Title: Letters Never Sent
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Ianto Jones/Tenth Doctor
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Table: 3
Prompt: 30, Love Letters
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own Ianto Jones or the Tenth Doctor. Please do not sue.

***

The Doctor let out a soft sigh of contentment, snuggling into Ianto's arms and looking up at his young lover with a smile hovering on his lips.

"Do you remember those notes you sent me when you were trying to hide your identity?" he asked Ianto, his voice soft as he asked the question. "I still have them, you know. Once in a while, I'll take them out and look at them, and wonder how I could have ever not realized it was you sending them."

"Was I that obvious?" Ianto teased, smiling in response to the Time Lord's words. "I didn't think it would have been that easy for you to discover me. I suppose I'm not as good at being stealthy as I thought I was. I need to practice with that."

"Oh, you're very good at it," the Doctor admitted, still smiling. "I was completely mystified as to who it could be. I knew that it wasn't Owen -- he's not the roses and flowers type. And it certainly couldn't have been Jack. But I don't know why I didn't think of you."

"Perhaps because I'm good at hiding who I really am," Ianto suggested, his words a little slow, as though he was musing on what he said. "I've always had to be like that, really. I've discovered the hard way that it's usually not good to let your true feelings show."

"I think we've all discovered that, at one time or another," the Doctor told him. "But you don't have to do that any more, you know. Not with me."

"I know I don't, love," Ianto said softly, bending his head to press a kiss against the Doctor's mouth. "I'd been hiding myself behind a lot of walls before I met you. But you've broken down all of those walls -- in a way that I never thought anyone could."

"Has anyone else ever been this close to you?" the Doctor asked softly, wondering if he was asking a question that might be too difficult for Ianto to answer. After all, he'd had other lovers; they were people who'd been close to Ianto's heart, though in a different way.

But Ianto was shaking his head in the negative, a small smile on his features.

"No, never," he murmured, his gaze meeting the Doctor's. "I've been close to people before, obviously -- but no one has ever gotten as close as you. No one else has been my soul mate, you know. No one else could possibly have been this close -- because no one else is you."

The Doctor didn't quite know what to say to that; he swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat so he could speak again. Somehow, Ianto could always manage to say the right thing, use words that would touch him and render him speechless.

"That's one of the most beautiful things anyone has ever said to me," he finally said, his voice barely a whisper. "I .... don't know how to reply to that, Ianto."

"You don't have to reply," Ianto told him, his voice husky with emotion. "Just accept it -- as your due. If you hadn't come into my life, I'd probably still be hiding behind those walls. It's because of you that I've been able to let them fall."

"I'm glad I could do that for you," the Doctor said softly, raising a hand to stroke soft fingertips down Ianto's cheek. "You're far too amazing a person to hide yourself forever, Ianto. Sooner or later, you would have emerged from behind those walls of your own accord."

"I don't know about that," Ianto said thoughtfully, frowning a bit. "I'd convinced myself that hiding away like that was the safest thing to do. After Lisa -- and then the relatinship with Jack not working out -- I didn't think I'd ever be able to fall in love again."

"Thank goodness you were wrong," the Doctor said, smiling up at Ianto. "Just think of how much we would have missed if you'd kept to that attitude."

"Those notes changed everything for us, didn't they?" Ianto mused, the frown turning into a smile. "And to think that I was almost afraid to leave you any of them. I was terrified that you'd find me out. And you did, eventually."

"I was insatiably curious," the Doctor admitted, shaking his head and laughing. "Though I've learned the hard way that my curiosity can get me into terrible trouble sometimes, I still can't help following it when it's aroused. It's one of my many failings."

"You don't have many failings, my love, and I wouldn't call curiosity one of them," Ianto admonished him, running a hand affectionately through the Time Lord's hair. "I know you're not perfect, but curiosity isn't a bad thing."

"All right, all right, I concede the point," the Doctor laughed, holding up his hands in surrender. "But let's get back to the subject of those notes. It's hard for me to believe that I couldn't recognise your hand in them. After all, you always struck me as the romantic type."

"I am," his young lover answered, laughing along with the Time Lord. "You get full marks for guessing correctly." After a short pause, he continued, "I wrote you other notes, you know. Not really notes. Longer than notes -- letters, actually. Love letters."

"You did?" The Doctor was surprised at that; even though he'd always thought of Ianto as a romantic sort of man, he'd never have guessed that his significant other was the letter-writing type. "Why didn't you ever give them to me?"

"I was .... a bit embarrassed about them. They're not the sort of thing that I would normally write -- but then, when you're in love, you don't stick with the tried and true, or even think about what you're doing. You just follow your heart," Ianto said, his voice very soft.

"You shouldn't be embarrassed, sweetheart." The Doctor pressed a ksis against Ianto's shoulder, once again feeling somewhat overwhelmed by what hsi lover was telling him.

"I'm not normally the type of person to pour out my heart -- especially where someone who those words arne't meant for could see them and find a way to use them against me. But those words had to be said, and at the time, I was afraid to say them out loud. So I wrote them down instead."

"Will you ever let me see them?" the Doctor asked quietly, hoping that Ianto would say yes. He couldn't have said exactly why, but he had a feeling that those letters would give him a new insight into the young man he'd fallen in love with.

"I will -- one day." He could hear the hesitation in Ianto's voice, and though he didn't want to push the younger man into anything he wasn't willing to do, he couldn't help asking another question.

"Why not now? After all, we're talking about them." He looked up at Ianto, an appealing expression in his dark eyes. "Ianto, those letters are nothing to be ashamed of. Though I have to admit that they'll probably make me cry."

"I wouldn't want to do that, love." Ianto's gaze met his, the look in those blue-grey eyes at once tender and a little apprehensive. "You know I hate to see you cry. The last thing I'd want is to make you upset with anything I'd written. And I wrote those letters before I really knew you."

"I'd just .... I'd like to know what you thought of me before we knew each other. Before we were close. And how you felt about me," the Time Lord said, his voice soft and husky. "Because I'm quite sure that I felt the same way about you -- and I was afraid to say it, too."

"We would have saved ourselves a lot of time if we had just told each other how we felt, wouldn't we?" Ianto said, reaching for the Doctor's hand and twining their fingers together. "We should have had the courage to do that from the beginning."

"But we didn't," the Time Lord mused, squeezing Ianto's hand and looking up at his lover. "We took the long way 'round -- but we got there, eventually."

"Yes, we did," Ianto agreed, his voice low and husky. "And you know --" He shifted his position on the bed, swinging his long legs over the side and standing up. ".... I think it's about time I showed you those letters. So you'll know how I felt about you, from the very beginning."

The Doctor nodded, taking the hand that Ianto held out to him and rising to his feet. "You don't have to show me the letters if you'd rather not, Ianto. Don't feel that you're obligated if you don't feel comfortable with doing it."

Ianto shook his head, squeezing the Doctor's hand as he led the Time Lord out of the bedroom. "I want you to see them, love. I want you to know what's in my heart -- what's always been there since the first time I saw you. You deserve to know how much you've always been loved."

As he followed his young lover from their bedroom, the Doctor couldn't keep the lump from rising in his throat again. But this time, it wasn't sadness rising that he should try to keep back -- it was a happiness that he was sure was going to overflow. And he didn't want to hold it back. Not at all.

***