- Previously -
A few hours later, just minutes before dawn, John finally released Rose to go back to the servants' quarters, but only after extremely lengthy, reluctant goodbyes.
She couldn't keep the warmth of his bed, but she got to take with her the feel of his kisses—still a dull buzz against her overtaxed lips—the smell of him clinging to her skin and the memory of every moment playing vividly, over and over through her brain.
And if she'd not completely left her heart with him before, she'd absolutely done so now.
A mere few hours later, Rose was climbing the back stairs with John's breakfast tray.
She'd managed half an hour, more or less, of dozing. She had washed up as best she could back in her room—what a time to have only a bowl and pitcher—before returning to the school, greatly fearful she would reek of her activities the night before. She thought she had succeeded well enough but still carried the paranoid fear that everyone who passed her could tell. She felt as if it radiated out of her—after all, her entire world had changed. Her fondest dream had come true more splendidly than she could ever have hoped. Her soul felt complete for the first time ever, if they were playing anywhere around her all the love songs of her time would make sense and she'd found the meaning of life. How could that not show on a person?
She was tired and wired, shell-shocked and overjoyed and petrified, and felt utterly out of control.
She arrived at his door and tried to act normally, except she found she'd never really paid attention to what "normal" was before this and had no idea what it meant. She tried for "businesslike," hoping it would all be conveyed in one simple knock. To keep her secret from anyone who might be watching. Which no one was.
John did not call for her to come in, as usually happened; instead the door opened on its own, swinging gently inward. Rose considered this oddity for a moment, then walked cautiously inside.
The moment she was past the open door hands appeared and relieved her quickly but quietly of her tray, putting it aside and then grabbing her firmly about the waist and pulling her swiftly behind the cover the door provided. Before she could even form a surprised cry very newly-familiar lips had covered hers and were kissing the breath out of her. John's smell and touch and the feel of his body were suddenly all around her, and she melted against him with a whimper he gladly swallowed.
They kissed quietly, sweetly, both instinctively working together to make no sound until John finally rested his forehead against hers, panting as noiselessly as possible.
"Rose Rose Rose Rose Rose..." he whispered, silly and smitten.
"John John John John John," she whispered back, working to keep in a delighted, adoring giggle.
"I so dearly wish you could have been here when I awoke this morning," he said, hands restless on her back, face glowing. "Doesn't seem fair that we can't spend all day in bed after what we discovered last night, does it?" Rose abruptly wanted to cry with the sweetness of what he was saying. "Seems like our right, people like us..." he murmured.
Rose's brow furrowed gently. "People like what?"
John just smiled, looking down a little shyly. "Did you get any sleep at all?" he asked.
"Barely a wink," she sighed. "It's going to be a long day."
His eyes took her in with a quiet hunger. "For more reasons than one," he murmured.
She nodded at him, looking a little dazed, already feeling the pull.
"Really, you can't stay here long," he said, causing Rose a brief flash of hurt and confusion, until he clarified: "I'll ravish you."
Rose smiled softly, wickedly. "Well, that's not much incentive to leave, is it?" She leaned in for another kiss and watched John's eyes stay open till she made contact, staring at her with a kind of helplessness that made Rose blissfully weak with excitement.
A few more minutes of kissing and John pushed Rose back almost harshly. "I mean it," he said raggedly. "You make me lose all self-control. At the very least you'll have me in such a state I won't be able to teach. Even now I'm not going be able to leave this room for...well, a while." He smiled a sheepish smile.
Rose bit her lip, glowing with fondness for him. She could feel their power over each other so keenly it was like a drug. "All right, I'll take pity on you," she said, though she couldn't resist stepping in to add a little grind against him. The knowledge he was starting to harden made her stomach flip and her eyes close.
John's eyes closed as well. "You realize my revenge on you will be swift and terrible."
"Oh, it will certainly not be terrible," she murmured against his lips. "And please don't make it swift."
She gave him one last peck and swept out the door before the need in his eyes could draw her back, had to consciously stop herself skipping down the hall and suddenly understood why people wrote musicals.
Late that night Rose returned to John's room. She walked through the door he opened for her with a quiet smile, saying nothing, her eyes heavy - she was nearly swaying on her feet, and John knew exactly what she was feeling. He himself was beginning to feel drunk with the exhaustion of not only spending nearly two days awake, but spending those two days churning with bone-shaking emotions at both ends of the spectrum.
Rose began peeling off her outer layers, John silently helping. Their eyes stayed fixed on one another, smiles soft.
Until Rose's outerwear was fully removed, at which point their smiles leapt to full wattage and they launched themselves into each other's arms, surrendering gleefully to kissing, touching, sighing into each other's mouths. Stripping off clothing was done with the utmost haste and the least amount of precision, adding quiet giggles to the sounds they fed each other.
They stumbled to the bed and he was inside her in a heartbeat, her soft warm body under and around him, the slick pressure that clenched him touching everything good and her hips rising wholeheartedly to meet him each time he thrust, bodies animated by joy.
It wasn't long before the sighs and moans turned rougher and more urgent, increasingly desperate noises of reaching for an ecstasy hovering ever closer. Muscles straining, heads bowing or thrusting back, clutching and pushing and fighting for the perfect friction till their inner worlds exploded, letting loose a soaring pleasure that language has never been able to capture.
One party, long and spare and wiry, collapsed and breathing and held close, the other softer and smaller, lost in aftershocks and blanketed by the first.
After a moment John raised himself onto his elbows to look down. "Hello!" he said brightly.
Rose laughed; John beamed. They rolled and teased and reconfigured till they were curled together in a cocoon of warm contentment.
John realized sometime afterward that they were both asleep roughly two minutes later.
Their subsequent days and nights continued in just such a fashion: Rose coming to John's room after everyone had retired, staying with him until the last possible moment before the sun rose, stealing kisses and endearments in the morning when she delivered breakfast and any other time they could throughout the day.
The days passed slowly, the nights blissfully. Rose refrained from showing John too many more "modern" moves, not at all sure how much further she could go before really making him raise his eyebrows. There were furiously-aroused times when she could barely keep from taking him in her mouth or when she was wild to feel his tongue between her folds, but she didn't want to press her luck. Besides, John was unknowingly teaching her the virtues of slow, and gentle, and reverent—of devoting one's attention and time so thoroughly to a task that its effects were electrifying.
Sometimes they met in the middle: it wasn't long before Rose couldn't resist kissing him open mouthed, and soon kissing with tongues was one of John's favourite things. He'd want to do it so long she'd grow impatient, desperately needing him to move on to more. He'd linger and savour, teasing out admittedly glorious sensations, igniting everything within her and even though she felt she'd explode, she didn't often have the heart—or the operating brain cells—to hurry him along.
And apparently she had ignited adventurousness in him in more ways than one.
They would lay awake nights talking about the stars, postulating whether man would ever visit them, what they would find there. John wanted to visit faraway lands, climb mountains, go to Africa and photograph wild beasts. Rose listened with both a quiet joy and a private sadness. She wished she could tell John what he was-the man with her would be nothing but awestruck and overjoyed, forever thinking himself the luckiest, most blessed being ever to exist. But simply having him come back to being the Doctor...that wouldn't be the reaction, of course. She wished she could split the difference, bring him back without awakening all the world-weariness and stifling guilt that came with it. A perfect balance hovered somewhere in between. A perfect, unachievable balance.
Then again, if John were loosed on the galaxy with his innocence intact…he'd still lose it eventually.
But moments and thoughts like that were few—the remainder was magic. When they weren't physically trying to climb into each others' souls, they talked and teased and gazed and giggled and drowsed and curled together and basked.
This went on for one week.
At a week and one day, John's breakfast was delivered by someone else.
The knock on John's door caused the customary smile on his face. "Come in."
Turning to bestow said smile upon his visitor, he blanched when the visitor was not who he expected. A lanky brown-haired girl, all elbows and knees and terrified silence, entered instead, keeping her head down as she walked quickly for the breakfast table.
"Where's Rose?" John asked without preamble.
"She's not available, sir," came the timid reply. John still hadn't seen her face for the shadows she kept it in. "I was told to deliver your meal instead."
Alarm shot through John's limbs. "Is she sick?"
"No sir, I don't believe so, though I wasn't told a definite reason." The girl hurriedly set out the breakfast implements with a surety and speed Rose never achieved.
John got a brief glance of her flaming cheeks and felt suddenly certain of something: "What reason is being talked about?"
The girl's head dipped even farther as the colour in her cheeks grew impossibly livid. "I—I don't know what you—"
"TELL ME what's being said," John ordered, the sinking feeling in his stomach taking him over.
The girl paused, finally seeming to find some backbone. She straightened and presented her young freckled face to him. "The talk amongst the staff says she's been dismissed, sir." Her eyes didn't leave his; they clearly said "You know why."
John's face was now the one that coloured.
Without another word he strode from the room. When he was gone the girl supported herself with one arm against the breakfast table, slumping and sighing in terrified relief.
In the school's back corridors, Rose was on her way to the servant's entrance, escorted by the thoroughly-disgruntled head Housekeeper. In this case said entrance was to be her exit—she'd been directed to leave immediately. The Housekeeper was making no secret of her irritation at this entire matter: not only had the morale of the staff been thrown into complete chaos, watching one of their own lose her job without the slightest advance notice or consideration, but the interruption of her daily duties to take care of it had her mightily put out.
Rose had trouble sympathising.
She endeavoured to keep her head high amidst the occasional gawking looks and the whispers. It seemed no one had any compunction about staring straight at her while the gossip flew.
Except one person.
When Matron saw her from a distance, the older woman's eyes flashed for one long moment with a kind of shocked paralysis. She then cast them firmly to the floor and did not raise them again as she passed.
Rose knew his "scandal" meant nothing to her in the grand scheme of things, existing as it did in a time she wouldn't even inhabit for much longer. She was panicked about getting in touch with John, frantic to figure out how not to lose track of him, but concern about her "reputation" didn't even register.
Nevertheless, it didn't stop her face from contorting into a look so furious that by all rights the Matron should have spontaneously burst into flames.
John's angry stride was carrying him toward the door to the kitchen. He could hear behind the doors that he was approaching a clucking henhouse.
He burst in on a group of women preparing and clearing breakfast trays, and his presence immediately stopped all conversation and activity. "Where is Rose?" he boomed.
The gathered staff of women all gawked at him, stunned at the arrival of this newly-insane professor. One of the older women found her voice the quickest.
"Mister Smith, you must leave at once! I'm afraid the Cook doesn't tolerate anyone but—"
"And I'm afraid I don't care," John cut across; the woman looked thoroughly shocked. "If you tell me what I want to know I'll be gone. Where is Rose Tyler?"
No one offered anything. They seemed unsure of consequences of responding, but also...strangely united.
"How long ago did she leave?" he demanded, looking angrily between them all. "Will she still be gathering her things, or has too much time passed for that?" He waited a long but impatient moment. "Well?"
He looked around wildly and spotted Jenny. "You! You're her friend. She would absolutely tell you her plans!"
Jenny's look was nothing like it was the night they'd spoken before, the night Rose had run off after the light in the sky. Her eyes were wide and bizarre and her smile was oily. "I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid I haven't a clue," she said, in a way that made John's skin crawl. Abruptly she stepped closer and inhaled deeply through her nose, causing her nostrils to flare disturbingly. John couldn't move away from her quickly enough.
Faced with a stonewall, John was about to unleash a fresh tirade when a young ginger woman spoke.
"She'll still be at the servants' quarters, sir." The woman's expression held something like compassion. "It's not been even an hour since she was dismissed, but I don't expect packing will take her long—she hasn't many things."
John met her eyes with an expression of pure respect and gratitude. The woman nodded her acknowledgment with a polite smile, and the kitchen door was left swinging as John flew back out it.
Conversation in the kitchen erupted again with the force of a hurricane, words like "shameless!" and "never seen the like!" audible within the maelstrom. A group of scandalised older women focused on the ginger woman.
"What possessed you to tell that perverted old sod where she'd gone?"
Ginger woman looked at them. "Did you think there was anything going to stop him?"
The women had no response, but it didn't prevent them resuming gossip amongst themselves. Ginger woman stood and left the fracas, abruptly unwilling to listen.
Evidently no one else recognized the look of a man in love.
John was nearly out the school's front doors when the Headmaster casually stepped in front of him. He smiled tightly. "A word in my study, Mr. Smith?"
John clamped down on his instant impulse to tell the Headmaster to get the bloody hell out of his way. "Certainly, sir," he forced out.
Moments later, perched tensely on a chair in the Headmaster's study, John watched the Headmaster arrange various items on his desk. "I'm sure you know why you're here," he said. "I further assume you've already been informed that Tyler has been dismissed."
John nodded again. "Am I?" he asked numbly.
"No." John looked up in surprise. "Your skill and your record have always been exemplary, and I would be hard-pressed to find your equal." The Headmaster's look became something frank, almost fatherly. "This isn't the first time in the history of private schools that something like this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last. I would be a fool to release you for a…lapse of judgment." The Headmaster seemed to think he was giving John a comforting absolution. John merely felt his jaw tighten.
"Of course," the Headmaster continued, rising to pace, "I would like Farringham to avoid a reputation for Masters intimidating young women into behaviour that will lose them their positions and character; to do so makes it most difficult to get servants."
John was momentarily speechless. "You think I coercedher?"
"Or perhaps the little strumpet set her cap for you, hoping to become with child so she could force a marriage out of you." He frowned at John. "Mr. Smith, I've been at this post a very long time and have seen a great number of things. You may presently be blinded by emotion, but in my experience once your head has cleared, you'll see sense. Situations like these boil down to one of those two cases, nine times out of ten."
John fought to contain his temper. "This is the one leftover time," he ground out.
The Headmaster smiled thinly at him. "In whatever case," he went on, "there is to be no further social contact between you and Tyler, on or off the school premises. In future I would advise to confine your attentions to barmaids and shopgirls. Do I make myself clear?"
John's jaw was tight enough to grind his teeth to dust. He could only nod.
The Headmaster moved back and sat at his desk again. "That will be all."
John's trip to the servants' quarters to find Rose proceeded as planned.
From moment to moment, depending on his thoughts, his heart alternately leapt and sank and rallied and despaired. What would he do to find her if she was already gone? She'd have to leave him some clue, wouldn't she? He had no idea where she was going now, or if she even had anywhere to go. Even if the school no longer permitted her to see him she'd find a way, wouldn't she? Or would she expect him to do the chivalrous thing and find a way to come to her? And…she would wanthim to come to her, wouldn't she? The scandal wouldn't have put her off him? Maybe she'd be thinking instead about her future and her character and…John's head felt ready to explode.
He arrived at the servants' building and momentarily tried to decide if it was better to just run up the stairs full throttle and check every room for her, or to try and learn her room's location so as not to waste time and energy. His choice was made when a young resident of the property appeared. Easily influenced by a bit of sternness, she readily gave up the information. John took the stairs two at a time, feeling a bit of a bully.
The door to the indicated room was half-ajar; John shoved it open. There Rose sat on one of the two small cots, holding a packed bag, staring into space. His heart leapt and then stopped; he waited for her reaction.
Rose turned and cried out upon seeing him, launching herself from the bed and into his arms. He caught her and clutched her to him with every bit of strength he had, holding her as she sobbed in relief and feeling grateful tears prick the backs of his own eyes.
"You found me," she wept, "You got here in time. I didn't know how long they'd let me wait, or how I'd talk to you if they made me leave, or—"
"Shhh," John said, rocking her back and forth half to soothe and half to celebrate the feel of her. "I'm here. And as long as you'll have me I always will be."
Rose pulled back to look at him with fresh tears and amazement. She looked overwhelmed and beholden and as though she was holding herself back against some thought. Her lip began to quiver. "It's my fault. Someone must have seen me leave, I wasn't careful enough—"
He kissed her to stop her berating herself. She kissed back ferociously, tasting of tears.
When they paused for breath he looked at her tenderly. "Rose...do you really not know how much I love you?"
Rose went completely still, staring at him open mouthed, and a kind of laugh-sob escaped her.
For one bewildering, horrible minute she looked both over the moon and as though he had just dug her grave.
Her face suddenly gained a heartbreaking intensity, one so concentrated he abruptly suspected there was something he didn't understand. "Remember this, never forget it," she warned. "I will always love you—and want you—more than any man I will ever meet in my entire life." She gazed at him as though trying to memorize him. "No matter what happens, I am nevertaking that back."
John kissed the breath out of her, lifting her off her feet, feeling her admonition that he remember the moment to be singularly unnecessary.
A brief while later and they were still there, John sitting on the floor against the bed with Rose sat between his legs, her back to his chest, his arms folded around her.
"The Housekeeper should be back any time now to walk me to the gate," Rose murmured finally. "I'm sure it won't do for you to be caught here." She looked forlornly over her shoulder at him. "We have to leave."
"I know," he said, still looking straight ahead. "I wish you'd tell me where this friend of yours lives."
"I wish I could," Rose covered, "but she's showing me such a kindness by letting me stay with her, I don't want to drag her into it." She didn't really know what the TARDIS would do if she let John in, but it didn't seem like part of the plan.
Suddenly she felt John's body straighten. "What day is it?"
"Thursday. The twenty-first."
He moved so he could face her better. "Meet me tonight?"
Rose nodded. "Where?"
John smiled. "The village hall."
Rose grew concerned. "But what will the Headmaster—"
John shook his head. "Don't know, don't care."
Rose's heart squeezed painfully. "John..."
"Rose...it's my choice," he implored her. "Just...meet me?"
The look in his clear eyes vanquished her. "Yes." John's grin went to full wattage.
"Right. Now before you go to...your friend's, I want you to visit a shop in the village, called Foster and Co. I'll have called ahead, and I'll need you to pick up a package for me. All right?"
"All right," Rose nodded in bemused confusion. "You going to tell me what we'll be doing?"
"No," he beamed. "It's an adventure."
Rose's heart squeezed again and she hugged him, hard, finding the understatement overwhelming.