Torchwood: Fanfic: Clothes gone astray

[m_findlow]

Title: Clothes gone astray
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen, Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 530 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for mirrored_illusions’s prompt "any, any, a trail of clothing" at fic_promptly
Summary: Gwen learns how to interpret clothes

Gwen had become adept at reading into a trail of clothes in much the same way as a diviner could interpret the pattern of tea leaves left in a cup. Of course, when it came to a trail of clothes, it meant the trail of clothes that her two coworkers, one of which was her boss, had left behind.

Sometimes it was as innocent as a stray tie or a coat, something that had been taken off during a bout of kissing before they retired elsewhere for more frivolity. Other times, the trail was far more blatant. Shirts and t-shirts, pants, socks and shoes. She could tell how frantic they'd become by the amount of clothing left out in public view, and just how close they'd actually managed to get to Jack's bunker before there were no more clothes left to shed.

She was horrified the first time she'd come in and discovered the trail lead as far as her desk, with the last piece being a pair of satin blue boxers hastily thrown over her chair. Really? She thought. It was still miles from her desk to Jack's office. She flicked them off onto the floor and sat down, trying not to think what else they might have gotten up to in the vicinity of her work space.

She'd even become skilled in telling who had instigated things. If Jack kicked things off, the order was usually tie, waistcoat, Ianto's shirt, Jack's shirt. If Ianto started, the order changed to Jack's shirt, Jack's undershirt, tie, waistcoat, Jack's pants.

The trails themselves had developed over the years, and had begun showing up in more and more unusual places. More often than not they had a tendency to start near the coffee machine, but they'd been known to start off or end up in the autopsy bay, leading up the spiral staircase and into the greenhouse, any general direction that ended near the sofa, trailing downstairs to the interrogation room, the cells, the archives, the shower and change rooms, and weirdly, once leading up to and ending at the invisible lift. The last one didn't bear thinking about what had happened next. Invisible or not.

Occasionally as well, random pieces of clothing turned up in really unusual places. These had been explained as items lost during naked hide and seek that the wearer had forgotten to retrieve afterwards.

It wasn't always easy to look her colleagues in the eye after earlier spying a pile of their clothes draped over computers and desks, knowing what it had ultimately lead to, but to she had to accept that for Jack this place was his home, and perhaps Ianto's too. She couldn't speak to the clothes she and Rhys left lying around in their own flat, so she could hardly take the high moral ground with the boys. Plus, it was usually Ianto who was later seen sheepishly picking up the trail, trying not to blush as he caught Gwen's eye.

At the end of the day she reasoned, it was better that they were happy together, and if she had to put up with a few wayward laundry items, then so be it.