amberfocus | A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Forty-Three

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Chapter Forty-Three

Rose squirms around to look at him. Jonathon looks as shocked as she feels. “Umm…what?”

“I—I want us to live together.”

“You do just tend to blurt things, don’t you?” she asks him.

“Umm…?”

“I want to date you. I fully intend for us to become lovers. I want you to move in with me,” Rose quotes. “Do you think about these things before you say them?”

“I mean them.”

Rose sighs. “I’ve no doubts on that, Jonathon, but it’s not what I asked. Look, I know being away from each other was really hard, but I think you’re reacting on your renewed grief for your son. Thinking I might be pregnant…it’s brought up a lot of painful memories for you and your response to it is to hold on tight to the one thing that doesn’t hurt you to think about, the one thing that you need most right now, and that’s me and our relationship.”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, actually,” he tells her a little defensively. “Since you told me you were going to move in with Rachel—.”

“Rebecca,” corrects Rose. “Rebecca Hollister.”

“I wanted to ask you then but I thought it was too soon.”

“That’s because it is too soon,” she says seriously. “Jonathon, I love you so much. I do. And the idea of living with you, of seeing you every morning when I wake up and having you there every night when I go to bed, I love the idea of that. That’s why I want to spend every weekend with you. But I need to spend some time living on my own. I need to know that I can take care of myself. All my adult life I’ve lived at home with my mum, and yeah, I’ve contributed to the household since I got my first job, but I’ve never supported myself. It’s important to me to know that I can do that.”

He sighs. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to ask. I’ve told myself a hundred times it’s too soon. Everything we’ve ever done together has been too soon.”

“Yes, it has. It’s moved at breakneck speed and sometimes it scares me. Jonathon, we only met a couple of months ago. I never intended to date you before I finished school, and once we started dating, I never intended to get so serious. I certainly wasn’t going to be sleeping with you. But all my logic and reason went out the window when it came to you. I fell in love and I was so fiercely attracted to you, it was just a losing battle.”

“And don’t you want to lose this one, too?” She doesn’t answer him. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair. I just…want it,” he says helplessly, “so much.”

She gives him a tender smile and reaches up to gently caress his face. He leans into her touch, tilting his head like a cat. “I want it, too. One day. I’m just not ready yet. And I promise we won’t go so long without seeing each other again. It was hard on me, too. I hated it, but I shouldn’t ever have to focus that hard again. Besides…”

“What?”

“Well, I’m going to be working full time at Illuminate now. My career is really starting. It won’t just be part days and half projects. I’m going to need to become Rose Tyler, career woman, and really think about what I’m doing and that won’t be so easy if my focus is split by suddenly being your live-in lover. I think about making love with you far too much of the time right now as it is. If I knew I had you to go home with every single night…I’d never get any work done. I need to find my balance. Really, that’s what all of this is about. Finding my balance. Is that…is that all right?”

“I can understand where you’re coming from.” He doesn’t seem happy.

“Are we all right?” she asks tentatively, unsure of his mood now.

“Yeah, yeah, of course we are.” His answer is hasty and she’s afraid it may be a little too hasty. She really hopes she hasn’t messed things up between them, but compromising on this is just something she isn’t prepared to do.

“I don’t want you to think I’m rejecting you, because I’m not. Not even a little bit. I don’t want to do anything that might hurt us. I want to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. If I thought I was gonna lose you over this it would kill me.”

“Rose, no,” he says genuinely shocked at her line of thought. “Don’t even think that. Not for a minute. I’m not going to push you away because you said no. It was stupid of me to ask.”

“Not stupid,” she says with a soft grin, relief flushing through her. “Just forward thinking, that’s all. Really, I feel like we’ve been playing house since we met. Picking out furniture together, outfitting the kitchen, and helping you pick out your clothes. I know it was my job, but it always felt like more than that, from the day I laid down on that bed with you in the middle of Temmel’s.”

“Why did you lie down on that bed with me?” he asks.

“I wanted you,” she says simply.

“That soon?”

“Sooner,” she says. “That day we ran into each other at the chippie. All I could think about afterwards was how much I was attracted to you, how much I couldn’t wait to see you again. Well, I kept telling myself that I wasn’t waiting to see you show up; that you were far too old for me, that I wasn’t hoping to see you again, but it wasn’t true. I was a smitten kitten. It was silly and rash and ridiculous, but,” she shrugs, “I wanted you.”

“I’m sorry I keep trying to rush you into things. I guess I…I feel like my life has been on hold for the last decade waiting to find someone to love again. Now that I have, well, I think you might have come to recognize by now that patience is not a virtue I’m all that familiar with,” he tells her.

“I get that. I do, but I’ve been driven to do one thing and one thing only since I was sixteen and that’s get to this point, this point where in a few days I’ll graduate from University and I will have all the skills I need to never have to worry about being poor again. It means until now every other aspect of my life has been put on hold. For some reason with you, I let you get under my defenses. How could I not?” she asks. “But if I go from living with Mum to living with you, to letting you take care of me, and I know you’d want to do just that because you always do, I’ll never know that I could have done it without help and I need to know that.”

“Why won’t you just let me take care of you? I can afford it. I mean, you could contribute to the household if you wanted, but you wouldn’t have to. If you’re with me you’ll not have to worry about being poor either,” he says.

“You really don’t get it, do you?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“What happens if we don’t work out?” she asks.

“What?” He looks stricken, as if the idea of it has honestly never occurred to him.

“What if we don’t work out? What if all of this, the first blush of new love and all of the excitement, what if it goes away? What if you decide you want someone else, that I am too young, and that I’m not enough for you? Then what do I have? Nothing!”

“That’s never going to happen!” he insists.

“You can’t know that,” she says.

“Yes, I can.”

“And what if it all works out and then for some reason you die? You’re a widower, Jonathon. You know what that means to the person left behind. What if we have kids and you’re gone and I don’t have any real clue about paying all the bills on my own and running a home and keeping all the accounts in order? I was four years old when my dad died. I saw how hard my mum struggled to make ends meet. She didn’t know anything about anything. Dad took care of everything and then he was just gone. I can’t just be some sheltered girl. I won’t be.” Tears spill over and run down her cheeks.

“Rose, Rose, calm down, it’s okay.”

“This is a deal breaker, Jonathon. It’s what I need.”

“Shh, Rose,” he said pulling her closer to him. “I said it was all right, Rose. I’m all right with this.”

“I know. It’s just that sometimes I get the impression that you would tell me that you’re all right even if you were dying inside,” she says slowly, a soft hiccup in her voice.

He thinks about that for a moment. “I used to be like that,” he answers, “but not since meeting you. Rose, I’m being honest when I say that you’re it for me. I’m being honest when I say that I’ll wait for you to do what you need to do. I’m okay with it. I don’t like waiting, I’ll admit it, but I know it’s just me being selfish, because I love you so much and I just hate being without you.”

“So you’d tell me if…if things were going wrong?”

“Of course, I would. But they’re not. I couldn’t hide it from you even if they were. I’ve had my hearts on my sleeve around you practically since the day we met.”

Rose frowns at him, distracted by his sentence. “Hearts?”

“What?”

“You said hearts,” she repeats. “You said your hearts on your sleeve.”

“Huh. That’s a weird slip of the tongue.” She feels him shrug beside her and then pulls her hand over his chest. “Nope, just the one.” His voice is much lighter, almost cheeky, and relief washes through her.

“Well, duh,” she says rolling her eyes at him. “Donna’s the one shagging an alien, not me.”

He laughs. She’s happy to hear it and begins to relax. He doesn’t seem to be carrying any hard feelings over her decision to decline his impulsive offer. “I don’t think she actually is.”

“What?”

“Donna. I don’t think she and Lumin actually are. Shagging, I mean.”

“They look it. They act like lovers,” Rose replies.

“So did we. The first day I held your hand, before I ever even kissed you, before we ever got that far, we looked like lovers,” he said.

“That’s different,” Rose says.

“How?”

“Just is. Donna’s not repressed.”

“You weren’t repressed.” Rose snorts. “Weeeellll,” he corrects, “not after I got a hold of you.”

“You’ve completely corrupted me.”

“I know. Isn’t it brilliant?” he asks with shining eyes and Rose laughs.

She presses forward and kisses him and his lips part under the slight pressure. She pushes in with her tongue and sweeps across his teeth to gently slide across his tongue. It’s a brief, soft, sweet kiss and she feels him shiver just a little as she breaks it. “I want you to promise me something,” she says.

“What?”

“I want you to promise me that in six months time, if it’s what you still want, you’ll ask me to move in with you again.”

“Are you sure? Six months isn’t much time to live on your own,” he replies.

“I know, but it’s long enough to prove I can do it. And it’s probably as long as I can stand to hold out when I know what I could be having,” she tells him truthfully.

“But if you want to—,” he begins. She puts her fingers to his lips to silence him.

“Sometimes I have to go with what my head needs and not what my heart desires,” she says softly.

“And just what does your heart desire?” he asks huskily.

“You. Always you.”

“Pretty, clever little heart.”

“Yes.” She yawns rather violently then. “We should get to sleep,” she says nudging closer to him, “unless you want to, again…?” Her voice trails off while her hand trails downwards.

“Do you even have to ask?” She’s pretty sure you could power the greater London area with the wattage coming off his smile. She’s sure then that he’s going to be all right with her decision.

They are awakened early the next morning by a knock on their compartment door. Jonathon falls out of bed and has to scramble awkwardly to find his jeans and pull them on. It’s the steward with their boxed breakfast, delivered to all first class passengers. It contains two rubbery, microwave omelets, a couple of muffins, two cups of juice and two very weak teas. “We can eat at the Edinburgh station if you’re hungry,” he says after tossing the too dry muffin back into the box.

“Not really, yet,” she says. She yawns, the sheet falling off the top half of her naked body. Jonathon’s eyes gleam. “We so don’t have time,” she tells him sternly. She wraps the sheet around her body and squirms past him to the other compartment where she firmly shuts the door behind her.

“What’s the harm in looking?” he calls after her.

She doesn’t answer him and quickly pulls on fresh clothes before opening the door back up. He immediately puts on a pout. “Faker,” she says. She washes her face and gives her teeth a quick brushing while Jonathon goes about his own business and then slips out to the loo where there is a line. By the time she gets inside she feels like a potty-training two-year-old after drinking a half liter of apple juice and going on a long car ride.

It’s not long after she returns to their room that the train pulls into the station. They hire a cab that takes them to their hotel. It’s an older hotel but it is beautifully furnished and Rose feels like she’s stepped back in time as they walk through the lobby. “Far cry from the Ramada. It’s gorgeous here,” she says in appreciation. “I like old things.”

“Me, too. It’s like walking through history,” he says. “Like getting to relive a piece of the past or stepping into a time machine.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Rose asks.

They step up to the front desk and check in and then go to find their room. The lift is probably more modern than it looks, but in appearance it’s one of those old-fashioned cages with a man working a large black lever. Jonathon suddenly shivers beside her and she follows his gaze. He’s fixated on the lever.

“You okay?” she asks slipping her hand into his.

“Yeah, fine.”

“You sure?’

“Dunno. Something about that lever…”

“I can assure you, sir, that the lift is perfectly safe,” the operator says. “It looks old, but the technology is quite modern.”

“I’m sure it is,” Jonathon says but his voice is slightly shaken. They get off on the third floor and their room is at the end of the hall. The bed is fairly small compared to the one they usually sleep in together, just a double mattress, but considering what they woke up in just an hour ago, it’s positively gigantic. Jonathon plops their suitcase on the bed, they’d shoved everything into one when Rose had arrived with her duffel at his flat, and opens it up. He fishes out the piece of coral and smiles at it.

“How’s she doing?” Rose asks reaching out to stroke her with a fingertip. She hums under the caress and gives off a soft pink glow.

“She seems happy,” he says.

“How come you didn’t leave her with Caelum for the weekend?” Rose asks. “I’m sure they both would have been thrilled.”

“Maybe,” he says with a shrug, “but I like her with me when I’m not busy working.”

Rose starts to unpack their clothes into the dresser. “You don’t have to do that,” he says. “We’re only spending one night.”

“I need to do that,” she says. “I’m slightly compulsive about it.”

He smiles. “I’ve noticed you’re slightly compulsive about a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like you like doing things in even numbers,” he says.

“I like even numbers. Pairs are good. Nothing should be lonesome,” Rose says reasonably.

“Inanimate objects don’t get lonely, Rose.”

“It’s a compulsion. It doesn’t have to be logical.” He laughs and she grins in response and finishes putting their clothes in the drawers. “I’m getting hungry now. Does the hotel have a restaurant in it?”

“Yes. Or we can order up room service.”

“That’s a lot more expensive, isn’t it?” she asks. “You’ve already paid for the train tickets and the hotel.”

“Well, it’s my trip. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to come see the graves.”

“I know, but—.”

“Rose,” he interrupts on a long-suffering sigh.

“I’m sorry. Guess even numbers isn’t the only thing I’m compulsive about,” she tells him. “It’s hard, okay? I’m working on it.”

“If you want to eat in the dining room that’s fine. If it makes you feel any better you can buy the meals.”

“Now you’re just humoring me,” she says crossing her arms.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he says. “This day is going to be hard enough without being at odds with the woman that I love.”

Rose stops. She’s forgotten and she feels horrible for being so self-absorbed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you.” She crosses to him and slips her arms around him, hugging him tightly to her body. “It’s the habit of a decade. I just…”

“You don’t want to be dependent on anyone. And I understand why.”

“You just spend so much on me and it makes me feel guilty,” she admits. “I don’t have the resources to make this an even relationship. You’re older, more experienced, established, well-off, and smarter than I am. You have all the power.”

“Rose Tyler, you are just as intelligent as I am, and I do not have all the power.”

“But you do.”

“No, love. You’ve got me completely wrapped around your little finger. I would do anything to make you happy. You’ve got all the power. You just don’t know it.”

“Really?” she asks.

“Really.”

“Don’t you understand yet just how in love with you I am?” he asks and the look he turns on her hides nothing.

“I think,” says Rose, “that I’m finally starting to get it.”

Ch. 44: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/253258.html