amberfocus | A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

James Lumin sinks into the glass of his office window, the coolness of it a welcome balm to his frazzled synapses. He hopes it won’t be much longer before Dr. Smith arrives. He stares off into the distance, watching the London skyline on fire, feeling the vibrations of the Earth that still echo through him a good thirty minutes after the crash. They are minute enough that it would take sensitive equipment to even measure the aftershocks of the violent landing. But he feels them. He always feels them. This is not the first time they have come. If he survives this, it will not be the last.

He doesn’t need any equipment to sense them, of course. He never has. He knows what is going on, has known even from before the moment the craft had entered orbit three days ago, cloaking themselves from all but the finest of his satellites. The presence inside them has been screaming for days. Even here, protected in his glass and steel tower, the psychic emanations are nearly maddening. If he leaves the building before the reentry wailing is complete, the cries will deafen him.

He knows he will have to pull himself together soon. He needs a working biosignature masking device before the beings in those ships have a chance to recover and seek him out. Not just for himself but for what is hidden deep in the complex. Dr. Smith can help him with that. He is almost finished with the repairs and the man is brilliant enough to pick up Lumin’s own slack, figure out what it is exactly that is missing.

He had thought he would have time before they found him, thought that he’d at last have the technology in place to protect himself forever from the trackers, time at least to guide Dr. Smith to making the appropriate intuitive leaps that he was sure the man was capable of. Just a few more months and he’d have been safe. Now…now he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be safe again. He doesn’t know if Earth will ever be safe again. Finding Dr. Smith when he had had given him so much hope. Are those hopes to be forever shattered now when they are finally almost in reach?

He’d been so delighted to discover the untapped potential of Dr. Smith. It was as if the man had appeared from nowhere just when he’d needed someone with his capabilities. How it is that someone so gifted had escaped his notice for so many years continues to elude him. Everything about him has checked out. All of his records are intact. But Lumin had not known about him.

And he prides himself on knowing about anyone with tech abilities. Even the students in his scholarship programs, the ones with the most potential, he knows by name and by sight, even if they don’t yet know him. He has his eye on three in particular that could help him with his project, has contracts ready to be presented upon graduation. But Smith had not even been on his radar.

Of course, there is also the little matter of the man’s health scans. The irregularities clearly mark him as someone whose personal energy field has at some point in time been severely altered. Some time in the not too distant past. It is enough of an alteration that the scans read the man as having the cellular decay rate of a one month old infant. And that is impossible unless, like Lumin himself, the man isn’t actually human. Or truly was born only one month ago, but that’s impossible.

A knock on the door and the clear tones of Donna Noble alert him to the fact that Dr. Smith has at last arrived. He slips out of the glass, pulling himself together, light and radiant energy coalescing into human form. He is exhausted but he can hold his shape without full rest at least for the next few hours while he puts his plan into motion.

He only hopes he isn’t acting too late; for himself, for the secret locked away in the vaults, but mostly for his much beloved adopted planet. Because if the creatures that are after him ever were to find what he’s been hiding all these many years, they’d tear apart the very Earth to possess it. And though he had once vowed his very life to protect his charge, he does not think it worth the destruction of humanity or the little blue green world that has brought him so much joy.

“Yes, Donna, bring him in.” The cool, cultured tones of James Lumin issue forth and Donna steps into the room. Rose hangs back, hesitant, but with a firm grip on her hand, Jonathon tugs her into the room with him.

“Ah, Dr. Smith. I’m glad you could--.” The man breaks off and appraises Rose coolly for a long minute. She does the same.

His pictures don’t do the man justice. The phrase larger than life comes to mind. James Lumin is a tall man, taller than Jonathon by a good few inches. He’s also rather well built, filling the expensive suit jacket near to bursting, simply radiating restrained power. There is something almost…blinding about him at first, but the impression vanishes almost as quickly as it comes.

Lumin is standing by the windows that look out in the direction of the fire, the glow of which can be seen from where Rose stands by the doorway. His hair is a golden brown and his eyes an even paler shade of golden brown. There is a slight bluish undertone to his skin as if he seldom sees the sun, but the man reeks of vitality and health. His biography puts him at fifty years old but his appearance puts him at forty.

He shakes his head then a slow smile creeps across his face. “Well, this is a surprise. Welcome to Illuminate, Rose Tyler.”

“What?” she asks shocked. “You know who I am?”

“You’re a fourth year recipient of the Illuminate Young Minds Scholarship Foundation. Of course I know who you are,” he says. “I keep tabs on all of the recipients. There’re only twenty of you. What I don’t know is why you’re here.”

“Rose is my girlfriend,” Jonathon says. “We were on a date when I received Donna’s text. I couldn’t take her home. She lives on the other side of that.” He gestures towards the fire. “Your message sounded urgent so I didn’t want to take the time to drop her by my flat. And honestly, I want her with me until it is safe out there.”

“Probably a smart choice,” Mr. Lumin says. “It’s not safe out there right now. It may be a long time before it is.”

“I’ll wait out in the hallway,” Rose says nervously letting go of Jonathon’s hand and taking a few steps towards the doorway.

“Thank you. I won’t keep your man long, Miss Tyler,” he says with a broad smile. “And I apologize for interrupting your date.”

“Come keep me company,” Donna Noble says to Rose as she retreats from the office and the doors slide shut with Jonathon inside.

Rose smiles gratefully at Donna. She feels completely out of her element in the beautiful building. Well, she’d probably be fine in one of the labs, but the extensive lushness of this particular floor is mind-boggling.

“I thought you were just Jonathon’s office manager. You work directly for Mr. Lumin, too?” Rose asks the pretty red-head.

“My official capacity has me managing Jonathon’s entire floor. All information systems flow through me; all documents are tracked by me, all files. But on occasion, I do special work for Mr. Lumin. No one knows the systems like I do and he likes to bypass the nonsense of regular channels sometimes,” she explains casually. “Plus I don’t whinge about coming in after hours. He pays double time. Triple time on on-call nights.”

“It’s lovely up here,” Rose says changing the subject. She’s always been uncomfortable talking about money, mostly because she’s never had much of it. “All these plants.”

“Oh, it’s a veritable jungle,” Donna says pushing at the fronds of a large-leafed tree in an elaborate pot. “It drives the maintenance staff barmy. Hugo says if he’d wanted to be a gardener he wouldn’t have gone into janitorial services, but he loves it here as much as we all do.”

“Hugo?”

“He’s head of maintenance for the complex. Mr. Lumin believes in keeping a living environment inside. There are birds and butterflies in the atrium next building over. It’s a good place to go for thinking or for eating lunch when the cafeteria is too loud to concentrate. A lot of our dreamers go there. I imagine you will.”

“I will?” Rose is beginning to feel like a parrot, repeating Donna’s words like this.

“When you come to work here after graduation,” Donna explains.

“Assuming I get hired, you mean,” Rose corrects.

Donna tilts her head. “You do know that no one else has ever received the Illuminate Young Minds scholarship four years running, don’t you? Some students manage two; most only one. Mr. Lumin has quite the keen interest in you, Rose. You’ll be asked on, don’t you worry about that.”

Rose frowns. “I guess Professor Cullen, my robotics professor, did make a huge fuss over me because I kept getting that,” she admits. “I didn’t realize. I was just so happy to have earned it so I could keep going to school.”

“Yes, I remember those days. Scraping by to put myself through college and then ending up temping for years when technology advanced in a direction I didn’t study in. Of course, I’m happy now. I love my job here. Mr. Lumin is a very good man to work for. A very good man, period,” Donna says in a tone that makes Rose wonder at precisely the relationship the woman might have with Mr. Lumin. Not that it’s her business.

“It’s a funny old world,” Donna says. “I never dreamed that Jonathon’s Rose could be the same Rose Mr. Lumin’s mentioned keeping an eye on. Should have. It’d take a girl like that to catch his eye.”

“Dunno about that,” Rose says. “Caught his eye when all he knew of me was that I was a shop girl.”

“I’m sure that’s not what kept it though.”

Rose blushes and seeking to change the subject fingers a big purple flower on one of the plants. It looks like an orchid but it’s the size of Rose’s head. “What is this?” she asks Donna.

“Something from the South American Conglomerate. A region called Alagoas. It’s a state in Brazil, I think. It was grown from seed after the 2003 fire that took out much of the remaining Mata Atlantica rain forest; what wasn’t already given over to the growing of sugar cane. Most of the plants here are rescued, endangered species. It’s a type of orchid, cattleya labiata. No one’s ever grown one with flowers this large. But Mr. Lumin has a spectacular green thumb. He can make anything grow,” Donna tells her.

“You sure know a lot about plants,” Rose comments.

“Only the special ones up here. I’ve done the research on their growing requirements for Mr. Lumin,” Donna says with a shrug. “Lots of useless information tucked away up here,” she adds pointing to her head. “But what Mr. Lumin wants, Mr. Lumin gets. It’s all part of the job.”

“Sounds rather demanding,” Rose replies.

“Sounds it. Surprisingly, it’s not.”

The door behind them opens and Jonathon emerges, a curious look on his face, as if he’s contemplating a puzzle. He smiles happily when he catches sight of Rose again and strides quickly to her side, capturing her hand as if he missed holding it rather desperately while they were parted.

“All done?” she asks him.

“Yep,” he replies. “He’s going to be out of the office for a few days and he has a specific project he wants me working on while he’s gone.”

“All right, come on,” Donna says. “I’ll let you back out of the building.”

The trip down in the lift is a quiet one and at the door to the courtyard Jonathon pauses. “We can walk you to your car if you like,” he tells Donna.

“Oh,” she replies. “I’m not done here. Mr. Lumin and I have unfinished business. I’ll probably just bed down in one of the overnight rooms. See you in the morning, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“Lovely to meet you, Rose.”

“You, too, Donna,” Rose replies.

Donna locks the door behind them and they make their way across the deserted campus and back to the car park. When they arrive at the car, Rose realizes that Jonathon is very distracted when he doesn’t even try to kiss her, just opens the door for her and hands her inside. She hopes the rest of the evening doesn’t go the same way. She was rather looking forward to a bit more kissing. She blushes at the thought of what his kisses do to her.

Jonathon backs out of the parking lot and pulls up to the guard. Rose signs out and he drives the short distance to his apartment building. It’s not long before they are on the lift, then on the sixth floor and entering his flat. Although he is still holding her hand, Jonathon is a million miles away.

“Hey,” she says softly, “I’d like you here with me.”

He turns into her then and snags an arm around her waist, pulling her up against him. “Sorry, Rose,” he says. “Sometimes when my mind gets going on an invention I lose focus on other things. But I promise, for the rest of the night, all of my focus is on you.” And the intensity of his regard is suddenly almost too much.

Her hands slide across his chest and then hook up behind his neck and he leans down and gives her a gentle kiss. It is not nearly as fiery or as passionate as his previous ones and she finds herself a bit disappointed as he pulls away. “We need to talk about sleeping arrangements,” he tells her.

“And sleepwear. I have nothing to sleep in,” she replies.

A slow smile washes across his face and his eyes darken. “Oh, I don’t mind that idea at all. You sleeping in nothing.”

Rose breaks away from him and smacks his arm lightly. “Not gonna happen any time soon. Now, do you have something I can borrow to sleep in?”

He walks into the bedroom and she follows him and sits down on the bed while he roots around in the bureau. He holds up a t-shirt hopefully. “That’s barely long enough to cover my bum,” Rose complains.

“Kind of the point,” he says and he has that look on his face again, the one that says he wants to strip her naked and make love to her right this minute.

“Jonathon,” she growls. He sighs and turns back to the dresser and pulls out a pair of pajamas. He hands them to her. “Thank you,” she says. She stands up and goes on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. She heads into the bathroom to change, hesitating before choosing not to lock the door behind her. She trusts him not to invade her privacy.

She can’t help but wonder what it would be like if he did, though. If he were to suddenly barge in on her while she was stripping off her clothes, how his hands would seek to touch her exposed skin, pull her body into his, explore what he had so far not done. “Stop it,” she says.

“Rose? You say something?” Jonathon asks from the other side of the door.

“Sorry, just talking to myself,” she says. “I’ll be out in a minute.” She finishes removing her clothes and slips the long button down pajama top over her head, snaking into it and wiggling it into place. She pulls on the bottoms but they are hopelessly too long for her so she takes them back off and folds them again. At least the shirt goes to mid-thigh.

She looks at herself in the mirror. The top button of the pajamas is quite low, made to be worn by a man. The top of her cleavage is very visible, but not indecently so. She’s shown far more than that in some of her every day tops. Still, this feels different. She’s about to step out into this man’s bedroom half dressed. This man who has declared his intention to take her as his lover when she’s ready. Nothing else in her life has ever felt quite so scary. Not even giving it up to Jimmy Stone.

Not that she has any intention of having sex with Jonathon tonight, but she is well aware of the situation she is in. If she didn’t feel a deep and instinctive trust for the man, well, she’d be sleeping in the loo with the door locked all night. As it is, she wonders if it’d be safe to share a bed with him, or will that be pushing things too far? Teasing him too much?

Rose sighs and pulls the clips out of her hair. The locks tumble down, settling well past her shoulders and she picks up his hair brush. “Jonathon? Can I use your hair brush?” she asks him.

“Of course,” the reply comes through the door. “There’s a spare toothbrush in the second drawer, too. And a few other things you’re welcome to use.”

She smiles. Using the brush feels almost more intimate than anything she’s done in regards to him before; almost more intimate than kissing. Almost, but not quite. When she finishes she roots around in the drawer and finds the toothbrush. She makes quick work of her teeth and rinses the brush. Shyly she places it beside his in the brush stand and her heart skips a little beat as they sit there side by side looking for all the world like the belong together.

Rose tells herself to stop being so silly, that there’s nothing romantic about toothbrushes next to each other in a cobalt blue plastic stand. Only thing is, that's not all she’d noticed in the second drawer. There is an unopened bottle of women’s deodorant and small containers of hand lotion and moisturizer, a lady’s razor, shaving gel, body wash, facial wash, hair gel, hairspray, shampoo and conditioner. And because he’s told her he hasn’t slept with a woman since his wife died, she’s sure those little toiletries were bought with her in mind. She uses what she needs and neatly tucks everything back away trying not to think about what it means that he’s already made a drawer for her in his bathroom.

At last Rose emerges from the bathroom, her clothes in a neat little bundle that she clutches to her chest. She looks around the room and then sets them down on the top of the bureau before turning to look at Jonathon. She hands him the pajama bottoms. “These were too big,” she says by way of explanation.

He is sitting on the edge of the bed, still fully clothed, his eyes on her. Or more accurately her legs. The pajama shirt she is wearing gives him rather a long expanse to study. His eyes drift all the way down to her bare feet with their shiny painted red toenails, and then begin the slow climb back up her body, resting a moment on the exposed cleavage of the low neckline, before rising to her face.

“You still look good in my clothes,” he says throatily. Though not as good, he thinks, as you would look out of them.

“About the sleeping arrangements,” she begins hesitantly sitting down on the bed beside him. Her hand reaches for his and their fingers lace together.

“Rose, I don’t expect anything from you tonight,” he tells her soothingly. “I know you’re not ready to sleep with me. I’ve got my sleeping bag. I’ll be in the other room. You can have the bed.”

“I don’t want to chase you out of your own bed. Let me take the sleeping bag,” she says in protest.

“You’re my guest, Rose. Besides, I like the idea of you sleeping in my bed, even if I don’t get to share it with you,” he says huskily.

“Maybe…” She pauses, huffs out a breath of air, looks anywhere but at him.

“What?”

“Well, I…I wouldn’t mind, you know, just…just…sharing the bed. Just to sleep.” She raises her eyes to his. “Would that be all right? Would it be too hard on you?” she asks earnestly.

Jonathon’s eyes widen. He doesn’t care how hard it is on him, or for that matter how hard it makes him. The chance to sleep in the same bed with Rose, even with nothing happening, is too good to pass up.

“I think I can manage to control myself,” he says dryly. “But, Rose…are you sure?”

“Yes,” she says quickly as if trying to get the word out before she changes her mind. He studies her face looking for any sign of doubt or uncertainty. “I’m sure,” she says more firmly.

“Okay, then.” He lets go of her hand and rises from the bed and taking the pajama bottoms with him walks into the loo. He does his evening ablutions then dresses in the pajamas. He doesn’t normally wear the top to bed anyway and hopes that Rose won’t read anything into it when he appears only half dressed.

He brushes his teeth thoroughly, hoping for a bit more kissing before they go to sleep, and grins foolishly at her toothbrush in the holder, then chides himself for being so silly. He opens the bottom drawer of the cabinet double checking that that is where he put the condoms he bought when he had purchased all the toiletries for Rose. He knows the chance is slim to none that he will be using one any time soon, but on the off chance that Rose loses control and jumps him, at least he’s one hundred percent sure of where they are.

When he reenters the bedroom Rose is already in bed, the blankets pulled up above her chest. Her arms are on either side of her, tucking the duvet close to her body protectively. Her face is set tight. Even though this was her suggestion she is obviously scared.

He decides not to push things by asking for a good-night kiss. Instead he slides into bed beside her and turns out the lamp. “Night, Rose,” he says softly.

“Night, Jonathon,” she whispers back to him. Silence fills the room and he thinks that maybe she has dropped off to sleep. He contemplates the day’s events, the date, the wonderful kissing, the explosion, and the meeting with Lumin. He thinks about everything except the fact that he’s in bed with Rose, that she is a mere two feet from him, and that his body is aching to curl around hers.

Then her fingers find his in the dark and curl around them. And he finds himself grinning into the blackness. And it’s enough, more than enough, that Rose Tyler lies in bed beside him and holds his hand.

Ch. 12: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/131351.html

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

hermya.livejournal.com

Awwwwwwww!!! That last bit is ssssooooo sweet!!

I love this chapter, well done!

From:

hermya.livejournal.com

And I got first comment! :D

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From:

amberfocus.livejournal.com - Date: 2008-09-04 09:54 pm (UTC) - Expand

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From:

amberfocus.livejournal.com - Date: 2008-09-04 09:54 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

inwe-amandil.livejournal.com

Lovely chapter as always, though I fear this may be becoming my new addiction. :) correct me if I'm wrong though but I think at the end you meant Lumin not Lumic?

From:

Not Rose-Colored Glasses

A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Eleven

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