Rating: T

Word count: ~ 1,400

Warnings: Cavity-inducing fluff.

Summary: Ianto has a new pet, and Jack is waging a desperate war.

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: The four-legged character in this is based off a real-life kitten my wife and I just adopted, whose background is the same. We went into a vet's office to see if they knew of any local breeders, and were just in time to hear two technicians discussing an eight-week-old Ragdoll kitten who had spent the last three weeks of her life in a cage in the back room, because her former owner had wanted to put her down for no easily apparent reason. The technicians had offered to find her a home rather than kill her, saving her life, and so we took her in. (She really does seem to be at war with my wife, too.)

To sum up: animal shelters are wonderful, and a great place to find a wonderful pet. But veterinarians also know of a lot of animals in need of homes, many of whom are overlooked. If you're ever thinking of getting a pet, keep that in mind.

(Wow, I sat down to write fairy!angst and ended up writing five pages of kitten fluff. Usually, it's the other way around.)

Hostile Takeover

(Or, Jack vs. the Dust Bunny Demon-Kitten)

There's a little white fluffball sitting on Ianto's counter, staring.

Jack pauses in the doorway, arms weighted down with heavy grocery sacks, and stares back.

The kitten—he's fairly certain it's a kitten, even if he hasn't seen one this close up in about a decade—studies him for another moment before apparently dismissing him as uninteresting. It sneezes, looks away, and pointedly turns around to present its back.

Jack blinks, disbelieving. He's just been snubbed by a scrawny little dust bunny smaller than his hand. It shouldn't feel like a complete and utter burn, but somehow it does.

From deeper in the house, probably back towards the bedroom, a door opens. "Jack?" Ianto calls. "Is that you?" There are footsteps in the hall, but Jack almost misses them, distracted by the kitten's sudden snap to attention, tiny, fuzzy, mouse-grey triangles perking up on top of its head.

But Ianto is far more interesting than whatever fleabag has managed to invade his home, so Jack calls back cheerfully, "Nope, sorry, I'm the neighborhood thief. I'll take you valuables, your virtue, or your life. Your choice."

"Really?" The word is drawled in that gorgeous accent, and Jack can just about see the eyebrow lift that accompanies it. "You want my life? Whatever would you do with it?"

"Start a harem?" Jack offers, and his brain helpfully tosses out an image of Ianto in see-through silks, smiling seductively. It's more work than it should be not to drool.

Ianto steps around the doorway, dressed in well-worn jeans that cling beautifully and a black thermal shirt that's wearing thin at the seams. He's smiling, and absolutely gorgeous, and Jack's inner thirteen-year-old girl giggles and swoons without delay.

But before he can say anything—something mature, because he's not a thirteen-year-old girl, whatever Owen might say—the color-challenged dust bunny makes an excited squeaking noise and launches itself off the counter, which just happens to be roughly twenty times its height. It lands without an ounce of grace, more of a furry splat with legs and tail going everywhere, but recovers and throws itself at Ianto's ankles.

And Ianto, going against all of the Jack-needs-full-attention-on-date-nights rules, proceeds to ignore Jack and bend down to coo over the thing, scooping it up in his arms.

Not that it needs much of a scoop, seeing as it would easily fit in the palm of even Ianto's fairly narrow, elegant hand.

When he straightens up, Ianto's smile is even brighter, which Jack files directly under the not fair heading in his brain. But he's still beautiful, and he looks warm and sweet, which makes Jack's heart turn stupid summersaults in his chest. He smiles back, and Ianto apparently takes that for encouragement, because he holds out the tiny ball of fur as though expecting Jack to take it.

Which—because he is an enormous sap—Jack does.

(Albeit gingerly.)

Fluffball looks less than thrilled to be out of Ianto's arms, but endures.

Jack sympathizes, feeling much the same.

"This is Annoushka," Ianto says, like a proud father. "Remember when we were looking into those disappearing pets, and it ended up being that velociraptor?"

Jack does, and damn Gwen for being a bleeding heart, convincing him to take cases revolving around missing pets.

"I was talking to nearby veterinarians, and someone brought her in to be euthanized." Ianto sounds disgusted, and when Jack chances a glance away from the fluffball (who is apparently Russian), he's wearing the frown he usually reserves for cannibals, axe murderers, and alien slavers who target children. "She's only five weeks old, Jack. I couldn't let them do that. It's infanticide. So I took her." As he turns his gaze to the kitten, his face softens again, and he smiles. "Isn't she lovely, Jack?"

Jack looks back at the kitten. She's (literally) more fluff than substance, a pale sort of cream, with white-tipped grey feet, a grey tail, grey ears, and a grey mask over her face. Blue eyes, he notes, almost the same color as Ianto's. Warily, he lifts the kitten a bit closer to his face.

The kitten gives him a frankly unimpressed look, rears back in his grip, and spreads her tiny arms as wide as they'll go. Then, needle-claws fully extended, she smacks him on both sides of the face.

Things go downhill from there.

The scuffle ends with Jack sulking on the far side of the island counter and Annoushka perched victoriously on Ianto's shoulder as he cooks.

"Honestly, Jack," Ianto says without looking up from the chicken. "She's just a baby. It was playful."

Jack and the kitten trade looks, suspended somewhere between 'oh god isn't that naïvety adorable' and 'back off bitch, he's mine.'

"No," Jack mutters, sinking down further in his chair. "It means war."

Jack is a handsome man. He knows it, has been told so many times by many different people—both human and otherwise—and has yet to encounter a situation (concerning his body and looks, at least) where shame and modesty will get him what he wants.

So, following this, Jack is fairly open about using his body to tempt and otherwise distract gorgeous Welsh alien hunter tea boys. Ianto has expressed a desire to simply cuddle tonight, rather than engage in horizontal acrobatics—understandable, given their earlier struggle with a Hoix and Ianto's bruising tumble down a steep cliff. However, Jack is cautiously optimistic about his chances for morning sex, so he strips off all of his clothes and flops into bed next to Ianto, settling on his stomach. Ianto smiles sleepily at him, deliciously drowsy and ruffled, and Jack smiles back, kissing his temple and draping an arm over his side.

"Night," Ianto mumbles, nestling against Jack and closing his eyes.

"Night," Jack returns in a whisper, and lets himself relax completely into sleep.

Or, at least, he attempts to.

There's a faint tug on the sheet, and then a soft scuffle, and then something—something with four legs, claws, and demon speed—races full-throttle over his bare back.

Jack does not scream and flail. It's a very manly bellow of surprise followed by the implementation of an advanced evasion technique.

Ianto jolts upright in bed, wide-eyed, and something ghostly pale and rabid hurls itself out of the gloom, straight at his chest. Jack dives for his gun, falls off the edge of the bed, and comes up to the sight of a tiny demon-cat smugly curling up on his pillow.

His eyes narrow.

This isn't war.

It's a coup.