Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack, Ianto

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,500 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 313 - Iron

Summary: Jack has raised some very serious concerns over Ianto's attempts to do their laundry.

'Stop, stop stop,' Jack said, walking into the living room to find Ianto stood up behind their ironing board with an enormous basket of laundry. The pile on its own was enough to frighten the faint-hearted, but it was Ianto's attempts to make inroads on it that were Jack's primary focus.

'What?' Ianto replied looking at him with a strange curiosity.

Jack came to a halt in front of the ironing board, giving Ianto a look that hopefully signaled his displeasure at the scene in front of him. He sucked in a breath and set his hands on his hips, hoping the pose was sufficiently Captain like, or at least aggravated husband like at worst. 'What do you think you're doing?'

Ianto gave a long suffering sigh. 'What does it look like? I'm penning my memoirs.'

Jack snorted in spite of himself. Not everyone understood Ianto's dry sense of humour but Jack was well-versed and knew a witty remark from a serious statement. 'Such a comedian, you are.'

'Someone had to be the intellectual humour to your slapstick. Now, you were saying?'

'Yes,' Jack began, glad that Ianto had put them back on topic. 'I want to know what you think you're doing with that,' he said, pointing at the iron.

Jack received one of Ianto's trademark stares. 'I'll go fetch my box of crayons and explain it to you, shall I?'

Ianto was in fine form this morning, Jack decided, if only in some respects. It usually took a decent blow to turn head to knock the sense out of him, but Jack was left wondering it he wasn't sufieldng from some kind of as yet undetected injury that made him partly lose his faculties. 'You can't do the laundry.'

'Why not?'

Jack pointed down at Ianto's bandaged right hand, the product of a minor explosion out in the field yesterday that had left him with a mild concussion and a bunch of glass shards stuck into his hand where he'd raised it to shield his face. Perhaps that concussion had affected him more than everyone thought. 'You can't iron with that,' Jack said, as if to emphasise the point that ironing left-handed with a bandaged right hand was sheer madness.

Ianto waved his left hand in Jack's face. 'Pretty sure I can.'

Jack took Ianto's uninjured hand and pulled it down and away from his face, tugging it further until Ianto was forced to sit perched on thdge edge of the sofa next to Jack. 'We both know you're not as good with your left hand.'

It was Ianto's turn to scoff at Jack. 'I didn't hear you complaining about my left hand doing all the hard work the other night.'

Jack smirked. He most certainly hadn't, and largely because Jack had his other hand preoccupied with other things, but it was good to know he could pleasure with both simultaneously. There were parts of the Vegas Galaxy where people paid extra for that. Jack tired hard to school his features back into serious boss mode. 'We both know you are multi-talented but you'll never be quite as good a shot with your left hand as your right.' Truth be told be was deadly with both, but Jack wasn't as prepared to put money ion the table to play William Tell to Ianto's left-handed marksmanship. Even immortals needed to exercise some common sense.

'It's all just a lack of practice,' Ianto assured him. 'Give me an automatic and I don't even need my right hand.'

'Except to throw off the safety,' Jack reminded him.

'Splitting hairs now, but fine. Like I said, it's just down to how much practise I put in.'

'So, you thought you'd get in some of that practise by putting great black holes in all our shirts?'

To say Ianto looked indignant was an understatement. 'I've never so much as even singed a piece of clothing. And ironing is not the same as shooting a firearm.'

'All the same, let's not spoil that unblemished record.' There was a reason Jack left his laundry and ironing in Ianto's far more capable hands. Not to mention that Jack had always despised ironing.

'And so who is going to do all of this then?' he asked, gesturing at the basket laden with about two weeks worth of shirts and trousers. Jack hated it when things were busy and their domestic life got this out of control. He could only imagine how Ianto must have felt about it, being as houseproud as he was.

'I'll do it.' The words tumbled from his lips before he could second guess himself and take them back.

Ianto fell backwards on the sofa, laughing uproariously. 'You? Ironing?' There was more laughter as he folded his bandaged hand around his middle, like he might burst apart from the effort.

Jack got his back up at being so openly mocked. 'I can iron!'

Ianto turned to him. 'Since when? I have never seen you iron a shirt in the entire time we have lived together. I've been doing your laundry and dry cleaning for years. Why, when I first met you, your solution to laundry was to open a fresh shirt out of a packet every day. Even then you never bothered about the creases.'

'It was not every day,' Jack argued. 'You just never noticed the days when it wasn't a new shirt. And hey, I get a backlog of laundry too. When some alien spits up on your last clean shirt, there's no other option.' And in his line of work he did go through an awful lot of shirts that were well beyond being saved by a bit of laundry powder and a gentle spin cycle.

'I would have thought you'd opt for nakedness at that juncture,' Ianto teased.

'Maybe I would if you lot didn't keep insisting I wear clothes,' Jack retorted. 'And yes, I did laundry back then, before I met you. I've been wearing shirts for over a hundred years. I've had to iron more shirts than any man in living history. You've got nothing on me for the amout of laundry I've gone through and the amount of shirts that have gone to God in the line of duty. Can you blame a guy for wanting to occasionally take the easy way out?'

Ianto gave him a look that was part skepticism at his admission and part having to accept that there was no other explanation for it. Ianto was a logical guy and some times there was just no beating logic. He raised a questioning eyebrow. 'And the egg on your collar?'

'It was a busy morning!' How many times did Ianto have to dredge up that memory? Barely any sleep, breakfast on the run, a full schedule of rift alerts and ongoing investigations... How was a guy meant ot keep spotless in his line of work?

'You'd really take over the ironing?'

Jack rested a hand on Ianto's leg, wishing he hadn't been injured in the first place. 'Not permanently. I know how much of a perfectionist you are. Don't wanna do less of a job of it than you'd be happy with, but I think, given the circumstances...'

Ianto looked down at the bandaged hand in his lap and though better of attempting the task. Jack could tell that the last thing Ianto wanted was scorch marks on some of his favourite shirts, or to have to replace some of Jack's identical blue shirts, even if he probably wouldn't notice so much, or at all. 'Yeah, okay. Probably not in the best shape to tackle this, am I? I just felt so guilty at how much of it had piled up on us and that we wouldn't have anything left to wear soon. Well, nothing we'd want the team seeing us wearing in any case.'

Jack gave him a warm reassuring smile, taking his undamaged left hand and bringing it up to his lips to kiss it. 'And do you know what worries me the most about you attempting this?'

'No.'

Jack pointed down at the plug in the wall. 'You were trying to do it without turning the thing on at the wall.'

'Oh.' There was a slight flush of pink blooming over his cheeks at the revelation. 'I did wonder why it wasn't working very well.' He gently reached up and rubbed the back of his head. 'Maybe I hit it a little harder than I thought.'

Jack leaned over and kissed his temple. 'Maybe you did. And even though Owen cleared you of anything serious, I think perhaps it would be best not to push things too hard, too soon, yeah?'

'You might be right, just this once.'

Jack grinned. Now that was a victory. 'A compromise then. How about I let you fold the socks and you leave all the dangerous stuff to me?'

Ianto gave him a roll of the eyes. 'Sounds just like a normal day at Torchwood.'