Title: Appearing apparel
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,436 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 421 - Trail
Summary: Jack and Ianto have gone missing, but they’ve left clues for Gwen to follow.



‘Hello!’ Gwen called out, shaking her head to dislodge the few drops of rain from her hair that had started up outside. It was promising to be one of those bleak sort of days that were best spent indoors. No fear of that, Gwen thought. Despite the enormous pile of reports on her desk that all required her attention, the rift would no doubt have other ideas and force them out into the rain.

When no one replied, Gwen called out again. She knew both Jack and Ianto would be around. They always were; like clockwork, she'd come to rely on their presence first thing in the morning. How they managed to get up that early when they were probably still up even later than she was baffled her. There was a begrudging jealousy she harboured that two people could be so bright and chirpy on so little sleep. Clearly that first coffee of the morning must work miracles.

‘Oi, your bacon butties are getting cold!’ she yelled out. ‘I had to fight off Rhys and a legion of angry Welshman truckers for these!’ she added.

She waited for any response and got none. She sighed. ‘Right, guess it's just me then.’ She moved over to her computer, flicking the screen on. Maybe there'd been a rift alert that they hadn't told her about. Escaped weevil during peak hour, or something else perhaps.

‘What fun are you off having without me?’ she muttered, bringing up all the latest data from their mainframe systems. Huh. Nothing. Not so much as a phone call from one of Jack's old flames. Not that she had direct access to Jack's phone records, but she knew Ianto would have texted her if he had. Usually something along the lines of "One of Jack's exes about to become a potential trouble source. Will try not to punch them. Or Jack. Let you know if I need help. I."

Gwen took a large bite from her own bacon but tie, feeling brown sauce squeeze out the side and drip down into the crumpled paper bag. ‘Okay, so where the hell have you two gotten to?’

She popped into Jack’s office and stuck her head, albeit somewhat reluctantly, down into the hatch that led to his underground bachelor pad. It was dark down there, but no sign of anyone. That was annoying.
‘Okay, fine. Let's do this the old fashioned way.’

She did a reconnoitre of all the usual places she might expect to to find the pair of them, or even just one of them, assuming they were already deep into work. Nothing was happening up in the conference room; there was no one chained and cuffed to the table down in the interrogation room; she already knew the SUV was parked precisely where it should be, right next to her own car, with zero passengers inside. The lab was pristine, the autopsy bay empty and the weapons room securely locked. The kitchen showed no evidence of early morning coffee mugs and down in the cells the weevils were still slumbering or otherwise quietly occupying themselves in their cells.

‘Where the hell have you got to?’ Gwen muttered, taking the stairs all the way down to the firing range, though not able to think why they'd be down there at this hour.

She didn't find them, though she did find a few guns abandoned on a table, along with spare munitions. It wasn't like Ianto and Jack to leave those sorts of things lying around if they weren't using them. Beginning to worry, she called Ianto's phone. It rang so loudly Gwen could hear it, looking back over her shoulder and finding it resting, along with Jack’s own phone, on top of Jack's coat, neatly folded on a bench. Great.

There were only two other corridors that led down here so she took a fifty-fifty guess and began down one of them. She had to walk a fair distance before something stopped her in her tracks. She bent down and picked up a sock. It was black. One of Ianto's, since Jack only wore grey socks. Were they…? She carried on walking, and after a while she found another one. Grey this time. She took the stairs up a level and a pair of braces lay crumpled in a pile in the middle of the corridor. ‘Bloody hell,’ Gwen said, following the trail of discarded clothes, knowing she was going to hit pay dirt at some point.

Shirts, t-shirts, Ianto's trousers… The pile was growing in Gwen's arms. When she stumbled over the first pair of underwear she nearly left it there. Gwen Cooper was not the maid and did not lower herself to picking up her colleagues smallclothes, but she had collected the rest so it felt a bit petty to leave them behind. At least they appeared clean. She used Jack’s t-shirt to gather them up without having to handle them directly and then did the same when she found pair number two. When had Ianto started wearing Calvin Kleins, she absently wondered.

At one point she’d found Ianto’s watch which then beeped at her unexpectedly, nearly making her drop her laundry. It was the snooze alarm that beeped out at ten minute intervals if the original alarm wasn't switched off. It beeped at her several times as she kept locating more items: Ianto's tie and Ianto's suit jacket, before finally finding herself standing outside the row of rooms that served as guest quarters. Only one of the six doors hung open. She wasn't sure she wanted to look inside, but she’d seen it all when it came to her two teammates. It felt pretty pointless not to confirm they were in there after all the time she'd wasted trying to find them.

All in all, it was a little anticlimactic. There was no pornographic action scene, no one inappropriately dressed in leather or chained to a wall. Just two men tucked up in bed fast asleep like it was a lazy Sunday morning.

Ianto’s watch chose that moment to beep out its ten minute snooze alarm once more. This time however, it was close enough for someone other than Gwen to hear it. Ianto shifted in the bed, rolling over and detaching himself from Jack who remained oblivious to the noise. Ianto sleepily, and without opening his eyes, reached across to the bedside table and began blindly searching with his hand for the offending item. After several fumbling passes being unable to lay his hands on anything he finally relented and cracked open his eyes, finding Gwen standing over him, his watch dangling from her hand.

‘Looking for this?’ Gwen asked, holding the watch out. Ianto frowned and took it from her, switching off the beeping alarm which went ignored by Jack. Honestly, that man could sleep through nuclear armageddon.

Ianto rolled back over and shook Jack’s shoulder. ‘Jack, wake up. Its nearly half nine.’

Jack finally woke, stretching lazily, the duvet slipping further down his torso as he did, though thankfully not so far that Gwen got a view of anything more than his belly button. ‘Morning, gorgeous.’

Gwen cleared her throat loudly, letting Jack know that he wasn’t alone.

‘Morning, Gwen,’ he said, unperturbed by her presence, like that should surprise her. ‘Come to join us? Always room for one more.’

She tossed the scrunched ball of clothes at him, hitting him in the chest and smacking him in the face. ‘I've been around half the bloody hub trying to find you.’

Jack didn't let her mood dampen his early morning good spirits. ‘Did you find my trousers?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. Ianto couldn't find them either.’

‘To be fair, you can't remember where you hid them either,’ Ianto reminded him.

‘Naked hide and seek again, was it?’ Gwen asked, wondering when it had become so accepted that she could openly talk about it. ‘You're lucky I found you at all. You're like the X-rated version of Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail of your clothes behind in case you can't find your way back to the hub.’

‘Blame Jack,’ Ianto said. ‘I tried to gather up all our clothes and take them with us but he was in such a mood that I kept dropping bits all the time. Do you know how hard it is to hold a bundle of clothes when someone is–’

‘Stop!’ Gwen yelled. ‘Don’t need to hear about it.’

‘Gwen’s right, Ianto. I won. Fair and square. I was just claiming my prize,’ Jack argued. ‘Who worries about laundry at a time like that?’