Title: Friends of Mine
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Ianto Jones/Tenth Doctor
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Table: 1, letter100
Prompt: 20, Friends
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own Ianto Jones or the Tenth Doctor. Please do not sue.

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Dear Doctor,

It gives me a sense of purpose to be able to sit here and write to you, even though you're only sitting a few feet away from me. I wonder if you know how absolutely beautiful you look, leaning back against the touch cushions, engrossed in a book?

Probably not. And even if you did have an idea of it, you would just shake your head and make a face, denying that you could possibly look good in a t-shirt and jeans, with your hair disheveled and your feet bare, more relaxed than most people ever see you.

I doubt that even the people who think of you as a close friend have seen you like this -- unless they might have spent time on the Tardis, and I know that there are few people who have. Well, few people since you've been in this body, anyway.

The friends I have on Earth, other than the people who know you and the ones who are connected with Torchwood, wouldn't believe all the things I've seen and done since I've been with you. They'd find it hard to even wrap their minds around the life I lead now.

If I'd never worked for Torchwood, I probably wouldn't be able to do it, either. But seeing all the things I did when I worked with them prepared me for this, in a way.

I can't help but wonder sometimes who else has seen you this relaxed, and what their relationship with you has been. I know that you've had other lovers besides me; I've never questioned that. And I don't hold that against you in any way.

After all, you're a man who's lived much, much longer than I could ever fathom a life lasting. Even though you weren't in this body at the time, I know that there have been other people in your life who you've loved, and I can't let myself feel jealous of what they've shared with you.

That would be horrible of me, to feel that I have any kind of right to dictate that you somehow weren't allowed to have any loves in your life before me. They all meant a lot to you, and I'm not going to deny that. I've had my own loves in the past, but that's behind me now.

But there are times when I can't stop myself from wondering about your friends, the people who'd been on this ship, been your companions, and didn't have the same relationship with you that I do. What did they think when they saw you like this?

I'm sure that they must have. And I can't help but feel that they must have been in love with you, that they felt that tug at their hearts, the same as I do, whenever they looked at you. Even in a different body, I can't imagine anyone knowing you and not loving you.

Would my friends, the ones that you don't know, feel the same way? I wonder about that. Some of them would, I'm sure. They'd be attracted to your face and body, undoubtedly. They would take one look at you and be smitten -- and I can't say that I would blame them at all, considering that I felt the same way when I first saw you.

But some of those friends of mine might back away from you if they knew that you're an alien. I hate to think that anyone I call a friend could be so intolerant, or that they would be afraid of you because of what you are. But that's a natural human reaction, I suppose.

Sometimes I want to ask you if people in your life before me, even some who eventually might have become your companions, were ever afraid of you. But if I did, I'd feel that I was prying into your past too much, looking behind doors that you might prefer to keep closed.

Did your friends take a while to become friends? Or were they as immediately attracted to you as I was? Did they have romantic feelings that they had to put aside when they realized that you didn't feel the same? There are so many questions that I have along those lines.

I'm not going to pry into your past, Doctor. If these are questions that you wouldn't mind answering for me at some point, then I'm more than willing to listen; anything you have to say, I'll listen to, whenever you feel that you need to talk.

But I'm not going to push you for confidences. I've always disliked it when anyone was overly curious about my friends, or about people in my past. I'm more than willing to talk about them if I don't feel that I'm being pushed into it, but I balk at any sense of force.

So I would never do that to you. That's another big difference between me and some friends of mine, friends that you've never met. They would push for answers.

I suppose there's something in me that's always been drawn to people who are inquisitive, and more outgoing than I am. I've become much more so since I began working with Torchwood, but there's still that side of me that hangs back, and clings to my private life.

That's one of the reasons that I never felt as though I was a big part of Torchwood. I know that all my colleages there accepted me, but that acceptance only went to a certain part. I was always looked at as interloper, no matter how much they tried to insist that I was a team member.

Well, I was a team member. Just not in the capacity that I wanted to be. I wanted to be out there with the rest of them, going out on every call rather than being relegated to the office. To them, I think that I was always a glorified teaboy.

I still think of the Torchwood team as my friends, but I've drawn away from them. I've definitely pulled away from all those older friends of mine, other than a few select people who are still close. But none of them could really understand my life with Torchwood.

They'd never understand my life with you, either. But that doesn't matter to me. I have friends who do understand why I'm here, and even if they can't begin to imagine the life that I lead -- other than Jack -- they know that it makes me happy, and they're happy for me.

Who knows? Maybe I'll actually be able to meet some of your friends one day, and mine will finally be able to see the man I love. The jury is out as to whether our friends will accept our life together -- but as long as we're happy in that life, then nothing else could possibly matter.

Yours always,

Ianto

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