m_findlow

Title: You can leave your hat on
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 579 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "any, any, being teased for wearing a brightly coloured bobble hat" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto gets caught out in a last minute wardrobe faux pas

It was still dark and bitterly cold when the team arrived at the marina under Jack's instructions. The message simply read: Torchwood. Marina. Dress warmly.

They were quickly piled onto a vessel that Jack had commandeered or otherwise acquired, no one was quite sure, only that they were pretty sure it wasn't on Torchwood's balance sheet.

Gwen had been looking curiously at Ianto for about five minutes as Jack was carefully navigating them out past the barrage. She couldn't put her finger on what it was at first, then she realised.

'Ianto, your beanie is on inside out. Here let me-'

Before he could stop her, she'd pulled it from his head, turned it right way out and was placing it back on his head.

When she caught sight of it properly she giggled, and that attracted the attention of the others.

Before it had just looked to be a plain old red and white beanie. Right way out though, it sported a very fluffy red pom pom on top.

'Oh, are those little reindeer on the side?' Tosh asked, 'They're so cute!'

It had seemed far from possible that Ianto could have gone a shade redder than his very red beanie, but he had.

'Nice work teaboy,' Owen said, between gasps for air, 'I needed a good laugh.'

'It's not mine!' he protested. 'I was babysitting at Rhi's last night. I didn't have time to go home. This was all she had.'

At least the gloves are plain, he thought, so they couldn't mock those as well. It had been bad enough having to hit up his sister at four in the morning for a hat and gloves in the first place. When he'd seen the hat he'd considered going without altogether.

'I can't wear this Rhi, what will the others think?'

But she'd told him not to be daft. Mica had a pink one if he didn't like the red. Begrudgingly, he'd accepted it as the best of a bad lot. It had been her idea in the first place to turn it inside out.

'Well I think it's delicious,' said Jack, leering flirtatiously. 'Perhaps you could wear that and nothing else.'

Ianto decided he couldn’t put up with any more giggling or sexually charged commentary on his unfortunate wardrobe and pulled it off, shoving the offending garment into his coat pocket.

Hours later as they were still skimming around the Bristol Channel, the wind had picked up again and he found himself absolutely freezing. Jack came out to meet him on deck, wrapping his arms around his waist.

'Cold?'

Ianto snorted, not in the mood for rhetorical questions.

'Here,' said Jack, extracting the beanie from from his coat pocket and pulling it over his head. 'This'll help.'

'It looks stupid,' Ianto moaned.

'Doesn't mean we love you any less, and at least you'll be warm.'

Jack frowned at the sour look on his lover's face.

'Okay, will it help if I do this? Jack asked, pulling it back off and swapping it for his own. He pulled the pom pom topped beanie grandly onto his own head and smiled.

'Better?'

'You look ridiculous.'

'And do you love me any less?' he asked, pressing their icy noses together.

'No,' Ianto sighed, and swapped the beanies back over.

'On the chance that we do run into aliens, we can't have our Captain looking like an oversized Christmas elf who's had too much eggnog.'

Jack smiled. 'That's my Ianto.'