Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Gwen, Ianto (mentions Jack)

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG-13

Length:1,508 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 252 - Key and Challenge 176 - Naked (Bingo square)

Summary: Ianto has unlocked many a secret playing naked hide and seek.

'You look exhausted,' Gwen remarked, watching the sleepy expression on Ianto's face as he raised the mug of coffee to his lips.

'My own fault,' he apologised. 'Our game of naked hide and seek lasted six hours last night. We only got to bed at four am.'

Gwen nearly spat her own coffee out in shock. 'Six hours? How the hell do you play a child's game for six hours?'

Ianto smiled at Gwen's choice of words. Naked hide and seek was definitely not a kids game. It wasn't even a game for most adults, but somehow it had become a tried as true form of entertainment for them, despite Ianto's usual shyness. Somehow Jack brought out the competitive spirit in him, to the point that not wearing any clothes rather lost its importance.

'Believe it or not, Gwen, when played properly, it really can go for a very long time.'

Gwen looked unconvinced. 'But it's just hide and seek. How hard can it be?'

'Well, having to find clothing and the person in question does add a layer of complexity,' he admitted.

'Yeah, but if you've been playing for a while surely all the same hiding places keep getting used.'

Ianto chuckled. 'The hub is a big place, Gwen, even when we set certain areas as strictly out of bounds.' If anything their hiding places were getting more and more inventive, even if they sometimes went too far, like that time Jack had locked himself in the boot of Ianto's car, then passed out from the lack of air. 'And you only get twenty minutes,' Ianto reminded her, sure he'd mentioned that part of the rules in a earlier conversation at least once. 'Trust me, if we didn't put a time limit in place, it truly would go on for days and days.' There were plenty of times where he'd failed to find Jack at all, and was still left scratching his head as to just where his lover had gotten to.

When they'd first stared playing that game that Ianto himself had devised, it had been a flip of the coin that usually decided who won, whilst they were each figuring out the rules and what tactics could be employed to improve their chances of winning. Games in those early days were short-lived, and often used merely as foreplay to what they really wanted. Many a game, even nowadays was abandoned before it reached its conclusion, simply because they couldn't keep their hands off each other a minute longer. Who really cared who won?

After a while though, patterns began to emerge: favoured places to hide, obvious plays like trying to find smaller pieces of clothing early on, because larger items were always trickier to find. It took more and more to develop a long game strategy for winning. It didn't help of course that Jack cheated, though he always swore he didn't. There were times when Ianto was sure Jack couldn't have possibly found where he'd hidden either himself or items of clothing, not without having hacked into CCTV or some other system, tracking his movements.

Jack, on account of his less than ethical methods, won more often than not, which at times was frustrating, especially when Ianto knew he had the upper hand, or more to the point, more of Jack's clothes in his custody than his opponent had his. Sometimes Jack let him win, he was sure, just to make the game seemed fairer, and other times even when he did cheat, Ianto still managed to beat the odds with his own deviousness. Ianto was nothing if not creative in his hiding spots. To this day, Jack had never found the socks that Ianto sometimes dumped inside their kettle after having tipped all the water out. To his mind, it seemed an obvious hiding spot, but then, at least he knew to always rinse the kettle out the morning after.

'The key,' Ianto began, about to divulge the one thing that had kept him from losing more games than he won, 'is not to keep things hidden.' He smirked as he watched the look of confusion cross her face.

'I don't understand. You're not hiding?'

'Well, that's not strictly true. There is an element of hiding involved. The trick is to keep moving. Jack tries to re-hide things in new places once they've been searched and not found. That's where he's got it all wrong. You go back and put things where they've already been searched. It's easy really. You don't even have to hide them properly. Leave them out in the open, hidden in pain sight. It works just as well.'

Gwen continued to frown at him.

'Okay, let me give you an example. Suppose I hide my shirt hanging underneath Jack's coat on the stand in Jack's office and he finds it. As soon as he's done searching there, I sneak in and take say, my tie, and I roll it up and leave it on his desk in amongst all the other clutter.

He's found something in his office already, so he's not going to go back there and look again, is he? So why bother putting it somewhere sneaky? And that's assuming he finds my shirt at all. I laugh when he goes and checks locked drawers, old filing cabinets and the secure archives. He completely forgets to go straight for the obvious sometimes.' Ianto had been busted on more than one occasion, unable to keep his sniggering to a sufficiently quiet level watching Jack walk straight past things.

'That's doesn't sound like Jack,' Gwen observed. 'When we go out on a rift alert, he's as sharp eyed as anyone.'

'Exactly. Rift alerts are different. He expects alien stuff to be out in the open. When we play hide and seek though, he expects me to be sneaky.'

'That all sounds a little too easy, then. Reverse psychology.'

'Oh, believe me, it took me ages to really master the game, but now Jack is almost as good without cheating. We go whole rounds now without finding a single piece of clothing or each other. It can be quite vexing, particularly if you're eager to get the game over and done with.

Gwen leaned back and folded her arms. 'Well, I feel like maybe you've now given away all the secrets to playing.'

'Oh, there's others.' Ianto gave her a cheeky smile. 'I'm not about to give away everything. You just never know when Jack might be eavesdropping.'

Gwen pulled a face at him, considering Ianto carefully. 'So, did you really just give me the ultimate key to winning?'

He smirked again. 'Of course not. If you want to know that you'll just have to learn it for yourself.'

'Let's hope I never find myself playing, then,' she said. 'I'm all for putting up with Jack parading around with no clothes on, but doing it with him is something I'll leave to you. Besides, I don't think the rewards would be quite as appealing for me.' Jack was handsome and dashing, but she'd long ago lost that lustful desire for something more. 'So, after six hours did you end up winning?'

'Oh, yes. And I wasn't going to let all that effort go to waste. I did make it worth my while,' he confessed.

Gwen held up a hand. 'Okay, stop. I don't need to know what happens once you finally determine a winner. I'm pretty sure Jack had covered off on that bit more times than I care to remember.'

Ianto grinned. 'Oh, it was nothing like that.' He could still remember uncovering Jack from his hiding spot, dropping his last sock at his feet and grinning. 'Looks like I won, Jack.' That made it all that much sweeter, knowing that even with Jack's attempts to cheat that he'd defied the odds and claimed the ultimate prize.

Jack was relatively humble in defeat, gripping Ianto by the hips and pulling him close. After six hours he'd lost some of that desperate need, but there was plenty of lust still there. Ianto was still wearing his underpants and his shirt, hanging loose and open. It didn't seem worth buttoning it up when Jack had seemed likely to force him into another round. It would just be easier and quicker to tug it off when the time came.

'So, I guess that means I'm all yours,' Jack crooned, knowing that losing was almost as good as winning. Sometimes it was fun to let Ianto call the shots.

'You are all mine,' Ianto confirmed, 'and I know exactly what I want to do with you.'

Watching Jack scrub the water tower in the nude had made for some very nice viewing indeed. 'Let's just say I made good use of that stunning physique, though he may not have it enjoyed it quite as much as I did.' The rules for playing might be set in stone, but there was no fixed rules about how you got to spend your reward for winning.