Just a little piece of valentines fluff. Hope you enjoy.
For any of you who read my other stuff, this was chopped out of 'Torchwood don't have holidays' due to extreme fluffiness which didn't really move the story on, but I liked it anyway, so here it is.

Jack grinned at the string of oaths coming from the direction of the bedroom. His evil plan was working perfectly. Ianto was frazzled enough that he definitely wouldn't know what day it was, let alone what time.

They'd been chasing Weevils until 3am and Jack had decided Ianto was going to catch up on sorely needed sleep. The rest of the team could help Starbucks meet its daily quota. It might make them appreciate Ianto a bit more if they had to drink substandard coffee.

The sound of running water drew Jack towards the bathroom. "Don't panic, Ianto," he called. "We've got plenty of time."

Ianto's head emerged from the shower, stubbornly not followed by the rest of him. "You unplugged the alarm clock," he accused.

"I did," Jack agreed. "And I've already told the others we're having the morning off, barring the world actually starting to end. So," he paused suggestively, "No reason to rush through your shower."

The head withdrew, without so much as an invitation for Jack to join him. The evil plan was falling in a heap. Jack trudged back into the kitchen to work on his strategy.

Ianto emerged eventually. Wearing, Jack was pleased to see, jeans and a T-shirt. Not Jack's favorite jeans, unfortunately, the ones that hugged his hips just the right way, but at least he wasn't suited up already. Casual clothes were a good sign. Now if he could just get Ianto back out of them Jack's morning would be perfect.

"I take it this means we've got time for a proper breakfast," Ianto said, with every sign of happiness. And no sign at all that he'd noticed the eyebrows or the hopeful leer. He owed Jack for the alarm clock, Ianto reminded himself, as he watched Jack's face fall. Jack didn't bother hiding his expressions around Ianto anymore, which was significant in a way that probably shouldn't be explored before breakfast.

Still, a proper breakfast. No donuts, no chocolate-filled croissant eaten in the SUV. Visions of porridge swam in his head. Real porridge, cooked slowly, the way it should be, instead of that ready-in-one-minute gunk. With raisins and possibly a sprinkle of cinnamon. Even the Healthy Eating pyramid would approve of that sort of breakfast.

Jack's face brightened as a thought struck. "Pancakes?" he said hopefully.

Ianto chuckled. "Just what I was going to suggest," he agreed, because by now he was regretting his grumpy reaction on waking. No porridge, then. No healthy breakfast. Nothing much to be done except watch his resolution to eat better fall in a crumpled heap before the first hurdle.

"I'll help," Jack offered. The eager expression on Jack's face reconciled Ianto to the loss of the porridge, even to the disaster area that his kitchen would become. Or maybe it was their kitchen. A slightly scary concept he didn't really want to investigate right now. Or ever. Jack's stance on labels was infectious.

"I'll make up the batter, you fry," Ianto decided. "And don't look at me like that, Jack. You are never sifting anything in this kitchen again."

-XXX-

Jack poured maple syrup over his stack with a lavish hand before glancing over at Ianto. More specifically, at Ianto's plate. One lonely pancake, rolled around something that looked suspiciously – healthy. Jack sighed. Indulgent breakfast and healthy just didn't mix. He poked Ianto's solitary pancake experimentally with his knife.

"Yoghurt?" he demanded.

"And berries," Ianto added, eating a mouthful. Didn't even have the decency to drip anything on his chin.

Jack looked at his own plate. It was a vision worthy of a magazine advert. On his plate rested a towering stack of fluffy golden pancakes with a viscous waterfall of maple syrup flowing down their sides. He sighed. "You're ruining this for me, Ianto."

Ianto dropped his eyes. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Jack eyed him with sudden suspicion. "What's going on?" he demanded. "You ordered vegetarian pizza last night and now you're onto fruit and yoghurt." His gaze sharpened and something that couldn't be panic fluttered in his chest. "Is something wrong? Are you sick? Has Owen said …."

Jack's tirade cut off mid-sentence as a blush colored Ianto's cheeks, spreading enchantingly down into his neck. Jack clamped down on the impulse to investigate how much further the blush would spread –with and without further encouragement - and focused his thoughts back onto the matter at hand.

"What's wrong?" he repeated.

Ianto mumbled something. Possibly in Welsh.

"Ianto?"

"My jeans don't fit," Ianto burst out, head hanging. "Those ones you like."

Jack laughed. "Is that why you aren't wearing them? I thought that was payback for the alarm clock."

Ianto placed his knife and fork carefully onto his plate. "It's not funny." he said, still not looking up. "I tried to put them on, and I couldn't. The….the button wouldn't close. Or the zip. They're too tight."

Jack gaped at him, still trying to work out why this was such a huge admission. "So buy some new ones," he suggested. "I could help you choose." Now that, Jack thought dreamily, absently shoveling a forkful of sticky pancake into his mouth, was one of his better ideas. He could just picture himself sitting in a changing room, watching Ianto undressing several times in the space of minutes, in between modeling ever-more-snug pieces of denim. The stuff that dreams were made of, indeed.

Ianto's red-faced humiliation punctured the daydream.

"What's so bad about needing new jeans?" Jack demanded, still way out of his depth. It wasn't as though Ianto couldn't afford them. He happily spent a small fortune on tailor-made suits. What was the big deal about maybe needing a larger size…..oh. Right. Twenty-first century body image issues. Crap. Crap that needed to be dealt with firmly.

"Ianto," Jack said, marshalling the combined authority of boss and…um… whatever he was that might be undefined but definitely gave him a stake in what Ianto's body looked like. "Don't you dare go on a diet."

"I'm putting on weight," Ianto hissed, face still burning. "It's not just the jeans, it's…"

"About bloody time," Jack shot back. "I've got permanent bruises on my hipbones, and you gotta admit that's a bit of a feat."

Ianto blinked, slowly, the way he did when his mind was working too fast for the rest of him to catch up.

"But you….we…I…" he began. Damn, he was cute when he was flustered. Jack grinned.

"I mean, look at you, Jack, you've got a bloody perfect six pack. And I've got…..I've got a... a muffin top." Maybe, Ianto thought hopefully, the Rift would open and swallow him, complete with insecurities that he never should have confessed to. Then again, the Rift never could be counted on to do anything useful.

Jack made a huge deal out of peeling his T-shirt away from this abdomen. "This?" he asked innocently.

"That," Ianto confirmed, swallowing hard at the mere sight. Damn it, he was worse than Pavlov's dog. "Abs you could bounce a coin off," he added huskily, wondering if it was biologically possible to blush any redder. His face probably matched the strawberries inside his pancake.

Jack grinned. "Wanna know a secret?"

"Not really," Ianto answered, dragging his eyes back to his neglected, relatively healthy breakfast, and noticing that the yoghurt was making his pancake soggy.

"It's not natural," Jack admitted. He leaned closer. "But if you tell Owen that, I'll have to feed you both Retcon."

Ianto merely blinked at him, his mouth shaping into a perfect cartoon-like 'O' of astonishment. The blush was fading though, which was progress.

"I had a makeover," Jack admitted. "Just before the whole 'fixed point in time' experience. So it kinda goes back, y'know? Only not exactly. Like copying from a copy."

Too much information. Ianto's eyes were glazing over. "It doesn't matter," Jack said briskly, tucking his T-shirt back in. "What matters is you don't need to lose weight. Especially not for me."

More blinking, but this time the eyes behind the blink refocused. "I don't?" Ianto asked.

"You don't," Jack confirmed. He grinned broadly. "I like you just the way you are."

Ianto looked suddenly adorably boyish. "Really?"

"You want me to sing the rest of it?"

"Please don't. Just pass me the maple syrup. And another pancake."

Jack pried one from the bottom of his stack. "Made this one especially for you," he said proudly.

Ianto gazed in bemusement at the oddly shaped object on his plate. "Is that a…."

Jack swiveled the plate around. Yes, it was. A perfectly heart-shaped pancake.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Ianto."

And happy Valentines Day to all of you, too.