Title: Well, it is his colour
By: b-w-williams
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: AO
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine!
Summary: If Martha Jones ever returns to Torchwood Cardiff, she had better not forget Jack's request...

***

Since the devastating incident with Jack's long-lost brother there had been a lull in Rift activity, almost as though the universe was attempting to right some wrongs by giving the members of Torchwood, both old and new, a few days of peace.

As a result, everybody was currently engaged in various tasks and projects which were important and yet far from vital; the kind that could be abandoned the moment something more urgent came up. They were each waiting for the inevitable blaring of alarms that marked a new emergency and the anticipation was doing far more damage to their concentration than if there had actually been any real trouble occurring.

Gwen and Martha were huddled around one of the workstations, debating the meaning behind the figures displayed there and failing to come to any clear conclusion.

"I don't know," Gwen said, lifting her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "What do you think?"

"I say we try it," replied Martha. She straightened, nodded her head once decisively and then seemed to deflate a little. "Or maybe we shouldn't. What do you think?"

There was a moment's hesitation before Gwen reached forward suddenly, pressed a button and snatched her hand back, fearful of what it might do.

Nothing happened and the two women sighed, both relieved and disappointed.

They fell silent, each frowning pensively at the read-out, and remained that way for a good few minutes before the hush was broken by Ianto's sudden appearance, his arms full of files from the archives.

Martha burst into life the moment she saw him. "Ah, Ianto! I completely forgot!" She jumped from her chair and began rummaging through a bag she had dumped on the old sofa earlier that day.

Ianto reached Gwen's side and stopped, exchanging a look of amused confusion with her. His gaze slid to the display they had been working on. "Any luck with that yet?"

Gwen turned from laughing at Martha's enthusiastic antics. "No, not yet. It's all very well Tosh leaving us detailed instructions, but those instructions are more complex than the systems themselves."

Ianto smiled but said nothing and Gwen looked away, unable to meet his eyes as the memory of their lost friends resurfaced yet again. Drawing in a deep breath and pushing aside the familiar feelings of pain, she returned her attention to Martha.

"So, what are you looking for, Dr Jones?" she asked, forcing a cheerful tone into her voice.

"Oh, no," Ianto groaned quietly, as Martha span around with a triumphant grin upon her face and a bright red military-style cap in her hand.

"Oh no, what?" Gwen looked across to find Ianto checking warily over his shoulder at the open door of Jack's office. "Ianto?"

Martha hurried forward, reaching up to place the cap on his head whilst he wasn't paying attention. Ianto stepped back in surprise, almost dropping the files in his arms and then twisting frantically to keep hold of them. As he struggled, Martha succeeded in squashing the hat down over his hair and leapt back, cackling at the indignant glare he directed towards her.

Gwen lifted a hand to her mouth, attempting to stifle her own laughter at the crumpled cap sitting at a jaunty angle on his head. Ianto scowled at her unsubtle giggling, but she could see the corner of his mouth twitching with his own amusement, completely ruining the effect and setting her off laughing even harder than Martha.

"Come here," she said, approaching Ianto and adjusting the cap whilst he sulked unconvincingly. "There we go, very handsome. It definitely suits you." She grinned at him, then caught sight of movement over his shoulder. Her eyes widened to see Jack standing in the doorway of his office, hands on his hips, watching them play with an unreadable expression upon his face. Biting her lip, she turned on her heel and moved quickly back to the workstation. Martha hurried to her side, jostling against her with muffled giggles.

"Ianto. My office. Now!" Jack called out sharply, before turning and disappearing out of sight again.

The younger man gave a long-suffering sigh and transferred the stack of files to one hand in order to reach up and remove the cap. Jack's voice boomed out from within the office before he could even touch the offending item. "Leave it on!"

Ianto shot Gwen and Martha a far more convincing glare as he turned to stride after the Captain, leaving them shaking with mirth behind him.

There came murmuring from the office and then Jack appeared in sight again. "Right, soldier," he commanded in a clear voice, flashing a grin at the indiscreetly eavesdropping women. He closed the door firmly, but not before he had finished speaking...

"Assume the position!"

***

With the door shut, and the women outside blushing, Jack span eagerly around to find Ianto standing in the middle of the office, arms still full of files and a rather bland expression on his face.

The Captain's grin morphed into a pout. "That isn't the position I was hoping for."

From Ianto's eye-roll it was clear he knew precisely what Jack had been hoping for. "Work hours," the young man answered succinctly and turned around to deposit the stack of folders on the desk.

Jack swiftly crossed the room and caught his lover by the hips as he bent over. "Hmm, getting better," he declared.

"Jack..." Ianto began in warning, trying to straighten up. The older man let him, only to slide his arms around Ianto's waist the moment he was upright and plaster himself to the Welshman's back.

"C'mon, soldier," Jack murmured in his ear. "Don't you want to serve your Captain?"

"'Serve under' you mean."

"Or 'service'. Whatever gets you naked and sprawled across my desk."

Ianto gave a faint shudder as Jack nibbled at his earlobe, but then firmly took hold of the older man's wrists and pried the wandering fingers away from his chest before they could delve past the buttons of his shirt.

"Still work hours," Ianto remarked, deftly slipping out of Jack's hold and heading for the door.

The Captain grinned and turned around to watch him escape, enjoying the view as he leaned back against the desk and folded his arms across his chest.

Ianto paused at the door and Jack lifted his eyes from the young man's backside to find him looking over his shoulder with one eyebrow cocked. Jack gave him a shrug, unashamed to be caught ogling, and then his grin widened as he realised that the UNIT cap was still sitting upon Ianto's dark hair.

"Uh..." Jack began, because obviously the Welshman had forgotten it was there, then suddenly decided against it and shook his head. "Nothing, forget it."

Ianto rolled his eyes again before opening the door and disappearing through it and Jack was only just able to hold back his laughter until the other man was out of earshot.

Ianto spent the rest of the afternoon walking around with the red cap on his head, apparently oblivious to its presence. Every time he passed by one of the others they descended into giggles and the unamused look he gave them only made them laugh harder.

When he withheld their half-three coffee in retaliation, Jack could see the girls weakening, so before they could confess and admit why they were laughing at him, he quickly stepped in.

"Oh, Ianto," he called across the Hub, his voice booming theatrically as he led into his jest. "You're getting so militant these days." He glanced over to make sure the girls were paying attention. They looked back at him, alert to his playful tone but not entirely on his wavelength yet. "I'd make my own coffee, but I'm afraid you might attack me."

"He is very protective of that machine," Martha put in, catching onto the new game. "Sometimes I go into the kitchen expecting to find him standing to attention in front of it."

"Yeah, guarding it, never moving," Gwen added with a nod, "like the Beefeaters outside the palace."

"They're called Yeoman Warders," Ianto corrected primly. "And they guard the Tower of London. You're thinking of the Foot Guards outside Buckingham Palace."

"Okay, okay," Gwen said, lifting her hands in surrender. "Don't shoot!"

Ianto sighed and disappeared off into the archives, where he stayed for the next few hours.

With Ianto busy and out of sight for most of the afternoon, the girls snuck from the Hub to retrieve outside coffee and then disposed of their incriminating cups in Jack's bin, which he only realised when he got around to throwing his own away some time later. Eyes narrowed, he burst out of his office to confront the scheming pair, only to find their workstations abandoned and the computers set to idle overnight.

Jack checked his watch and found it was already eight o'clock. He raised his eyebrows in surprise at how time had gotten away from him, then lowered them again when he realised the two women had left without checking that it was okay to do so.

In the next instant his gaze alighted on a dark suit jacket draped over the back of one of the chairs and a smile slowly spread across his lips. Of course; Ianto would have sent them home to their husbands when it became clear there were no immediate threats to the world that day, leaving himself and Jack to stand guard over the Rift for the night.

The fact that it was always Ianto and Jack taking the nightshift in the Hub was a point of amusement for the girls, but for Jack it was a very enjoyable arrangement indeed.

"Ianto?" he called out, looking around for his lover.

Silence echoed back at him and he pursed his lips in thought. He hadn't heard any giggling from Gwen or Martha in the past few hours, so Ianto couldn't have been wearing the cap when he'd emerged from the archives, and that meant two things. First: the young man had realised they'd let him walk around with the thing on his head all afternoon and second...there was no way Ianto was going to let them get away with it.

Jack chuckled to himself as he walked over to the small kitchenette. Ianto's punishments were sometimes cruel, sometimes enjoyable, always inventive and Jack never tired of witnessing his lover's ingenious games.

The kitchen area was fragrant with the scent of freshly brewed coffee but there was no evidence of either the drink or the barista and Jack gave a huff of disappointment. It was clear he'd only just missed Ianto from not only the lingering smell, but also from the abandoned tie still swinging from one of the handles of the coffee machine.

"Ianto!" Jack called again, stepping back out into the centre of the Hub.

Tradition dictated that, on the quiet days when everyone else had left at a decent time for once, Ianto would take a few minutes to switch off from work-mode, where he loosened his tie and devoted his attention fully to a small cup of liquid heaven. Usually this occurred in Jack's office, with the Captain gulping down his own mug of coffee and then watching in fond amusement as Ianto slowly let down his daytime barriers.

Jack wasn't entirely convinced that the same scene would be waiting for him today, but he returned to his office anyway, fingers itching to get hold of his lover now that work hours were officially over.

Striding through the doorway, Jack's first observation was of there being a distinct absence of Welshmen in the room. He huffed again, though not out of surprise, and planted his hands upon his hips. Then he noticed the tiny white cup that had appeared on his desk. He leaned forward to peer into it and saw the dark dregs of espresso within. One eyebrow arched upwards in amusement. Ianto must have downed the drink in one mouthful to have finished it in the time it had taken Jack to walk back from the kitchen.

Jack then glanced down by the chair in front of his desk. Sure enough, a pair of black shoes had been placed neatly perpendicular to the chair legs, where Ianto habitually 'kicked' them off in the evening.

The Captain straightened again. "I know what you're doing," he said in a voice he knew would carry to Ianto's ears – wherever they might be at that particular moment in time.

There came no response and Jack pursed his lips. "I thought we'd agreed no more punishments that involved coffee?" he went on, glaring at the empty blotter on the far side of the desk where his stripy mug should have been waiting for him.

"There's no coffee involved here," Ianto's voice drifted calmly through the Hub and Jack spun back to the doorway, eyes darting across the open space, searching for the young man.

"Exactly, there's no coffee. That's a punishment!"

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one, sir," Ianto said and Jack took a few steps forward, head tilting as he tried to locate his lover amidst the echoes. "We agreed no more tampering or substitutions."

"A lack of coffee is a substitution for coffee!" protested Jack, arguing now purely to keep Ianto speaking, but it seemed the other man had decided not to give him any more help, for he fell silent again. Grinning wolfishly, Jack took a guess and headed past the water tower towards the hallway that led into a deeper section of the Hub.

There was no sign of Ianto at all, but that didn't mean he hadn't been there, so Jack carried on. He passed by the boardroom, glancing in briefly to find it empty of elusive yet sexy young men, only to pause a few paces later and move back to the doorway, frowning at what was inside.

On the table something small and dark had appeared and he edged cautiously into the room, eyeing the object as though it were a bomb about to go off.

Two steps from the table, he realised what he was looking at; a pair of black socks, folded perfectly into a tidy square, dead centre on the polished surface. Jack's eyes widened in glee. He'd thought he was just following a vengeful Ianto, but instead he was following a vengeful Ianto who was becoming increasingly naked.

He started to turn away, even more eager having discovered this was one of Ianto's enjoyable 'punishments', when he noticed the slip of paper beneath the socks. Pouncing on the note, he snatched it up and proceeded to blink at the word written upon it in Ianto's italic scrawl.

Cold.

"Well if you will walk around in bare feet..." Jack began loudly, before the actual meaning of the clue sunk in.

He hurried back into the centre of the Hub, eyes sweeping over the space he now knew Ianto to be in, hoping for a glimpse of pale skin nearby. A shadow passed across the steamed glass of the hothouse and Jack yelped in victory, dashing for the stairs and climbing them two at a time.

"Hah!" Jack crowed, bursting into the environmentally-controlled area, positive he hadn't seen Ianto leave via the other door. He was halfway across the room before he realised that he wasn't approaching Ianto after all, but rather a pair of trousers folded over a wooden hanger, which in turn was hooked to a wire attached to the ceiling. The obscure mobile turned slowly on the wire, accounting for the shadow Jack had seen from below, and the Captain growled with a mixture of frustration and admiration.

When Jack emerged back onto the walkway again, he leaned over the railing to shout; "I could find you at any time you know!" He lifted his left arm and waggled his hand, drawing attention to his wrist-strap, though he couldn't be sure if Ianto was watching or not.

"If you cheat I'm going home," Ianto called back, his calm tone leading Jack to believe he was enjoying this far too much.

"What, half-naked?" asked Jack, following the other's voice back down the metal steps.

"Do you think I'd get many complaints?" Ianto countered.

"Only from me," Jack said, hurrying around the base of the water tower again, sure this time that he'd caught Ianto. He jumped forward into a stance, ready to pounce on his teasing lover, but all that awaited him was the base of the invisible lift; empty apart from a slightly wrinkled, but perfectly folded, dark red shirt.

"Amazing how this place echoes, isn't it?" Ianto said casually, sounding far too pleased with himself.

A flash of movement reflected in the curved surface of the water tower and Jack span on his heel to face its source. There was nothing in sight, but he ran back up the steps, in between the workstations outside his office and over to the one place he hadn't checked yet in the direction of the movement.

The Captain slid to a halt above the medical bay, his stomach hitting the railing hard enough to force the breath from his lungs in a loud whoosh, and he looked down into the sterile pit expectantly.

No Ianto.

Instead, however, on top the metal bed, were his boxers; lined up just about where Ianto's groin would be, had he been lying on the surface himself.

Jack chuckled at the sight, though he was a little disappointed that he hadn't been able to catch Ianto in time to peel off that last snug-fitting garment himself.

Still, it did mean his lover was now completely naked somewhere nearby and Jack turned away, excitement increasing and his grin stretching even wider than before.

The smell of coffee reached his nose and he stopped short. It was too strong to be left over from Ianto's earlier cup, which meant that at some point in the last few minutes, the young man had managed to brew another batch. Whilst avoiding Jack and planting his clothing all around the Hub.

Jack began to marvel at his lover's proficiency in sneakiness, but he was quickly distracted when he realised the tempting aroma was coming from his office. The Captain followed his nose across to the doorway and found that, sure enough, his mug was in its rightful place upon his blotter, steam rising from its scorching hot contents.

That observation, however, was purely instinctual, because Jack's immediate attention was fixed entirely on the naked man standing to attention in front of his desk.

The naked man who was still wearing a red UNIT cap upon his head.

Jack licked his lips, gaze roaming Ianto's body with undisguised lust. When he finally looked up from the delectable spread of bare skin he met Ianto's eyes, which gleamed with mischief, but before he could say anything, Ianto turned away, his movements precise and minimal as he faced the desk and placed his hands flat upon the surface.

He leaned forward, wantonly presenting himself to Jack, and then glanced back over his shoulder at his lover, one eyebrow arching beneath the rim of his red cap in silent query.

"Yes," Jack answered happily, moving towards the feast laid out before him. "That's the position I was hoping for."

***