A/N: Hello everyone! Yes, I know, I owe you updates for TLAWR but due to some pretty shitty happenings at work (one of my cashiers being arrested and fired for stealing and my schedule being shot to hell as a result, and then thank you sickness) and life in general I've not had a moment. I do bring this story as a peace offering, though. :D It's based on the movie Romancing the Stone which is my favorite guilty pleasure movie. Enjoy!
A woman stands next to a window in one of the many office buildings in London and stares out at the city, watching the people below. It's warm for March but the window is closed and she leans against it. The office is large and tastefully decorated, as one would expect. It belongs to one of the senior editors of London's largest publishing company—her editor. The woman's name is Rose Tyler and she writes romance novels. Her hair is bleached blonde and cut off at her shoulders. It hangs in loose waves, so much less severe than her previously favored bun and makes her look years younger. She brings one hand to her mouth and bites the calluses around her thumb nail. It's a bad habit, one she's tried thousands of times to break, but it always comes back when she's nervous. Behind her Sarah Jane Smith sits at the long, sleek desk and turns the last page of Rose's latest book.
A smile, wide and knowing, spreads across Rose's face when she hears a faint sniff as the paper settles. She put everything into this book, everything that happened in her mad attempt to save Mickey. The mysterious package mailed from Mickey's father, a man neither of them had heard from in years before he was found murdered in Columbia, the kidnapping that prompted her to leave everything she knew behind, gun fights and car chases and him: Ian Noble, know by a great many people (including the Cartagena police, apparently) as 'The Doctor.' Rose changed names, of course, to protect the innocent (and the guilty, but it wasn't her job to judge, just to write).
"Well," Sarah Jane says as she clears her throat and sets the sheaf of papers aside. "That's clearly your best work."
"Really?" she asks and turns away from the bleak London skyline.
Sarah Jane pauses in her hunt for tissues. "Look at me, I'm a mess!" She levels a firm glare over the top of her wire-rimmed reading glasses. "Don't you dare tell anyone."
Rose laughs. "They'd never believe me!"
"Even if they did, I'd deny everything." Sarah Jane chuckles warmly and joins Rose at the window. "Have you heard anything?" she asks, her voice softer.
Rose takes a deep breath and wraps her arms around herself. "No. Not surprising, though—you said it yourself, that's not the way he operates. He doesn't come back." The older woman opens her mouth to apologize but Rose cuts her off by laying a hand on her arm. "Don't. We've already done all that, yeah? It was just—it was a shock, coming back and finding out there was someone who knew him from so long ago right under my nose."
"How do you think I felt?" Sarah Jane asks, one elegant eyebrow arching. "I knew he was knocking about somewhere out there, but it was abstract. I never thought I'd find someone else who knew him and didn't know me." She squares her shoulders and gestures to the novel sitting in loose pages on her desk. "You've outdone yourself with this one, Rose. Take a week off, get used to being back in London. Visit your mum—she's been ringing me nearly every day asking if I've seen you."
"Yeah, okay." Rose steps away from the window. "Think I will, thanks."
It's not that she doesn't like her mum. Rose loves her mum—for the first nineteen years of her life it was just her and her mum. Then she got Jimmy out of her life and went back to school and started writing and someone bought her book. It is still surreal how four years ago she was eight hundred pounds in debt and working at Henrick's to pay the bills and now—now she has her own flat with a gorgeous view. Her mum met one of the publishing company's investors, a man named Pete, and a year later they were married. Two years later Tony was born and at twenty-one years old Rose was a big sister. Now she has a family and so does her mum. It's good, really, nothing less than her mum deserves and Rose will be the first to say it—but a space lies between them where there wasn't one before.
A part of her aches to call her mum and pour her heart out but a larger part wants to keep what happened in Columbia to herself for at least a little while longer. Her mum would think she's mad, falling in love with a man she knew for less than a week halfway around the world, a man who is a criminal and a vagabond with less than ten dollars to his name and a harebrained scheme to buy a ship and sail around the world. It sounds like madness, when she lays it out neat and rational in her mind.
It sounds like freedom.
A crowd huddles in front of her flat building and from the outskirts Rose can see something like a mast rising out of it. Her heart pounds and her hands shake as she elbows her way through the throng of onlookers until she's right up next to the boat, close enough to touch it, to read the name painted on the bow. Billie, it says. The letters waver and her eyes sting and inside her chest an impossible hope unfurls. It fills her up until her skin feels tight and thin, like she could shed it and be a thing of pure joy because it has to be him. Who else is mad enough to buy a boat and name it after the main character of her books, the woman who did everything Rose had been too afraid to try?
A shadow falls on her and she turns her head to the sky. It's been three months since she last saw Ian Noble diving off the battlement of the fort in Cartagena, three months since he kissed her forehead and told her she was fantastic, three months since arguably the best sex of her life.
He grins when he sees her, brown eyes sparkling, hair a riot as usual. His suit jacket is gone and his oxford is unbuttoned at the collar and rolled up to his elbows. A swift kick from his trainer-encased foot has a rope ladder unrolling in front of her and there is no choice. She goes, of course she does. But time speeds and slows around her and Rose doesn't even remember taking hold of the ladder. One minute she was standing on the street and the next his arms wrap around her and she breathes him in—wool and tea and over everything the smell of freshly varnished wood.
He pulls back to get a good look at her and his hands slip down to her hips. She looks different, has done ever since she came back from Columbia but then—she feels different. There's confidence she found that translates into the cut of her clothes, the way they compliment her body but also their practical nature.
"Hi," Rose says as she looks up at him. One hand rests on his upper arm, the other toys with the heart charm of her necklace. His gaze slips to it and his smile softens.
"Hi," he replies and his thumbs stroke the soft fabric of her jumper just above the waistband of her trousers.
She leans into the contact, just barely. "Long time no see."
"Been a bit busy," he replies as he shifts closer. "Had to wrestle a gator for a stone. Got myself a pair of boots in the deal but they pinch something awful."
"You came back." If she stands on her toes she'll be close enough to kiss him but she can't, not without hearing his answer.
Ian regards her solemnly. "I was always coming back, Rose. For so long I thought that the only way to be free was to be alone, but I was wrong. You showed me that I was wrong. And I thought—" He scratches his neck and Rose bites her lip to keep from beaming. Oh, how she missed him. "I'd like you to come with me. We can go everywhere, anywhere. Just the two of us."
"Yes," she replies and smooths the collar of his oxford.
"Yes?"
Rose nods sharply. "Yes."
A smile breaks over his face like the dawn. He pulls her into a tight hug and when she presses herself against him he whirls around, lifting her feet off the deck of the ship. Laughter bubbles up her throat and out her mouth as her hair fans out in the wind and he whoops in her ear. The whole world lies open in front of them, all the bright and shining places she has dreamed of but never seen. There will be time to call her mother later, time to write Sarah Jane and let her know that she will be receiving Rose' next book via email, time to sort out all the little details that make up living. Her feet hit the smooth wood of the deck and she grabs Ian by the collar, pulling him down so she can kiss him. For a moment he is startled into stillness but his hands curve around her bum, pulling her closer and he tilts his head, trying to wrest from her control of the kiss. Rose resists, releasing his oxford to bury her hands in his hair. The Earth spins beneath them and somewhere there is a horizon waiting but this—this is where she belongs.