"Wose is here, Wose is here!" Tony bolted across the classroom to the doorway. Rose scooped him up in her arms, he had only just regained the weight he had lost in the hospital and she was afraid that his growth was permanently stunted.
"How's your mum and Uncle Jason?" asked Anna Marie loading up Booboo Doggie and Tony's lunch tote and bag. "You mum says he's a fabulous cook and a deft hand with the dishes afterward."
"You tell me, he's your uncle. The women in your family must have had a hand in his upbringing," Rose teased back. "But, he's joined us for Codfella's on Thursdays, family tradition and all."
"Wose, time to go home," Tony tugged on her sleeve. "Off we go with the Doctah."
"Your new bloke a doctor too?" Anna Marie pressed for more information. "Know he drives a nice car, alright to be some people, eh?"
"He's not 'that' sort of doctor, he's got a PhD," or two she added mentally. "Tony seems to think that since they first met in the hospital that he's a proper doctor, and leave it to my mum to make the nickname stick, at least in our family."
She picked Tony up, though she knew he was fully recovered.
"I hold Booboo Doggie and you hold me," Tony observed solemnly. "Who's going to pick you up Wose?" he said and broke into a fit of giggles.
Tony said his goodbyes and they walked out the loading area where Jon was parked with the car. Jon was scanning the local news on Rose's smartphone, while Rose loaded Tony and got him buckled into the booster seat that had found a second home in the Carlisle's car.
"Go fast, Doctah," Tony ordered as they pulled out of the parking lot. The Carlisle's car had become familiar enough over the last few weeks that Tony now attempted to drive from the back seat via royal fiat.
Rose was afraid to look, so Jon had kept an eye on the headlines. "Nothing in the news feed about our mysteriously missing shopkeeper?"
"Nope," he replied with his endearing habit of popping his p's at the end of the sentence. "Totally vanished," he said pulling up to the loading area in front of the estate to drop them off. "You coming up?" she asked.
Jon was very different now than he was six weeks ago when he cornered her in his apartment in the carriage house and stopped short of kissing her. He had put away his pinstripe suits which had been his work armor in favor of the black leather jacket, work jeans and colorful jumper. The recollection of that first encounter in the study and Jon's arrogance stood in contrast to the subsequent, frequent and much less arrogant embraces that had highlighted their summer.
Something about the quality the light highlighted the stubble on his cheek. "Forget to shave?" Rose asked.
Jon handing Tony's rucksack from the back seat paused to rub his chin. "Drat, took you less that a day to notice. I get tired of the shaving in school year."
"Well, it's dead sexy and I'm glad you reserved it for after the term is over," she graced him with a tongue touched grin.
"Dead sexy, eh?" Jon quirked an eyebrow. "My mother and Verity are all into the feminine mystique and totally forget that being a man has it's own brand of mystery. Facial hair falls right into it."
"I'll have a beard when I grow up," Tony said clambering out of the back seat. There had been mornings now in the flat when three adults shared that steamy mirror and Tony was fascinated by Jason's morning rituals. Rose was suddenly saddened by the nothing of an adult Tony.
"Wish, he'd stay four. He's the perfect age," she added in a black melancholy.
"Almost did, that one," Jon replied before snapping at himself, "Enough of that line of thought. I'll find a place to park and be right up. Leave me that pack."
"I've got it managed," Rose snapped.
"I know you can," said Jon, "but your going to get a job a move away on me and I want you to take advantage while you can," he gave her his most famous eyebrow waggle before pressing on. "Seriously though, we need to talk about it."
"Wanna cuppa and plate of nibbles?" Rose shouted as she pulled Tony along to the stairwell.
"And banana bread," Jon shouted back to her. "Let's get all domestic while we've got the chance."
Rose made the tea and a couple of bacon sarnies. The kettle in the hob had finally died it's final death to be replaced by Jason with a shiny, chrome electric kettle. Rose had no screaming kettle as back up to her alarm clock anymore and she missed it. When she entered the front room Jon and Tony were playing playing with plastic dinosaurs on the floor. Rose placed their mugs and sandwiches on the end table. Johns messy brown locks and Tony's red huddled together. Later tonight in his workroom, Jon would shed his public personae and become the tinker and itinerant inventor, lord of time, and keeper of secrets, but for the moment in this space he was her problem. He was at one moment rushing her to towards a conclusion of what was them when she wanted to savor their time together, then he would insist holding back when she wanted her life to move on.
Jon has crafted an illusion on floor, a prehistoric world complete with flying pterodactyls. His deft fingers shaped ancient trees, volcanoes grew and smoked as he pulled them from the floor, lumbering forms of ancient beasts where he cupped his hands.
"It's an illusion, Tony," Rose warned. "It will melt away like ice cream, but I wouldn't trust the dinosaurs not to bite." She hovered over Jon's shoulder as he drew in a pond complete with alligators.
"Missed the most important bit," she said leaning past him and cupping her hands. The idea formed in her head and she willed it into being. Opening her hand she released a tiny common garden dragon into the pond. She then added a couple of gronkles, a hideous zippleback, three flightmares and a whispering death before warning Tony not to touch them.
"Toothless!" screamed Tony.
Tony was completely spellbound by the display, but Rose and Jon had frozen in place, their bodies pressed together. She could smell the leather of his jacket and the gel he used on his hair while he could feel the warmth of her body along his thigh and wrist.
"You're giving me a reason to stay, Tyler. Wanted to sort out Verity's finances, cover my mother's favor and move on. Flit into their lives, flit out again, make them worry about me in the interim." Tony ran off to get his dragon manual to compare pictures and Jon took the opportunity to pull Rose into a kiss.
"Good cuppa, I might add," he took a quick sip when Tony bounded back. "I declare a prehistoric picnic," Jon moved the plate of sandwiches to the floor.
"Penelope and Verity has pulled a fast one, I think," Jon said. "Been almost bearable to live with them these last few weeks. Heck, a couple months back those two were a pair of regrets: regret she had me and regret she asked her to have me."
"Improved, then?" Rose asked
"Yeah, the hovering has stopped. I'm no longer mad man behind the blue door. I'd even say they had grown complacent," he smiled. "Well..." he drawled, "supposed, I did that on purpose. But suddenly, I'm too preoccupied to raise their hackles on purpose. You'd have asked me a few weeks ago and I would have claimed that I never wanted this type of companionship in my life."
"If you'd ask me a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have wanted anything to do with my dad," Rose said. "But look at me now, scheduling a visit over the holiday to babysit for them."
"Remember how I told you how I carried a torch for my psychotherapist?" Jon asked. "Called me alienated, she did. I always figured myself for a renegade or something more aggrandized. I'm a bit mad, not that you haven't noticed. You've grounded me quite a bit and well, they want to keep you; I mean Penelope and Verity."
"Why do you have to spell it out for me?" Rose asked. "It was quite obvious, I met with their approval."
"I'm leaving," Jon said. "Not before the end of summer, but soon. I've been selected for a post-doc program in the States. There were only two openings this year and I applied last February. Between the amateur rocketry and and the impressive CV, well, I'm pretty lucky to be in."
Rose's eyes had grown glassy. "You're leaving me behind?"
"No, not exactly," he responded. "Well, you've got your mum and Jason, Tony, my mum and Verity, Willis and bloody Jeff Delobel over at Coal Hill and Ricky...er Mickey?"
"You're avoiding the issue," Rose said. Jon who had been watching Tony play with the mud by the little pond he has created.
"It's just as well don't you think?" he said. "You've got to find your own life, have your own career. I keep wanting to make you come with me. I know I can make you want it. But it's not right to do that."
"Wose, I'm bored." Tony had grown restless.
"Go find your book about dinosaurs and we'll see how close the illustrations are to Jon's picture," Rose shooed him out of the front room knowing it would take him time to find the book.
"How could you compel me to want to?" Rose asked, quietly angry through her curiosity.
"How'd you know I was a witch?" Jon rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. "It was like you laid my soul bare, so intimate, like a long lost lover. Verity and Penelope were happy for me, that I was noticed, but they advised, considering your delicate position as a student teacher, to wait until the end of term. I waited and then you walked into my life. I just about fainted on the spot. You came for me, I was doomed when you crossed my threshold."
"I did, and you are," Rose agreed.
"Well, don't I get a say in it?" Jon replied. "My life derailed by falling in... Sweet gods, Rose, I've just started exploring this part of myself.|
"So you're giving me up? Leaving me behind with my family for my own good, because you are scared of this part of yourself?" Rose finished for him angrily.
"I haven't given you up," Jon said. "It's just my choices and my future have suddenly gotten mixed up with your choices and your future. The post-doc, it's two years, a small stipend and a tiny flat, and if you want to wait for me, try the long distance thing, we can give this a proper go...live together, be a proper couple?"
"You'll meet some female mathematician," Rose suggested with a hint of resentment.
"You'll start dating Jeff Delobel," Jon admonished.
"You'd deserve it if I did!" Rose cried.
"Give over, Tyler!" he demanded. "We're on the same side in this. "I don't want to leave you, you don't want me to leave," he pounding his fist on his leg. "Sometimes I feel so thick, Mister thick thickity thick from thick town."
"Wose, I need help finding it," Tony called from the bedroom.
Rose got up to go, but Jon pulled her into an embrace, "Hold for a mo, Tyler," he kissed her again. "I'm suffering from something terribly domestic," he said. "You'll make a grown up out of me yet."
Rose had felt his hand sneak up the exposed area above her waist. "It's not fatal, people suffer from it all of the time."
"Let me make love to you tonight," Jon suggested. "I know that sex isn't a plaster for our troubles, but I want every second of you I can steal away."
"There's Tony and mum will be home in a few," Rose said, "and even though I'm an adult, she's not above delivering a slap if she thinks you are out of line, mister."
"Wose!" Tony called from the bedroom again, but Jon held tight. "Problem is that my emotions aren't too reliable."
"There is only one emotion that I am interested in the moment. I guess my question is: Do you love me?" she asked him. She thought she knew he did, but he had never declared that over their weeks together.
"How would I know? It's not an emotion that has been modeled for me growing up. Fierce loyalty, wicked lust, a yearning that follows me when you are not around, grief at the notion of leaving you behind...sums me up quite nicely. It might be love if I'm a hero or obsession if I'm a villain.
"Sounds like love to me, if that helps you choose between hero or villain," she extricated herself from his embrace to help find Tony's book, out of his line of sight on the top of his dresser.
When she came back and had Tony firmly ensconced with his book in his room, Jon was at the sink washing up their plates. "Goddard Space Flight Center, did I tell you that?" he called out to her over the noise of the sink. "Might lead to a position at NASA or Centre National D'études Spatiales if I brush up on my French. It will be at least good enough to secure a tenure track position back here with you. I'll be back on holidays, of course, but I have to admit I'm really looking forward to it."
Rose, felt the beginning of a sudden relief, as suddenly the time lines she was being trained to read resolved themselves for a moment. She couldn't read herself or Tony or her Mum because they were family. She looked and couldn't read Jon either...as her resolve hardened.
"Jonathon Carlisle!" she called.
"Right here. You don't have to go all full name on me, and it's 'Jonathan Wilfred Carlisle the Second' if you please.
"I want to ask you something, proper like."
"Alrighty then. Go ahead," he yelled from the kitchen.
"I want to see your face when I do it."
Jon appeared in the frame of the kitchen, hands rubbing a striped dishtowel, her mum's apron around his slim waist.
"Fire away, my fair damsel! Troi to my Riker, Jadzia Dax to my Worf, Keiko to my O'Brien" he responded cheekily.
"Oi, fanboy!" Rose exclaimed. "How'd you ever get that collection anyway?"
"I inherited it from my mum," he answered sadly.
"Penelope?" she asked.
"No, other mum. Her form of escape from her hellish marriage, I guess," he said. "I miss her something terrible. I lost my charm when I was no longer a pretty little baby boy. Don't know what she'd think of me as a grown man, but I was a disappointing teenager causing so much strife in her life those last few years. Took to reading her books to remember her by."
"You might have to give up your science fiction if you enter the world of science fact with your post-doc. Imagine it's a bit of a pay cut too?" Rose ventured on a hunch.
"First you take my painting now you are threatening my books. You better have some better to offer," he gave her a saucy grin. "And to answer your question, they set the stipend assuming by the time you're post doc that you've got a few dependents. I should do fine after a few years. The other post-doc coming in with me is bringing her husband and kids from China," he responded, eyes widening at her line of questioning.
"Wait...you don't think? It's too soon, isn't it? I mean..." he floundered.
Rose concentrated real hard, he had only just begun to teach her how to apperate objects from the future, but she knew her course of action was locked in when the fuzzy little box filled her hand.
"Johnathon Wilfred Carlisle the Second," she got down on one knee before him, presenting the box and opening it for him, "will you marry me?" She stood, and removed the simple gold band from the box and slid it onto the ring finger of his right hand. "Don't know the proper etiquette coming at it from this side of things, but I think my intention is clear. If you want to travel abroad and study the stars, I want to be at your side. If you'll have me?" she had started to cry overcome with the emotion of the moment.
Jon's eyes had grown glassy as well and he crashed his lips to hers in acceptance and silent benediction opening a connection between them. ~My Rose. You are my everything. I'm yours forever.~
Rose basked in his presence before a step on the landing and a key in door broke them apart.
"Tyler!" Jon hissed. "Your blouse is done up crookedly." How he managed that in the few minutes of their embrace puzzled her, but he did a good job of buttoning her up. "You'll get me slapped, Tyler!"
"They're going to have to get used to it," Rose said as the door opened for Jackie and Jason. Tony barreled out of the bed room and launched himself at his mother's legs. Jackie gave Jon the eye for a uncertain moment.
"Staying for dinner, Jon?" Jackie asked.
"Nah, car's got a date with Verity's bridge club tonight. Besides, mum's got a banana cream pie in the fridge with my name on it," Jon said.
"Fish and Chips for tea tomorrow?" Rose asked. Jon looked at Jackie for approval before nodding. "Jon's got news. So do I on the job front, that is. It's alright, right?" she asked.
"Be nice to see my daughter for a change," Jackie gave her approval as Rose usher Jon out the door.
"Goodbye, Rose," he said, swooping in for a peck on the lips before bounding down the stairs.
"Rose, why did you invite him for Thursday dinner, that's family dinner?" Jackie asked darkly. "Cheeky that was."
"Earth to Jackie, she asked him for a reason," Jason observed. I've been a part of family dinners for the last month, and I don't seem to recall you asking Rose's permission.
Rose not wanting to get in the row over the merits of Jon versus Jason went to her room to change into a warmer shirt. She grabbed a brush to pull through her hair and the true adult she witnessed the day of her warning stared back, the older face with knowledge and memories of pleasures she had now experienced.
"Rose!" Jackie shouted from the hallway. "I didn't mean to natter at you soon as I walked in the door. Let's have a chat, love." Rose made herself presentable before going out. Jackie was at the table with the check book.
"Four pounds!" she groused. "That's all we have til the end of the month. Cept, your father actually sent a check which I haven't deposited. He says Joan is going to set up a direct deposit from her paycheck which is more steady, can you believe that?"
"Really?" Rose said, "now that is classy."
"My Pete has been gone along time, maintenance checks must be like paying for the same book over and over again. Nothing new with us for him," Jackie sighed.
"You married him at nineteen?" Rose was careful with this line of inquiry.
"Don't you get any ideas, missy! You won't be making my mistakes," Jackie said.
"Bit beyond that age now mum, I'm twenty-four already and depending on where I find a job...well Tony will have a room of his own soon," Rose continued diplomatically. "Besides, getting married at nineteen wasn't a total disaster, you've got me and Tony to show for it."
"My highest high and my lowest low all in one package, I'll admit," Jackie said thoughtfully. "I'm worried about you and that Jon Carlisle. He's too old for you Rose. A man his age should be married already or...wait, he's not a divorcee with a half dozen kids in a cothold out in the country is he?"
The look on Rose's face was all the answer Jackie needed. "Look, all I'm saying is, that a man his age will either commit and if he won't he's not worth your trouble. If you get to the point where you think he's the one, ask him to marry you. It's the twenty-first century, worked pretty darn well with Jason. Didn't tell you that, did I?" she winked. "Asked him myself, not ten minutes ago. Said I needed a good head in the house for numbers now that you are moving on."
"Oh, mum, that's wonderful news. I'm assuming he said yes?" Rose hugged Jackie.
"Well, not in so many words, but I think him saying 'I'm your's' summed it up quite nicely"
Jason came in, wearing the apron that Jon had worn earlier, an apron that neither Jackie or Rose ever seemed to remember using themselves. Three glasses and a sippy cup balanced on Tony's hardcover dinosaur book. Tony followed with a bottle of sparkling juice.
Jackie grabbed the bottle. "Oh look, a particularly bubbly year!"
They sipped their bubbly and danced in the front room of the small flat and for once Rose knew what Jon had meant about seeking the world through his eyes. All of the interconnections, what was, what is and what will be. She saw the leaves blow across Peckham Rye and the clouds move across the moon on a London skyline. She looked back in time to see her huddled figure in a past time being drawn to Diu Solum and her future now past.
Much to her shock Jon's voice spoke in her head. ~Tyler, what are you doing taking a wander in my mind?~
~I was thinking about Peckham Rye~ she said.
~So was I. You know what this means?~ Jon asked.
~That I'll never mess up another Star Trek or hard science question again on quiz night at the Pub?~ she responded saucily.
Tony came over to Rose and clambered onto her lap. "Jon made the dinosaurs, Wose."
"And I made the dragons," Rose whispered adjusting him on her lap and nuzzling her nose into the smell of shampoo in his hair.
~Thinking of me, Tyler?~ Jon asked. ~You are feeling all warm and comfortable~
~I'm cuddling Tony~ she replied. ~You're feeling happy and satisfied, been thinking of me?~
~Banana cream pie, Tyler, the ambrosia of the gods.~ he said.
~You are comparing me to banana cream pie?~ she teased.
~It's my favorite!~ he tried to comfort her. ~It's going to be hell until I can see you tomorrow, fancy sneaking out?~
~Tomorrow, Jon, and all the tomorrows after that. Just hold on.~ She whispered the last sentence into Tony's hair.
"Hold on!" Tony replied. "That's what you said, Wose. Hold on."
"Oh and you did beautifully, love," she couldn't help as a tear escaped into his hair as the room was filled with music and bubbly and Jackie and Jason's moment with each other.
In an eclectic flat in the upper level of an old carriage house, with funny blue doors that pushed in when you expected them to pull out, Jon Carlisle admired his engagement ring, sipped a glass of wine and pondered which books they'd take with them to the States. ~Have I told you how much I loved you lately?~