[Creative Muses] Response
004.Gut feeling
The first time she saw him, she had thought that there was something familiar about him. Familiar in that dream sort of way you never do quite understand. Still, it had been enough for Sarah to walk over and take a seat on the park bench near him.
“Hullo,” she said, smoothing out the newspaper in hands as she talked. “Come here often?”
He seemed startled. No, shocked was far more like it. Whatever it was that he had been watching now seemed forgotten as he stared at her. His brown eyes were wide and his mouth a little ‘oh’. Before she realized it, he started to babble quite excitedly.
“Sarah Jane Smith! It is you! Ooooh, this is brilliant! No, wait, this is beyond brilliant! How’d you ever-Oi! And you’re so young! Brilliant, absolutely-”
“Do I know you?” Sarah interrupted. It was one thing to have this man seem familiar. It was something else entirely for him to start babbling this incessantly seconds after she had greeted him. “I’m sorry. It seems to be the first time I’ve ever evoked this sort of reaction out of someone. It’s not Smith, though. I’m Sarah, yes, but Sarah Evans.”
The man looked dumbstruck. A part of Sarah wanted to reach out and close the open mouth before he caught flies. “It’s the Liverpool accent, isn’t it? My best mate here in London always gives me a hard time about it. It’s Sarah Evans. I think Smith might have been my parents’ - my birth parents, that is - surname, but I can never remember these things.”
“Sarah Evans,” he repeated slowly, almost as if he were testing out the name. He seemed lost at first, as if trying to process a great deal of information all at once. Processing finished quickly, though, and that manic smile returned right away. “Sarah Evans! Oh, it’s terrific to meet you. I’m John. John Smith.”
***
It had become a ritual for them over the following five months to meet in Hyde Park ever Sunday. Although Sarah never quite figured out why John Smith looked so familiar, or why he had reacted to her as such, she had soon decided some things were worth keeping secret. His friendship had become far more important. He would dazzle her with amazing stories of a Doctor in a parallel universe who saved countless planets and people with his trustworthy companions. She, in turn, would tell him about her life growing up in Liverpool.
Sometimes they would break ritual and meet during the week. Usually, these were the days Sarah was chasing after some sort of story: an alien spotted here, Cyberman equipment there, oh yes, it really is the abominable snowman in Piccadilly Circus! The life of a tabloid reporter was never dull and John seemed to take to it naturally. He enjoyed the thrill in the chase as much as she did. And, she found out soon enough, he was rather fond of editing her work.
Five months later, and Sarah was bursting with excitement as she waited for him to show at their bench. Every five seconds she glanced at her watch. When she finally did recognize his silhouette (she never would understand his fondness of pinstripe suits), Sarah could not sit still any longer. She jumped from the bench, leaving her bag behind as she ran over to him. She threw her arms around him in a happy hug, giggling and grinning and never noticing the somber expression on his face.
“Guess what?” Sarah did not wait for a response. “Mr Chapman is hiring new reporters! I told him about you and how you’ve been helping me and showed him some of those stories you’ve written and he wants an interview! Oh, isn’t it fantastic, John? We could be partners! Proper partners at the Inquisitor at last!”
No response. Sarah blinked and untangled herself from his body. She took a step back and looked up at him this time. There was a sadness to his eyes that she could not quite remember seeing ever before. He looked far older than his thirty years of age, almost ancient. Those were eyes that had seen all the tragedies of the world, eyes who couldn’t survive one more.
Quietly, she slipped her hand in his and led him back to their bench. She placed her bag on her lap before turning around to look at him. He still looked haunted. All of her previous excitement quickly flew away.
“John?”
“She left.”
***
As far as she knew, John never did find his Rose again. Sarah had done her best to help, using every single access point she could find to data files on the Tyler family. It appeared that, while the woman’s mother, father, and brother were still living in an estate outside of London. But all traces of Rose Tyler had disappeared. She never understood, even when John had said she had slipped out in the middle of the night in search of his brother, leaving him only a goodbye note. No one could disappear from the face of the Earth that easily.
In the end, it did make a good scoop: “Tyler Daughter Abducted by Aliens!” Even the cost had been worth it, to the reporter in her. John had been furious at her for weeks after seeing the headline on the front page of the Inquisitor.
The excitement died down soon enough. Life returned to normal, or, at least, a new sort of normal. John had taken the job at the paper and Sarah found herself with a partner. So what if it wasn’t quite real news the two were reporting? They lived for the chase and the rows that would follow as they tried to type up something after. And when Tessa moved out of the loft Sarah had been sharing with her, it took less than a heartbeat for John to agree to move in.
Yet, they still kept up their Sunday ritual.
She had been coming from the office that day. As she walked down the familiar dirt path, Sarah braced herself for the rounds of teasing John was certain to inflict for that fact. He loved to tease her for her little quirks: the artsy photographs she was fond of taking, the way the tiny dogs always frightened her, the fact that she’d sometimes go in to the office on Sundays to think. She, in turn, would mock him right back the best she could, his hair being her favourite sticking point.
Sure enough, there John was waiting for her when Sarah turned the bend. Her lips quickly quirked into a bright smile and she began to walk faster. She had missed him, skipping out on breakfast this morning. The thought and emotion almost surprised her.
“Hullo, John!” Sarah called, waving at him. He stood, smiling that manic smile in which she had become so fond. “Been waiting long?”
“Oi, you’d like to think that,” he answered, pulling her in a tight hug when she came close enough. “Man waits for impossibly slow woman, stuck watching the birds fly east for hours upon end. Off to Capistrano, perhaps. Home planet, you know. Or maybe just looking for someone to feed them, nannies and schoolchildren that. Definitely not Tom Lehrer. Lovely man - gorgeous man - but that song about poisoning pigeons-Naaaaah. Point is, you’re finally here and that's brilliant.”
She laughed, batting him away playfully. It never was too early in the day for one of his stories. “You’re absolutely impossible; you know that, don’t you?”
He winked at her as he returned to the bench, patting for her to sit next to him. Sarah rolled her eyes as she did. She really had missed him this morning, hadn’t she? She settled her bag on her lap, as per normal, before looking back at him. There was a twinkle in his eye, a twinkle she had come normally to associate with chases down dark alleys. She wound up grinning in anticipation. Oh, today’s story would be good.
“Well, going to begin, aren’t you?”
John nodded, clearing his throat overdramatically. “This one begins with a girl. Not just any girl. This girl was special, special like the Donna-lady special and like Donna, never even realised just how special she was. Thing is, she didn't go around saving worlds or anything of the kind. See, she didn't need to go around doing that. Cause she did something just as spectacular: she saved a man. Don't you go interrupting me, Sarah Evans! Because this story is important. You see, this brilliant, brilliant girl saved me.”
“Did she now?” Sarah raised an eyebrow, trying her best not to grin. Still, a laugh escaped her. She had always been bullocks at mocking him, no matter how hard she did try.
“Yep! Job, flat - the whole shebang! Except I don’t think she’s realized it. Brilliant girl, but absolutely daft sometimes.” He sighed, just as overdramatic as all his gestures have thus far been. “Hints all week, Sarah Evans. But nooo, she has to ignore every single flippin’ one of them, don’t you? How’d Garret ever put up with her is utterly beyond me.
“You’re so keen on these stories, so let me spell it out for you: boy meets girl, boy bloody loses girl, boy falls for best mate. Got it now, Miss Sarah Jane Evans?”
She had paled as he talked. It made sense now: the flowers on the table every morning and the silly little notes he kept tacking to the refrigerator. The way he’d hold doors and chairs out for her and the way he insisted on cuddling on the couch of late. She had been blind, hadn’t she?
“Oh.”
“Oh? Oh? Is that really all you can say?”
John shook his head, opened his mouth to say something, and then seemed to reconsider. Before Sarah had a chance to respond, though, he had placed a hand on either side of her face. For a moment, time seemed to stop as she found herself really looking in to his eyes. Infinite, they were, and full of love. Love for her? She had little time to consider the prospect before he crushed his lips against hers.
A gut feeling told her to return it. A gut feeling, it seemed, that was remarkably similar to the one that had her introduce herself over a year ago.
When he finally let her go, she stared up at him with breathless awe. “Oh.”
“Oh,” he mocked as he smiled warmly at her, a hand still resting on her cheek. “Just oh?”
“Yep,” Sarah laughed. She wrapped an arm around his neck, lowering his head so their fringes touched. She smiled; heart alight with happiness. There was something to be said about instincts, something to be said about friends, something even maybe to be said about falling in love. Cautiously, her eyes closed and she tilted her head to meet his lips again, soft and tender in a testing kiss. “Just ‘oh.’”
John’s laugh was a low rumble against her lips and chest as he pulled her into his lap. When he replied, he replied between happy, sloppy kisses distracted by laughter and talk. “I think… I… can… live with that.”
They both could.
[ooc: thank you to sarahs_attic for beta’ing help.]
The first time she saw him, she had thought that there was something familiar about him. Familiar in that dream sort of way you never do quite understand. Still, it had been enough for Sarah to walk over and take a seat on the park bench near him.
“Hullo,” she said, smoothing out the newspaper in hands as she talked. “Come here often?”
He seemed startled. No, shocked was far more like it. Whatever it was that he had been watching now seemed forgotten as he stared at her. His brown eyes were wide and his mouth a little ‘oh’. Before she realized it, he started to babble quite excitedly.
“Sarah Jane Smith! It is you! Ooooh, this is brilliant! No, wait, this is beyond brilliant! How’d you ever-Oi! And you’re so young! Brilliant, absolutely-”
“Do I know you?” Sarah interrupted. It was one thing to have this man seem familiar. It was something else entirely for him to start babbling this incessantly seconds after she had greeted him. “I’m sorry. It seems to be the first time I’ve ever evoked this sort of reaction out of someone. It’s not Smith, though. I’m Sarah, yes, but Sarah Evans.”
The man looked dumbstruck. A part of Sarah wanted to reach out and close the open mouth before he caught flies. “It’s the Liverpool accent, isn’t it? My best mate here in London always gives me a hard time about it. It’s Sarah Evans. I think Smith might have been my parents’ - my birth parents, that is - surname, but I can never remember these things.”
“Sarah Evans,” he repeated slowly, almost as if he were testing out the name. He seemed lost at first, as if trying to process a great deal of information all at once. Processing finished quickly, though, and that manic smile returned right away. “Sarah Evans! Oh, it’s terrific to meet you. I’m John. John Smith.”
***
It had become a ritual for them over the following five months to meet in Hyde Park ever Sunday. Although Sarah never quite figured out why John Smith looked so familiar, or why he had reacted to her as such, she had soon decided some things were worth keeping secret. His friendship had become far more important. He would dazzle her with amazing stories of a Doctor in a parallel universe who saved countless planets and people with his trustworthy companions. She, in turn, would tell him about her life growing up in Liverpool.
Sometimes they would break ritual and meet during the week. Usually, these were the days Sarah was chasing after some sort of story: an alien spotted here, Cyberman equipment there, oh yes, it really is the abominable snowman in Piccadilly Circus! The life of a tabloid reporter was never dull and John seemed to take to it naturally. He enjoyed the thrill in the chase as much as she did. And, she found out soon enough, he was rather fond of editing her work.
Five months later, and Sarah was bursting with excitement as she waited for him to show at their bench. Every five seconds she glanced at her watch. When she finally did recognize his silhouette (she never would understand his fondness of pinstripe suits), Sarah could not sit still any longer. She jumped from the bench, leaving her bag behind as she ran over to him. She threw her arms around him in a happy hug, giggling and grinning and never noticing the somber expression on his face.
“Guess what?” Sarah did not wait for a response. “Mr Chapman is hiring new reporters! I told him about you and how you’ve been helping me and showed him some of those stories you’ve written and he wants an interview! Oh, isn’t it fantastic, John? We could be partners! Proper partners at the Inquisitor at last!”
No response. Sarah blinked and untangled herself from his body. She took a step back and looked up at him this time. There was a sadness to his eyes that she could not quite remember seeing ever before. He looked far older than his thirty years of age, almost ancient. Those were eyes that had seen all the tragedies of the world, eyes who couldn’t survive one more.
Quietly, she slipped her hand in his and led him back to their bench. She placed her bag on her lap before turning around to look at him. He still looked haunted. All of her previous excitement quickly flew away.
“John?”
“She left.”
***
As far as she knew, John never did find his Rose again. Sarah had done her best to help, using every single access point she could find to data files on the Tyler family. It appeared that, while the woman’s mother, father, and brother were still living in an estate outside of London. But all traces of Rose Tyler had disappeared. She never understood, even when John had said she had slipped out in the middle of the night in search of his brother, leaving him only a goodbye note. No one could disappear from the face of the Earth that easily.
In the end, it did make a good scoop: “Tyler Daughter Abducted by Aliens!” Even the cost had been worth it, to the reporter in her. John had been furious at her for weeks after seeing the headline on the front page of the Inquisitor.
The excitement died down soon enough. Life returned to normal, or, at least, a new sort of normal. John had taken the job at the paper and Sarah found herself with a partner. So what if it wasn’t quite real news the two were reporting? They lived for the chase and the rows that would follow as they tried to type up something after. And when Tessa moved out of the loft Sarah had been sharing with her, it took less than a heartbeat for John to agree to move in.
Yet, they still kept up their Sunday ritual.
She had been coming from the office that day. As she walked down the familiar dirt path, Sarah braced herself for the rounds of teasing John was certain to inflict for that fact. He loved to tease her for her little quirks: the artsy photographs she was fond of taking, the way the tiny dogs always frightened her, the fact that she’d sometimes go in to the office on Sundays to think. She, in turn, would mock him right back the best she could, his hair being her favourite sticking point.
Sure enough, there John was waiting for her when Sarah turned the bend. Her lips quickly quirked into a bright smile and she began to walk faster. She had missed him, skipping out on breakfast this morning. The thought and emotion almost surprised her.
“Hullo, John!” Sarah called, waving at him. He stood, smiling that manic smile in which she had become so fond. “Been waiting long?”
“Oi, you’d like to think that,” he answered, pulling her in a tight hug when she came close enough. “Man waits for impossibly slow woman, stuck watching the birds fly east for hours upon end. Off to Capistrano, perhaps. Home planet, you know. Or maybe just looking for someone to feed them, nannies and schoolchildren that. Definitely not Tom Lehrer. Lovely man - gorgeous man - but that song about poisoning pigeons-Naaaaah. Point is, you’re finally here and that's brilliant.”
She laughed, batting him away playfully. It never was too early in the day for one of his stories. “You’re absolutely impossible; you know that, don’t you?”
He winked at her as he returned to the bench, patting for her to sit next to him. Sarah rolled her eyes as she did. She really had missed him this morning, hadn’t she? She settled her bag on her lap, as per normal, before looking back at him. There was a twinkle in his eye, a twinkle she had come normally to associate with chases down dark alleys. She wound up grinning in anticipation. Oh, today’s story would be good.
“Well, going to begin, aren’t you?”
John nodded, clearing his throat overdramatically. “This one begins with a girl. Not just any girl. This girl was special, special like the Donna-lady special and like Donna, never even realised just how special she was. Thing is, she didn't go around saving worlds or anything of the kind. See, she didn't need to go around doing that. Cause she did something just as spectacular: she saved a man. Don't you go interrupting me, Sarah Evans! Because this story is important. You see, this brilliant, brilliant girl saved me.”
“Did she now?” Sarah raised an eyebrow, trying her best not to grin. Still, a laugh escaped her. She had always been bullocks at mocking him, no matter how hard she did try.
“Yep! Job, flat - the whole shebang! Except I don’t think she’s realized it. Brilliant girl, but absolutely daft sometimes.” He sighed, just as overdramatic as all his gestures have thus far been. “Hints all week, Sarah Evans. But nooo, she has to ignore every single flippin’ one of them, don’t you? How’d Garret ever put up with her is utterly beyond me.
“You’re so keen on these stories, so let me spell it out for you: boy meets girl, boy bloody loses girl, boy falls for best mate. Got it now, Miss Sarah Jane Evans?”
She had paled as he talked. It made sense now: the flowers on the table every morning and the silly little notes he kept tacking to the refrigerator. The way he’d hold doors and chairs out for her and the way he insisted on cuddling on the couch of late. She had been blind, hadn’t she?
“Oh.”
“Oh? Oh? Is that really all you can say?”
John shook his head, opened his mouth to say something, and then seemed to reconsider. Before Sarah had a chance to respond, though, he had placed a hand on either side of her face. For a moment, time seemed to stop as she found herself really looking in to his eyes. Infinite, they were, and full of love. Love for her? She had little time to consider the prospect before he crushed his lips against hers.
A gut feeling told her to return it. A gut feeling, it seemed, that was remarkably similar to the one that had her introduce herself over a year ago.
When he finally let her go, she stared up at him with breathless awe. “Oh.”
“Oh,” he mocked as he smiled warmly at her, a hand still resting on her cheek. “Just oh?”
“Yep,” Sarah laughed. She wrapped an arm around his neck, lowering his head so their fringes touched. She smiled; heart alight with happiness. There was something to be said about instincts, something to be said about friends, something even maybe to be said about falling in love. Cautiously, her eyes closed and she tilted her head to meet his lips again, soft and tender in a testing kiss. “Just ‘oh.’”
John’s laugh was a low rumble against her lips and chest as he pulled her into his lap. When he replied, he replied between happy, sloppy kisses distracted by laughter and talk. “I think… I… can… live with that.”
They both could.
[ooc: thank you to sarahs_attic for beta’ing help.]