A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Thirteen

[amberfocus]

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                                                                           Chapter Thirteen

What had she been thinking telling Jonathon she might help him out next time? Rose wonders. Well, she knows very well that the problem is she hadn’t been thinking at all. She’s been caught up in the excitement, the passion of making out with him as if they are a couple of horny teenagers and she’d gotten just that little bit carried away with the flirting when she’d offered to…well, help him. She feels a blush come over her just thinking about it. And she’d been thinking that she wanted to feel, well, him just a little bit more intimately.

Truth be told what she’d really wanted was to skip school and have him shag the hell out of her. Right there on the kitchen counter. Or the kitchen floor. She hadn’t even wanted to take the time to make it back to the bedroom and the relative comfort of the bed. She wants him with a ferocity that scares her. She has told him she isn’t ready for sex, but she is starting to think that she is. At least her treacherous, traitorous body thinks so. She’s not sure her mind is engaged in the conversation at all. She’s not sure she wants it to be.

All she can think about is the expanse of bare chest that had been surprisingly hairier than she’d expected when she’d allowed herself to wonder about it not too long after they’d met. She thinks about the way it tapers off into a thin line above his navel and then picks up beneath it, how it disappears into the low slung pajama bottoms riding his hips. How she wouldn’t mind riding his hips, feeling what so far has only been hard against her thigh or stomach or back burying itself within her body. Arousal sweeps through her and she jerks.

“Ouch!” Rose turns off her soldering iron and sticks her hand against her mouth, sucking the burnt flesh where a cascade of sparks has scorched the skin. She shoves her safety goggles up off her face and goes to the sink in the back of the lab, running cool water over the little burns that freckle the palm of her left hand, much like the freckles that pepper his body, each one a temptation to her lips. Why can’t she stop thinking about him?

She’s distracted and it isn’t like her. This is why she hasn’t let herself get seriously involved with men before now. Well, one of the reasons. The main reason anyway. Not that she would trade her new relationship with Jonathon for anything. It’s already become something precious to her. The problem is she wants it too much. She wants him too much. And it’s making her crazy.

Jonathon’s not just any man. If a man could have been designed specifically for her, have all of the things that she wants both physically and mentally, he is pretty close to the top of the list, if you take out her somewhat ridiculous and unaccountable attraction for rough-hewn, lanky men with great cheekbones and Manchester accents. And that particular thing is really her mother’s fault come to think of it, for making her watch that police drama as a kid where the lead actor looked and sounded that way and always managed to have a cute, adoring, and far too young for him blonde on his arm as needed. She’s embarrassed to this day to admit that he was the reason she’d started dying her hair blonde as a teenager. Aside from that one stray desire though, Jonathon is what she wants in a man.

He is more than just reasonably intelligent. One has to be to work at Illuminate. He is funny. She’s laughed more with him in less than two weeks than she can remember doing in the last year. He goes after what he wants. He is handsome. Just the dimples alone give him ten points above most men, not that she’s grading. But he also has well-structured cheekbones, the warmest brown eyes she has ever seen and a smile that lights the room. And then there’s the soft, secret smile he turns on her right before taking her hand, or kissing her, or after kissing her. The one that makes her feel like she’s the only woman he will ever need.

He also has an enthusiasm for living that she finds appealing. Despite having lost so much in his life he still seems to get joy out of simple day to day existence. She’s not heard him complain about anything once. He has his own rather sexy accent, one that really beats Manchester by a mile. And then there is the fact that he makes her pulse race and her body ache with desire. That’s both a good and a bad thing. Good because obviously sexual chemistry is important between a man and a woman in a relationship. Bad because it makes her mind wander far too much.

His hands are beautiful, too. Manly hands, but not in that calloused, rough, construction worker way. More in that big, 'I can cover your entire torso with both my hands if I spread my fingers' sort of way. And the way he holds her hand as if it is just as important to him, if not more so, than kissing. The way their fingers fit so easily together, the way their palms caress, the way he rubs the webbing of her hand with his thumb. It’s far hotter than the simple act of hand-holding should be. It’s practically foreplay.

And then there is the way one of those hands had slid over her body in bed that morning, caressing her hip and waist and then he had slid it up onto her breast, his thumb just grazing her nipple and she’d had one shrieking moment of common sense, a moment she is regretting now as she stands against the sink breathing hard wishing she’d just let him touch her there.

“Is it bad?”

“What?” Rose snaps back to reality at the deep bass voice. Professor Cullen is standing next to her with a look of concern. Rose turns off the water and pulls her hand back, looking down at the injury.

“You burned yourself. Is it bad?” he asks her.

“I—I think it’s okay,” she says shakily.

The professor takes her hand and studies it then moves over to the first aid kit next to the sink. He uses his key to unlock it and pulls down a spray bottle of Elastoplast, removing the lid and saying, “Hold out your hand.” Rose does and he sprays the soothing medicine onto her skin. He pulls down a roll of cotton bandaging and wraps it carefully around her hand, securing it with medical tape.

“I think you should go down to student health and have the nurse look at that, Rose,” he tells her seriously.

“But my cat—,” she begins.

“I’ll lock up your work for you, Rose. You go on down and make sure that’s not serious enough for further medical treatment.” With a sigh Rose goes to collect her purse and her school bag and heads out to do what her instructor has asked of her.

It is a slow day at student health and she is taken right back, the nurse removing the bandage and looking at the wound. “How was it treated?” she asks and Rose tells her. “Well, I don’t see any signs of it being greater than a first degree burn,” she says. “But let me put some Savlon on it.” She pulls out a tube of the antiseptic gel and rubs it carefully into Rose’s palm, then covers it with a Melolin pad, securing it in place. She rewraps the cotton bandage over the outside of it for extra protection, gives her some paracetamol for the pain, and then sends Rose on her way with instructions on how to redress the wound as needed. She has just enough time to get to her computer tech class before it starts. Fortunately today is a lecture and she doesn’t have to do any hands on work.

The class passes quickly and she is grateful when it is over. She eats a quick lunch in the cafeteria and then heads for the bus. She hopes that the medication the nurse gave her will last through her shift at work or else it is going to be a really long day. Well, she can always raid the first aid kit at Temmel’s if need be. Each floor has them so one of them is bound to be fully stocked. When the bus pulls up at the stop she boards carefully, cradling her hand. She plops into an empty seat and lets her mind wander ahead to meeting Jonathon on her dinner break later that day.

Not only has he made plans to join her for the meal as he’s done every night this week, he’s also said he’ll come around when her shift ends and walk her back to his flat. He didn’t need to, she’d told him, but he’d insisted that he wanted to. There is a bit of old-fashioned gentlemanliness to him at times that she finds rather charming. She wonders if there’ll be a chance to sneak a kiss or two over dinner, then chides herself for it. There will be plenty of time for kissing later that evening. The look he had given her this morning when they’d parted on one last kiss had told her Jonathon would make sure of it.

The day passes in a slow haze as she waits on only one customer. She realizes as she sorts invoices and changes price tags to bring them in line with the new sale starting the next day that she is happy. She’d not been living a miserable existence or anything before meeting Jonathon. She’d been content with her life, though a bit frustrated at how hard she had to work, but she wasn’t unhappy. This is better than that though. This is more. It is almost like Jonathon is offering her the world. A silly thought when all he is really offering her is just himself. But that is enough. She doesn’t need the world. He makes her happy and that is all that she needs.



Jonathon sighs and runs his hand through his hair then pushes back from his desk. He tilts his chair back on the back two wheels and balances precariously trying to make himself think. He tips back so far he nearly overbalances but is saved by a quick hook of a toe into an open desk drawer. He sits back up with a resounding thump, banging into the desk and knocking a pile of papers flying onto the floor.

He watches them flutter down, pulling on the back of his neck in irritation. With a sigh he gets up and goes to pick up the papers and stacks them on his desk, thumping his name plate on top of them to hold them in place. Donna had brought it round this morning. He could really do with a paperweight around here. Well, maybe he can bring his chunk of coral in tomorrow. The idea kind of unnerves him even as he thinks it. It’s the one thing he really has left from his old life and the idea of leaving it at work unsettles him.

Then again, he can always shift it back and forth with him in his briefcase. It’s small enough to fit. Though he’s probably being silly. It would be perfectly fine locked up in his office at night. Maybe he could just take it home on the weekends. He chides himself then for being ridiculous. It’s not like it’s a pet, yet he’s always had a particular attachment to it. Really, really silly. Besides, he has Rose to come home to. Although for how long…

And that particular thing is what he’s been trying to avoid thinking about all day. Rose’s parting shot as he went to take his shower had unnerved him. He is pretty sure that she was just flirting with him as much as he’d like her words to have been a promise. And all she’d really said was maybe. He wants to, of course he wants to have her help him, but he doesn’t want to put any kind of pressure on her. This thing between them is just so fragile and he doesn’t want to do anything to mess it up.

His stomach grumbles and he looks up at the clock. Lunchtime. Well, Donna should be poking her head in the door any minute now. Maybe she could keep his mind off of Rose.

“Hey, space man, you coming to lunch with me today or shall I bring you something back?” Donna asks a minute later from the hallway. Perfect timing.

“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” he says scrambling to his feet and grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. He slides easily into the brown leather and joins Donna in the hallway. The short walk to Lombardi’s is filled with Donna’s observations about Michelle in bookkeeping who has attracted the eye of Dr. Drake up on floor seven.

But even Donna’s impressive chatterbox skills don’t keep his mind from wandering to Rose in his pajama top, her long legs almost fully exposed under them. Or the way her warm body had curled so trustingly against him in the bed the previous night. Or the morning kisses and caresses that had held so much promise of things to come.

“Am I boring you?” Donna asks in annoyance and he crashes back down to Earth. “Because I tend to like it when my friends pay attention to me.”

“Sorry, I’m a bit…preoccupied,” he admits, but he’s not so preoccupied that a tiny part of him doesn’t glow with pleasure at the fact that Donna just called him her friend. Such a small thing, but it seems like forever since he’s had just a friend.

“I’d noticed, thanks,” she says acerbically.

“I’m not used to having someone in my bed anymore. I had a bit of a restless night,” he explains.

“I imagine so with that sweet young girl keeping you up and at it,” Donna responded with a smirk.

“No,” he says immediately, a blush racing across his face. “Wasn’t that. We aren’t…we haven’t…I mean, Rose is…we just slept.”

“Huh,” says Donna.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she replies.

“No, what?” he asks again.

“I just thought, well the way you two were together, the way she looks at you, that you had to be…”

“Last night was our first real date, Donna!” he protests.

“If you don’t count meeting her for dinner and all those other little things. Besides, lots of first dates end in sex,” she says. “It’s a whole new morality out there these days.”

“Rose is different,” he says emphatically.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I wouldn’t go putting her up on any pedestals,” she tells him.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he replies. He chases the last of his Spetzofai around his plate. “She’s special, but she’s still human. Puts on her pants one leg at a time, just like I do.” Of course her legs were far more attractive. No. He brings his attention fully back to Donna.

“So tell me about you and Mr. Lumin,” he says. For one long moment she stares at him as if he’s lost his mind or sprouted a second head or both.

“Me and…Mr. Lumin?” she asks. It is the first time he’s ever seen her blush. “Are you completely mad? Why would you…what makes you think…? There’s not…we’re not like that.”

“Oh, please. You are the only person I have ever heard him call by their first name. It’s always Miss or Mrs. or Mr. or Dr. Yet he calls you Donna.”

“I’ve been with him a long time,” she says. “He’s…a nice man. Good to work for, but we’re not…he’s just my boss. Whatever gave you the idea that there was…something there?”

“Just seemed like it,” he shrugs. “He looks at you like you mean something to him.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she says blushing an even deeper shade of red. He is sure she knows precisely what he means but decides to let it go. Perhaps he is mistaken. Or perhaps the feelings are there and neither Lumin nor Donna has chosen to act on them.

“So how’s that biological dampener thingy going?” she asks him decisively changing the subject.

“I think I’ve about sussed it,” he says. It doesn’t dampen so much as it masks. The personal one should be ready for testing tomorrow. The large scale one, I’m not so sure how long that’ll take. It requires a bigger power cell than Mr. Lumin has available on the premises.”

“Well, write up the requirements of what you need and I’ll make sure it’s brought in as soon as possible. He’s given me carte blanche to get you whatever you need for this,” she says.

“Do you know why it’s so important?” Jonathon asks curiously.

“No,” she says. “But he’s been trying to make one for a long time. When he discovered your work, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited before. He still doesn’t understand how he missed you all these years.”

“Well, some of my inventions are a little obscure,” he replies.

“Yes, but those ones all went into other things that are very widely used. And then there’re the ones that aren’t obscure at all. That sonic scrubber is brilliant. I have one in my kitchen.”

“It pays the bills,” he tells her.

“What you really ought to do,” she says, “is come up with some sort of all in one tool, something that does everything. Bet you’d make a fortune in bonuses.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. But right now Lumin has me far too busy with designs already on the drawing board.” He taps Donna’s watch. He can’t remember the last time he’s worn one. He’s pretty sure their lunch hour is over. “How much time have we got?” he asks her.

“Time to head back,” she says. They throw out their trash and walk back to the office.

They stroll back in relative silence until Donna says, “She’s very pretty.”

“Hmm?”

“Your Rose. She’s very pretty.”

“Ah, yes, she is,” he responds.

“And quite young,” Donna continues.

“She’s old enough,” he says. “I’m not exactly robbing the cradle, you know.”

“No, more like the bunk beds,” she says with a smirk.

“She’s twenty-one. She’s a grown woman,” he replies.

“Well, people are going to talk, is all,” she says. “You know that, right? I mean, I won’t and Mr. Lumin won’t, but…other people, when they see you going round with her, or when she comes to work at Illuminate and they see how you are together. They will talk.”

“Let them,” he says. “I don’t care. Don’t know but a few of them anyway. Why should their opinions matter to me? Besides, being with Rose more than compensates for any loose talk at the water cooler.”

“Just be prepared for it to be harder on Rose than it is on you, that’s all. Especially when she hires in. You’re what? Thirty-four?” He nods. “Twelve years is a big gap.”

“Age is just a number,” he tells her.

“And denial is a river in Egypt,” she responds.

“And how many years are there between you and Mr. Lumin?” he asks just to shut her up.

She surprises him by promptly responding, “Fourteen.”

“Guess I’m not the only one who needs to worry about what people might say about the age gap.”

“I told you, Ja—Mr. Lumin and I are not like that. You know what, space man? You’re a bit of a pain in the arse,” she tells him.

He grins. The way she says it makes it sound like a compliment and there is fond affection in her voice. She can’t help but smile back at him. He finds that the more he gets to know her, the more he really rather likes Donna Noble.



It’s an extremely slow day in furniture and by the time five o’clock rolls around Rose’s hand is throbbing. If that’s not enough, her period starts three days early. Because no one has entered the department in the last two hours, and because she is in so much obvious pain, Brendan asks her if she wants to go home early. She agrees and heads downstairs to wait for Jonathon in the café.

He is just arriving when she shows up, his eyes immediately going to her bandaged hand. “What happened?” he asked her.

“I burnt myself in class today,” she says. “When I was putting the legs on my cat.”

“Is it serious?” he asks her.

“It hurts,” she says, “but it’s only a first degree burn. Brendan’s letting me off early today. Can we stop by the chemist’s so I can buy supplies to treat it?”

“What about dinner?” he asks her.

“I can cook something,” she says.

“But your hand,” he protests.

“Then I can give you another cooking lesson. Though your breakfast was quite nice this morning,” she tells him.

“Well, but I can cook breakfast. That’s where all the easy food is,” he tells her. She smiles.

“I need to pick up a couple of things from my flat. Keisha told me they’re letting people back in to retrieve more belongings, but they don’t want anyone going back into the area to live for a few more days, not until they get whatever they’ve cordoned off carted out of there.

“Ah. Let’s walk back to the flat after the chemist’s then and I’ll get the car.”

Rose nodded. The chemist’s is not that far from Temmel’s, just one traffic light down, and Rose buys a big bottle of paracetamol along with her wound dressing supplies. Jonathon decides he may as well stock up his medicine cabinet as well while they’re there. Rose grabs a water bottle and the minute they’ve paid for their purchases she downs a few of the pills. By the time they get back to Jonathon’s apartment building they’ve taken the edge off her pain.

Jonathon and Rose quickly drive to the Powell Estate and he follows Rose into her bedroom, sitting down on her bed next to her rucksack as she packs a few needed items. Next she ducks into the bathroom and returns with a box of tampons and a small box of overnight pads that she tosses on top. She adds her beauty supplies and then zips up the large bag.

“Don’t know how long this’ll take,” she says with a shrug. “I’ve probably over packed. Feels like I’m signing up for the long haul.”

He captures her uninjured right hand. “You can stay as long as you like, Rose,” he tells her. He kisses the back of her hand.

“Thanks,” she says.

He hauls her bag out to the car and they return to his flat. At reception he’s informed that there’s a large package waiting for him in the manager’s office. “What’s that?” Rose asks him when she sees the size of it. Jonathon borrows a dolly and maneuvers the box down the hall to the lift.

“It’s a television for the bedroom he tells her. “One of those flat screen ones for on top of the bureau. We can watch telly tonight if you like.”

He returns the dolly to the office telling Rose to go ahead and unpack her things while he does. She smiles to herself as she places her clothes in the two drawers he’s allotted her and hangs up the rest of her garments in his wardrobe.

When he returns she teaches him how to make Swiss steak and homemade chips and her hand is feeling just decent enough to tear up some greens for a salad. It’s a lovely meal, though Rose is starting to get tired of eating on the floor. She hopes that she’ll still be there on Saturday to eat off his new dining room set.

After dinner they retire to the bedroom, Rose stretching out on the bed while Jonathon unpacks the telly and hooks it up. He climbs onto the bed beside her and says, “So what’re you interested in? Should be some dramas on about now. Or a comedy.”

“Wouldn’t mind some romance,” she tells him softly.

He takes the remote control out of her hand and sets it on the bedside table. “I wouldn’t mind some romance, either,” he says huskily. He leans towards her, takes her into his arms, and peppers her mouth with soft little kisses, pulling back a moment later.

“I meant on telly,” she manages with a soft sigh.

“You want me to stop?” he asks, his warm brown eyes staring deeply into hers.

“No,” she tells him. “No, I don’t.” She lies down on the bed and reaches for him and then his hands are tangling in her hair and his tongue is begging admittance to her mouth. She lets him in. She’s definitely in this for the long haul.

Ch. 14:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/139091.html