fic: Good Ideas
Title: Good Ideas
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: pg-13
Genre: humor
Warnings/Spoilers: cleverness, a little naked hide and seek.
Author's note: this won prompt six: Myfanwy, at myfanwys_nest. I'm incredibly flattered. Thanks loads to aztiluna13 and senry for their awesome beta work, and thanks to all the people who voted for me!
Summary: Jack is full of good ideas. He’s not the only one.
Jack moved confidently down the catwalk, the metal grating prickling his bare soles. Every footfall was measured and light, every economical movement of his smooth body precise, attracting as little attention as possible as he slipped silently through the shadows of his base. This is not to say that he refrained entirely from swaggering or strutting; pleased as he was, it was hard to keep a certain buoyancy out of his step. He’d taken the liberty of adjusting the climate control, increasing the temperature in the vast and cavernous Hub a few degrees. It was always disappointing when one side or the other gave up prematurely, called off the game citing shivers and chilly appendages. This would increase longevity, as well as make it easier to beg future rounds out of his playmate.
His already bolstered opinion of himself was further improved by the fact that he was completely naked, which always put him in a good mood, being the showing-off type, even if the only audience were the banks of silent CCTV cameras. And Ianto, where-ever he was. Jack crept away from the hothouse, which he’d just finished searching, and made his way down the spiral staircase towards the ground floor. The grating bit into his toes with every step. He had half a mind to slip down into his quarters for a pair of socks, but that would be breaking the rules of the game, and Jack was nothing if not a fair player.
The ground floor, when he reached it, yielded nothing. No Ianto in the main area, crouched among the desks. No-one in the armory. No-one in the basin around the fountain, which was dry at the moment with the outgoing tide of the bay. No-one behind the cog door, which would have been cutting it close even for Ianto. Couch; Autopsy room; kitchen. Nothing. Disappointed, Jack checked his office and even peeked down into his quarters (as if it would be that easy.) When a thorough search of the boardroom proved just as fruitless, he began to realize that his clever plan to prolong the game had worked a little too well. Without the sapping chill of bare concrete, Ianto had one less reason to come out of hiding. While Jack blundered about, growing increasingly frustrated, the archivist was probably tucked away cozy somewhere with a magazine.
Never let it be said that Jack Harkness is without resource. Never let it thought that he is not adaptable, a problem solver, able to take his surroundings and bend them to his purpose.
Creeping back into the upper deck, he slipped past the silent workstations and down the corridor labeled “cold storage.” This was primarily the autopsy area, but it also housed a pair of large walk in refrigerators. One was used to store biological samples and corpses that were of current use or not ready for long-term storage in the morgue.
Jack, Owen’s lab coat hastily tied around his waist, went into the other one.
Inside, he selected a large heavy-duty container made of a plastic and held closed with a pair of clamps. He dragged this out into the main area and left it by the couch, although he didn’t open it. Then, he hurried back up to the cats, got a good view, and whistled.
In an instant, the pterodactyl came swooping down from her lofty perch. She circled the fountain once, then, spotting the plastic container, dove straight towards it like a missile. Jack watched from above as she waddled around the recreation area on her short legs, eying the tote with keen interest. Even with the lid tightly sealed, he knew she could smell the offal and other bits and scraps thrown into her daily meal as an added treat. She’d come to recognize the blue plastic as a sign that she was being rewarded, and when no helpful human appeared to liberate her prize, she began to raise cain in the most appalling manner. Myfanwy threw back her head and flapped her wings, screeching and yowling. She hopped on top of the container and tried to pry the lid off. Finally, when neither of these produced a result, she stopped and stood very still.
Jack watched from his hiding place beside the greenhouse.
The pterodactyl leapt down suddenly and hurried across the upper deck, her clawed feet clicking on the cement and concrete. She paused for a moment, turning her great head this way and that, and then with an eager squeak leapt into the air. She swooped up into the airy Hub, looping joyously around the fountain and soaring over the stairs, the flight closest to the cog door, before landing on the far side, in the shadows out of sight. Within seconds, Jack heard a familiar voice.
“For God’s sake - not - it’s not your feeding time. Go on, away -“
Laughing, Jack sauntered down from the catwalk , reaching the bottom in time to meet Ianto coming out from under the stairs, the pterodactyl’s long crest against his naked back, propelling him forward. The captain swept his arms around the other man in rescue.
“Found you - looks like I win.” He purred, steering the archivist away from the hungry pterosaur, who began to squawk and flap irritably.
Ianto fixed him with an irritated look. “You cheated.”
“You forgive me.” Jack grinned, nibbling Ianto’s ear.
“Yes, I do.” Ianto sighed. He slipped his arms around Jack’s waist in return and pulled him in for a kiss that made all the captain’s hard work worth it. Then, he abruptly pushed away. Jack watched stupidly as he stalked across the deck, Myfanwy waddling after him like an enormous overgrown duckling.
“Where are you going?”
“Sorry, sir, I have to feed her - won’t take a moment.”
“But - I won.”
Ianto disappeared into the storage area without a reply, leaving Jack standing alone and bereft again in the cold Hub. He was still there a few minutes later when Ianto reappeared in a pair of surgical bottoms. He looked adorable, but his face and his manner were utterly professional. Nothing like a man who'd just spent half an hour hiding naked under a staircase from his boss.
Despairing, Jack watched as he tied on an apron, the fluff of his chest hair peeking out under the bib.
”Why are you standing there?” Said Ianto, “Go down to your bunk, I’ll be there in a minute.”
If Myfanwy had moved quickly in pursuit of her prize, Jack was ten times as fast. Ianto watched him charge across the Hub toward his office, the long tail of Owen’s lab coat, still wrapped around his middle, flapping behind him.
The pterodactyl tutted and nudged him softly with her beak, reminding Ianto to get back to the task at hand.
“Yes, yes, you’re very clever.” He gave her a fond scritch along the crest. “Cleverest search and rescue dinosaur in Wales… I’ll have to be the one to bribe you, next time.”
The light went on in Jack’s office and Ianto heard the clang of the hatch being swung open. He calculated that he had about a minute of Jack sitting peacefully in his bunk, and about two minutes before he started bellowing. He’d let the captain stew a little bit, of course, under the pretext of punishing him for his cheat - it wouldn’t do to let him think he’d won all the time.
Plus, the more frustrated Jack became, the better the game in the end. And the better the game now, the easier it would be to blackmail his playmate into good behavior with the promise future rounds. Ianto wasn’t a proud person, but he liked to think of himself as someone who could bend his surroundings to suit his will, a problem solver.