of subjects. This one he'd destroyed was one of two copies, which made him feel less guilty about defacing it. It was also a terribly wordy and tiresome tome, which even he struggled to read. It made it the perfect place to hide something like a saucy personal journal.

Never in a million years would anyone else ever bother to open its pages, and if he had it out on his desk, everyone would just assume it was the kind of mindlessly boring book that someone like him might find fascinating. Jack took little interest in books, beyond those he described as shamelessly bad science fiction, for which he had an unusual obsession. With very little warning, he'd be able to slip his diary back inside the neatly carved space, and slip the first few pages back over the central gap, hiding it from view. Once he was done it could slide back onto the shelf, in amongst all the other titles, innocently keeping his secrets locked away.

There were drawers with keys, combination lock safes, and even biometrically sealed containment units, any of which could have easily been an alternative, but if Ianto knew anything about Jack, it was that in a past life he'd been a master conman. Jack could no doubt pick any lock or crack any safe in under five minutes, so there wasn't much that was going to stop him. Plus, he'd naturally assume that Ianto would gravitate towards keeping it somewhere secure. Putting it out in plain sight just seemed silly. It would be worth the entertainment value alone to watch Jack on the CCTV, turning his office upside down trying to find it. He was sorely tempted to put as many difficult to open things in his office as possible, forcing Jack to break into each and every one of them, certain his diary was in there.

Ianto took the superfluous inner pages and slipped them through his shredder, eliminating evidence of his activities, before settling his diary into the new nook he'd created. It was a perfect fit, with just enough room to slip a finger inside to pull it back out.

You've been out-foxed this time, Jack, he thought happily as he closed the cover on the book and left it there amongst his other files, hearing the sound of heavy boots echoing down the corridor towards him.

'Hey, Ianto. Come on, it's dinner time and I'm starving.'

Ianto consulted his watch and noted it was barely half six. Jack's stomach had no sense of timing.

'I was thinking we could try that new Thai place,' Jack said, sitting on the edge of the desk. He was staring straight down at the pile of files and books, looking bored by their appearance. Ianto wanted to laugh. If only Jack knew just how tantalizingly close he was to the one thing he wanted more than anything.

'Sounds good,' Ianto replied, grabbing his wallet. Being sneaky was hungry work.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Jack may have been a conman, but no one is sneakier than Ianto!

Even so, I don't think I'd be able to do that to a book, not even a deathly boring one.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

It was worth it to protect his secrets from prying eyes. No one was ever going to read it, not even him!