Jack pulled up by the grand entrance and let Ianto and Tybalt out, then took the Jaguar around to the designated parking area down the side of the house. He pulled his collar up and left the bags in the boot to get later to run, head down, into the wind that howled around the corner of the building. Several UNIT guards, most of them armed, stood around in the foyer acting as footmen, and one got the door for him as he reached it. Whilst Tybalt prowled around the foyer, Ianto stepped up and slid Jack's coat from his shoulders, then passed it on to a hovering guard who whisked it away to the coat room. A reception desk had been set up between the two grand staircases, and Jack led the way over to it. The guard working the desk was watching Tybalt with an air of bemused concern, but when Ianto went and picked him up again, he seemed to decide that the cat was not his problem and turned his attention back to Jack. "Torchwood, Harkness," he stated baldly and turned back to Ianto. "Who are you with, then?"

"Captain Harkness, your room key," the guard at the desk had pulled an envelope out of a box and offered it to him. "The card key and your security pass are in there, sir. I need you to sign for them."

"Of course, where am I going?"

"Up the left hand stairs, turn left at the top and go to the far end of the corridor. The Torchwood offices and the Downing Street office have that floor of the West Wing. Your card will unlock the main door into the wing and your own room. Sir, you are?"

"Downing Street, Jones," Ianto leaned on the desk next to Jack.

The guard nodded and found the envelope. He frowned as he read the details on it. "I'm sorry, sirs, there must have been a mix-up. You've been put in the same room."

"Not a mix-up," Jack took the envelope from him and gave it to Ianto.

"But..." He stuttered, "it's a double, not a twin..."

"Like I said," Jack smirked as Ianto carefully attached his security badge and avoided looking at them. "Not a mistake."

"Right, good, I'll... Your schedules and information packs are in your room, then."

"Is there a digital version?" Ianto asked.

"Yes, there's a disk with the files, Sir."

"Good," he looked out at the weather and fished Jack's car keys out of his trouser pockets whilst he dumped Tybalt on the desk from his other hand. "Let's get the bags from the car. Would you mind watching the cat for us for a moment? Thanks so much."

The wind had died down a little, but it had started raining as well, so they were soaked and very glad to be indoors when they got back to the foyer with their bags. Jack grumbled about Ianto's suit bags, but still insisted on carrying them, and Ianto gave him his most amused and indulgent smile as UNIT guards and a couple of government aides scuttled out of their way. Tybalt jumped down from the desk as soon as they reappeared and was content to follow them – trips between Ianto's flat, Downing Street, Ally's house, the Hub and finally their flat in Cardiff had trained him in settling in to new locations well enough for bringing him to be the most practical solution. It was a long corridor, especially when carrying a week's worth of clothes, and Jack dumped them in the corridor before he went looking for their room. Ianto rescued his suit bag and checked the room number on his envelope. "Room number 7, Jack."

Jack was already swiping his card in the lock and pushed the door open, then reached behind it to hook it open. "Home sweet home for a week," he came and picked his bag up and Ianto went past him into the room where he started hanging his suits in the wardrobe, whilst Tybalt leaped into a chair by the window to watch the proceedings. "Nice room, though."

"Yeah, it is," Ianto agreed over his shoulder. The bed was a four poster with cream drapes and a cream, gold and ivory bedspread. It bounced when Jack hauled his bag onto it. The carpet was thick and a rich, dark red - almost chocolatey in colour - and the furniture was all made of beech. Ianto sorted his things out and settled back onto the bed to watch Jack do the same. "Very comfy bed."

"Yeah? Want to try it out?" Jack leered at him and stood quickly from his bag – if Ianto had stood that fast he'd have got a head rush.

But Ianto just leaned back and grinned. "No, I want to watch you put your stuff away, then I want to look at my schedule for the week, synch it with my Blackberry, run through my notes for my presentations on Tuesday and Thursday and then explore this place," Jack's face fell slightly, but he shrugged and went back to putting things away. "And then, after dinner with the heads of UNIT and whoever else is here, I want an early night."

"Are you tired?"

"Nope," he grinned. "But this is a very, very comfortable bed."

Jack got the last of his things put away and picked the files up from the desk, then crawled up onto the bed until he straddled Ianto. "You can have your paperwork when I have a kiss."

Ianto sighed and leaned up to kiss him, then tugged the file from his hands. "Jack Harkness descending to bribery to get a kiss, I never thought I'd see the day."

"Ianto Jones, accepting bribery in order to get his hands on paperwork. I'd say that I never thought I'd see the day but..." Jack shrugged and flopped beside him. "I already had."

"Jack..."

"Yes dear?"

"Shut up," Ianto didn't look up as he flicked through his schedule. "My schedule's changed slightly, yours probably has too. You should check it."

Jack sighed and swung around to sit on the edge of the bed to pull his boots off, then turned back to take Ianto's shoes off too. "Reckon we'll be in the same places still?"

"Probably," he agreed. "Tickle my feet and I'll kick you. Amanda wasn't going to attempt to split us up last time I checked."

"Why do I get the feeling that people assume that I wouldn't go to the talks I'm supposed to be at if you weren't in them?" Jack sighed and ran his fingers firmly up the arch of Ianto's foot, then wrapped his large hand around Ianto's ankle. "That wasn't a rhetorical question, by the way."

"Oh. I don't know, you've managed to go on your own for years before you even met me," Ianto twisted his foot out of Jack's grasp. "Your talk's on Tuesday afternoon, right before mine. Same room too."

"That's convenient."

"Yeah, it's the Torchwood block. We're in there all day with reports from all the offices. I'm the penultimate, then Liberty Towers do their report. The discussion about reopening Torchwood London is on Thursday – I think everyone's going to that," he commented with surprise. "There's nothing scheduled against it."

"It's a big issue," Jack sat back and reached for his own file to check his schedule. "I've been called on to give evidence for and against. You okay with it?"

Ianto shrugged and set the file aside to pull out the stack of reports they'd been sent. "It needs to be more regulated than it was before. The United Nations needs a representative above UNIT who all the organisations report to, but there also needs to be more inter-agency communication."

"What was your degree in?" Jack asked with a chuckle.

Ianto sighed and nudged him with his foot. "It was in English Language. And I didn't finish it.2

"I know, I'm only teasing," Jack smirked, but when he looked back to his schedule he groaned. "We've got a full day of presentations from UNIT. That will be..."

"Interesting?"

"Decidedly not," he flipped it shut and leaned over the side of the bed to get his laptop. "You got a disc with your schedule on it?"

"I have, will you run it for me?" he passed it over whilst Jack booted up the computer. "I shouldn't be this worried about this presentation, should I?"

"Public speaking's not everyone's thing, especially when it's such a contentious issue as you're presenting on Thursday," he thought back over the sentence and shook his head. "Anyway, you'll be fine. Are you going to wear a suit?"

"Yeah. I brought about a dozen," he chuckled and crawled around to lean over Jack's shoulder, resting his chin on it and his cheek against Jack's. "Possibly overkill, but you never know."

"This is true. Although I like you in this," Jack looked back at him and flicked the collar of his shirt where it emerged from his jumper. "It's, I don't know... More you, somehow."

"More me than what?"

"I don't know," a frown line formed between his eyes and he turned back to the computer. "Come on, computer."

Ianto chuckled and the schedule and notes finally opened. Jack saved it to his hard drive, then swapped the discs and held his hand up over his shoulder for Ianto's phone. "Got the cable?"

"Um... somewhere," he lurched off the bed and rummaged in his briefcase until he found it, then connected it up and sat next to Jack again. "Technology is a wonderful thing."

"It is. There we go, you're done," Jack disconnected his phone and handed it back to him. "Now, what else did you say needed doing?"

Ianto thought about it – about plans and schedules and notes for meetings and reading over reports he needed to present and be ready to hear. And then he thought about a Tudor mansion which would soon be filled with people, a sprawling mess of rooms and corridors, added to over the ears, owned by a Catholic sympathiser family during the Tudor reign, rumoured to be full of secret passages and priest holes. It wasn't a hard choice. "Come on, I want to go exploring."

They got some strange looks from the few representatives who had already arrived. Ianto recognised Mark Smith and his wife, Laura, from Australia, and Li Cheng from the Hong Kong Torchwood office when he and Jack poked their heads into the sitting room at the end of the wing, and they spent half an hour exchanging social news and discussing the conference. Tybalt followed them down to the sitting room, where Ianto had arranged for him to be fed, and found a fan in Laura. He curled up next to her and purred loudly when she stroked him. When Stuart Hill arrived – the sole representative from the Arctic Monitoring Station and someone with whom Jack didn't get on well – Jack and Ianto left Tybalt behind made their exit and went in search of secrets and surprises.

It was Jack who found the first one when he stuck his head up into one of the grand fireplaces whilst Ianto kept watch. He gave a low whistle and it echoed out of the fireplace, catching Ianto's attention. "There's a staircase up here," he stated quickly, ducking out to grin at Ianto. "Want to see where it goes?"

He hesitated, but barely for a moment. "Go on, get up there, I'll follow you up."

Jack ducked into the fireplace fully and Ianto turned his attention back to the corridor. Amanda went past at the far end of the corridor, the end that led to the front of the house, and she waved at him without really looking up from her Blackberry. When her footsteps faded into the distance and one of the big heavy doors slammed shut, Ianto turned and dived under the arch into the fireplace and looked around. It took him a moment to find the staircase – there was a ledge at about chest height on the right hand side, and the staircase was hidden behind the wall that partly shielded it. There was just enough room for Ianto to get up onto the ledge, and then he had to duck again to get onto the staircase. Once he was there, though, it opened out above him and he could stand and walk up the steep, sandstone steps, even if he couldn't see them. They hadn't been worn smooth, so Ianto guessed that not many people had used this hide-away. Maybe no one else knew about it even, it could be just his and Jack's. Speaking of whom... "Jack?" he called quietly, mindful of the echo and the carefully constructed air of mischief that lay over them. "Jack, how far ahead are you?"

"I've reached the top," Jack's voice was very close, and a second later Ianto turned the corner and walked into something warm and solid. "So have you."

"So I have," he took a step back so that he was one below Jack and leaned against the outer wall. "What's the hold up?"

"A door."

"Is it locked?"

"No, I just thought I'd wait for my eyes to adjust to be able to study it in detail," Jack sighed petulantly. "Note the irony mark."

"Shove over," he tugged on Jack's shirt until he could get up to the door and then fished in his pocket. "I bet I can get this open."

"It's a mortice lock, Ianto," Jack sighed. "And I've tried shoving a card in the join."

He chuckled and pulled out his specially designed multi-tool, then located the lock by touch and started work. "Hush, you," he nudged Jack further out of the way and bent down. "I'll get it."

Jack sighed heavily, the expansion of his diaphragm pushing his chest against Ianto's shoulder, and one of his hands came to rest lightly on the back of Ianto's head. "When you say you'll get it?"

"You know I got arrested once for shop lifting?" Ianto asked as an answer, giving the grip a sharp twist. He tried the handle again and the door swung open. "Well, I only got caught once."

Jack huffed a disbelieving laugh and followed Ianto into the room. Discussion was forgotten as they looked around, standing close together at one end of a massive, vaulted space. Presumably there had once been furniture in here, it was big enough for a family to hide up here for some time if they needed to but totally bare. Jack took a step towards the sloping roof that formed one side and raised his hand to run it down the nearest beam, his fingers tracing the grain and finding knots and holes. "I always wanted a house like this," he said quietly without turning back. "Somewhere with secret rooms that I could hide away in, somewhere that makes me feel young."

"Well, if Torchwood ever needs a new base," Ianto suggested. "There must be places like it."

"We could look for somewhere like this for Torchwood London," Jack mused and turned to look out of the floor-level window, down over the front lawns of the house where people had already started to park. "It's so big that you could all live there."

"I couldn't," Ianto pointed out and stepped up behind Jack, close enough to touch him but not doing so. "I won't be there, remember?"

"How could I forget?" Jack reached for him without looking and Ianto went to him, then followed the tug as Jack sank to the dusty, bare floorboards and leaned his temple against the ceiling. "I like it up here. It's peaceful."

Ianto nodded and leaned in against Jack. "We'll probably need it this week," he laughed slightly. "A hide-away from UNIT and aliens and weirdness."

"Everyone needs an escape," Jack smiled out at the gardens. "Tybalt settled in well, don't you think?"

"He's far too good at getting accustomed," Ianto muttered. "I think I've mentally scarred him."

"He copes," Jack kissed Ianto's temple. "We all cope. It's all we can do."

"What's up, Jack? Where have you gone?"

Jack's knuckles trailed down Ianto's arm and he looked out of the window again. "It's this house, it's so old. Older than I am and... and so much older than you are. I just feel a bit like a child molester at the moment."

Ianto smiled and curled in on him. "You've not got many options if you follow the 'half your age plus seven' rule, have you?"

He snorted. "No, I suppose not. I wonder how long it's been since someone came up here last? If there's been anyone up here in your lifetime."

"I hope not, I hope we're the only ones who know about it," Ianto traced patterns in the dust and tipped his head when he heard, faintly, the big grandfather clock striking the hour three floors below them. "Six, dinner time. You want to eat?"

Jack sighed and pulled away from Ianto to let him up. "Yeah, we'd better. And then get an early night. Long day tomorrow."

"Always is," Ianto pointed out as he took one more look around the room. Jack left first and left the door open for him. "Always is," he repeated more quietly, and followed Jack out and down the steep staircase.