Title: With One Look
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Ianto Jones/Tenth Doctor
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Table: 4
Prompt: 27, Sight
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.

***

"What did you think the first time you saw me?" the Doctor murmured, opening his eyes and looking up at Ianto.

The young man smiled down at his lover, then turned his gaze to the scene around them. The Doctor had said that it was time they had a quiet interlude, with no one around, and he'd landed the Tardis here, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

It was almost like something out of a fairy tale, Ianto told himself, smiling as his eyes took in their surroundings. Green as far as the eye could see, with patches of color that were flowers here and there. And the blue box in the midst of it all, the same color as the blue sky above them.

He almost expected to see a castle in the distance, but that would have definitely been overdoing it. Besides, this was merely a field out in the countryside in his own time. Medieval castles were a thing of the past. The far-distant past.

But it was a beautiful place, and he was glad that the Doctor had brought him here. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask just how the Time Lord had found this secluded spot, but the other man had asked him a question that he felt he should answer first.

How could he answer that? So many different things had gone through his mind the first time he'd seen the Doctor, and he couldn't clearly remember any of them.

He stroked a hand through the Time Lord's hair, his gaze moving to the man stretched out on the blanket with him. His head was in Ianto's lap, his dark eyes sleepy and langorous. Ianto didn't think he'd ever seen his lover quite this relaxed before.

Pondering the other man's question, Ianto tried to gather his thoughts. But there had been so many impressions going through his mind at the speed of light when he'd first met the Doctor; he couldn't possibly pick out just a few of them.

"I ...." He stopped, not quite knowing what to say. "I thought so many things the first time I saw you," he murmured, wishing that he had a better beginning than that. "I don't think I can recall all of them now. It was like .... like being hit by a lightning bolt."

"Really?" The Time Lord's dark eyes widened in surprise, his dark gaze meeting Ianto's. "I'd have sworn you just thought I was .... odd. Strange. Different."

Ianto shook his head vehemently at those words, a frown forming on his features. "No! I would never have thought that about you. Especially not after what Jack had told us all about what an amazing person you are."

"He did?" The Doctor looked surprised, as though he hadn't expected to hear something like that in answer to his question. "I'd have expected Jack to have something much less complimentary to say about me, at least before we got things straightened out between us."

Ianto didn't tell the Time Lord that Jack had said some things that he'd probably rather not hear, but that he'd taken them all back at a later date. He'd been mistaken, the immortal had said, and from then on, he'd sung the Doctor's praises.

So much so that Ianto hadn't been able to keep back his curiosity about this mysterious "Doctor" that Jack kept talking about. He'd wanted to know everything about this man, and he'd already formed something of a mental picture of him before they'd even met.

"He did," Ianto answered softly, smiling and musing over the Time Lord's question. "Hmmm. When I first met you .... I'd already gotten an opinion of what you must be like from what Jack had said, of course. But you were nothing like what I expected."

"What did you expect?" The Doctor laughed, tilting his head back and looking up at Ianto. "Not the handsome devil that you met, I'll wager."

"Jack told me that you were good-looking," Ianto said, his voice soft with memory. "But he didn't tell me that when I first saw you, I'd be looking at the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. I lost my heart at first sight, Doctor. I've never gotten it back."

He looked down at his lover, surprised to see the Doctor blinking rapidly, as though he was holding back tears. Ianto bent his head to brush his lips against the softness of the Time Lord's mout, murmuring against his lips.

"I didn't mean to make you cry, love," he whispered, his lips teasing along the Doctor's jaw. "But I mean what I said. To me, you're the most beautiful sight that I could ever lay eyes on. That's what I thought when I first saw you. That you were too beautiful to possibly be real."

The Doctor raised a hand to his eyes, wiping away the few tears that had escaped to trickle down his cheeks. He gave Ianto a wavering smile, his voice soft and subdued when he spoke.

"The first time I saw you, I was actually jealous of Jack for having been with you. I couldn't believe that he could have walked away from someone so ...." He spread his hands, his voice faltering. "I don't even have a word for how I felt."

Ianto blinked, looking stunned. "That's exactly how I felt about you," he said, feeling more than a little shocked at the Doctor's disclosure. "That Jack must have been crazy to let someone like you go. And I was jealous of him, too."

The Doctor chuckled, shaking his head. "We both felt the same, and neither of us said a word. I wouldn't have ever guessed that it was you sending me those notes and flowers. I wouldn't have thought that you had such a romantic soul."

"You didn't know anything about me then," Ianto reminded him with a smile. "You do now. And I'm fairly sure you've changed that opinion of me."

"Oh, I have," the Doctor assured him, a smile curving his lips. "In a good way. Before I knew you, I only thought you were an incredible man. Now I don't just think it. I know. Beyond any shadow of a doubt."

Now it was Ianto's turn to feel tears rising behind his eyes. He hadn't thought that he'd moved the Doctor in the same way that he'd been touched by his first sight of the other man. It was strange how fate worked, how it had brought the two of them together.

"Another thing that I knew from the moment I saw you," he told the Doctor, taking the other man's hand in his and bringing it to his lips, kissing the palm before he spoke. "I knew that you were the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. This life, and any other."

The Doctor didn't speak; he just looked up at Ianto with such love in his eyes that the young man could feel his heart clench in his chest.

Had anyone else ever looked at him like that? He didn't think so. But then, there had never been anyone else in his life who was quite like the Doctor. He was one of a kind.

The last of his kind. The only Time Lord left. Well .... Ianto frowned inwardly, a fleeting image of the Master crossing his mind. He wasn't gone. He couldn't be. Not the way he kept popping up into their lives, like a bad omen that refused to go away.

But this wasn't the time to think of the Master. This was their time, his and the Doctor's to be alone together, to renew the bond between them. The bond that strengthened every day, that would never be broken, not in the lives they led now, or for all eternity.

"Do you know what I also thought the first time I saw you?" he said, wanting to lighten the mood a little, to tease the Doctor and bring a smile back to his face. The face that he couldn't take his eyes away from, the face that he wanted to see every day of his life.

With a smile curving his own lips, he intoned in as serious a voice as he could manage, "That you had the wildest, most unmanageable hair I'd ever seen."

The Doctor looked startled, then he burst into laughter, the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes crinkling. He reached for Ianto, pulling his young lover down to him for another kiss. Ianto closed his eyes, surrendering himself to the Doctor's touch and forgetting the rest of the world.

***