Summary: Physics student John is enamored with an art student named Rose, but is she hiding her true motives for using his astronomy knowledge?
Notes: For @doctor-who-hears-a-horton, the winner of one of @doctorroseficreclists' ficlets! She requested college AU. Hope you like it, friend!!
Read on Ao3
It was late autumn when the star senior of the physics department, John Noble, fell head over heels for the most beautiful, talented, kind, intriguing girl in the universe. At least, in his eyes. No one else seemed to pay her much attention. She wasn’t an astronomy student, not even in the gen ed classes. She said she was researching for her senior project. She was an art major, she explained as she pulled a sketchbook from her bag.
But John was the only student worker manning the publicly accessible parts of the astronomy wing—specifically its giant telescope—who didn’t fully believe her when she said that was the only reason she started hanging around. He had known loss, had felt its keen sting, and he knew when her honey eyes caught his that there was more haunting her than high marks and graduation.
She often stayed late into the night, so he taught her all about the nebulas and galaxies and patterns the ancient cultures saw meaning in. With each of his stories, night after night, she opened up a little more. Her name was Rose. Rose Tyler. She told him of her mum, fierce and brave and overprotective in her tracksuits. Their life in their council flat. The celebration when Rose won a scholarship to uni, a miracle, one her best friend and ex had to pull strings for her to even enter.
And here she was, working odd jobs to pay for everything else the scholarship didn’t cover. Spending her nights in the observatory and planetarium, searching…
She always redirected the conversation before he could pry out of her what exactly she was searching for. She deflected with excuses about a new commissioning or perfecting an art technique or just needing to get away from the stresses of life.
He realized she knew very little about him (ok, his venting to his sister earned him a pillow to the head and a scolding, so it was less a revelation than a command) and he reciprocated her personal revelations: He was raised by his grandfather watching meteorites and constellations in their back garden, followed to uni by his younger sister who was studying business… He didn’t know what the magic words were as he talked, but Rose began to smile more as she sketched the star systems he projected onto a dark wall for her. She put down the sketchbook entirely as he answered her question about his parents. She slid her hand over his, and her eyes were full of empathy.
He wondered sometimes if she wanted to kiss him when he walked her to her flat or when she snuck him takeaway into the lab after hours. He held back from closing the distance himself, too unsure if she felt the same.
Autumn changed to winter, and the academic year flew by as they became the closest of friends. Their reunion after the Christmas holidays was perfected by a brief midnight kiss at the frigid strike of the New Year. They both blushed even redder in the icy air but didn’t have a chance to talk about what it meant as the fireworks exploded over the near-frozen river.
Winter changed to spring, and they held hands nearly everywhere they went. It became harder and harder to think about life after graduation.
He even caught Rose in tears in the planetarium one evening in April.
“Rose? What’s wrong?” He tried to think of anything that he should have known she might be upset about—or worse, that he might have done to hurt her.
“ ’m running out of time.” She tugged at her sleeve and he realized it was quite warm in here. Too warm for a hoodie, even a thin one like hers.
“Running out of time? To find a job for after graduation?”
She shook her head but smiled a bit. “Well, that too.”
“For us? To be with you? Because Rose, we can work it out. We can go anywhere we want. It doesn’t have to be the end–”
“No.” She cut him off and pecked to his cheek to soften the harsh tone. “I mean, yes, I want to talk about that and the future and everything, but there’s something else. Something I failed at.”
His confusion and honest desire to help must have shown on his face because before he could reassure her that while her academic performance wasn’t perfect, it was far from failing, she placed a gentle hand on his chest.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you. You do know most of the reasons I come here.” She gestured to signify the astronomy building as a whole. “But you don’t know the most important reason to me. The most personal one. It’s ridiculous, but please don’t laugh.”
“Rose…”
“No, let me just say it.” She unzipped her hoodie and took it off. He swallowed hard, and the part of his brain not keeping his overeager anatomy under control realized he had never seen her in short sleeves in all the time he’d known her. The weather hadn’t been warm enough until recently.
She revealed the inside of her right wrist. A star, the five-pointed kind, with black dots inside.
“It’s a map of how it looks from Earth,” she explained. “Or it’s supposed to be.”
He examined her wrist more closely, holding her arm as carefully as if it was her heart, because the look in her eyes told him it was. That’s how much this tattoo meant to her.
“I got it the day I turned 18,” she continued. “My dad… When I was born, he didn’t have much money, him and Mum, so to celebrate, he adopted a star and named it after me. After he died, my mum forgot about it. Somehow we lost the certificate with the star’s identification number, but he had this map in a file we found. The big one there in the middle, that’s it. You’re supposed to be able to find it yourself with a kid’s telescope, if you get away from the city far enough. But he died before I was old enough for him to show me.”
John’s heart sunk. This pattern didn’t match any he was familiar with.
“Of course, that was back in the ’80s, so who knows if the adoption program is still even active today. I’ve tried to find any part of the sky that matches. That’s why I’ve been here so much.” She sniffled and wiped the sparkling tears from where they were caught in her lashes. He let loose of her wrist and leaned in to kiss away her tears.
Just before his lips reached hers, however, her words echoed in his head. The late ’80s. The map was over 20 years old.
He jumped up. “I’ve got it!”
Rose blinked up at him, trying to figure out why he didn’t follow through with the kiss. He would have to make up for that.
“I know how we can find your dad’s star.” His glee wasn’t translating well as she sat on the planetarium floor in the literal and metaphorical dark. He pulled her up to standing and gave her the kiss she deserved.
He bounced away, leaving her shocked by the sudden kiss and still trying to follow his train of thought.
“Sorry, but how?” Her scrunched brow and slightly tilted head were adorable to him.
“You’re brilliant, Rose. You said it yourself! The map is as old as you are.”
Understanding dawned on her face and she inhaled sharply.
“John. I’ve been looking at your newest projections with…”
“With a telescope more powerful than most anything else out there. Certainly more powerful than tech from 20 years ago.” He typed furiously into the planetarium’s computer, flipping through the years until he had the archives from her birth month and year. He carded his fingers through his wild brown hair, not caring how it stood up in all directions.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered as it loaded piece by piece onto the giant projection screen covering the entire theatre. Their eyes scanned the white dots over and over until she gasped out, “Oh my god.”
“What? Where?” he asked, trying to follow her gaze in the dark.
She pointed, then walked right under it, staring at her star.
“It’s here.” One hand covered her mouth and the other wrapped around her middle as she choked back her tears. He went to her and pulled her into his arms, soothing her with strokes along her back.
“Hey, hey,” he whispered. “You did it, Rose.”
“We did it,” she corrected. “Thank you. I know it’s just a star, like any other, but my dad… it’s my last connection to him. The only thing I have left. Oh god, Mum! I should, I dunno, print it out or something.” She laughed at her own silliness. She hadn’t planned out what she would do if she actually found it. She only knew her senior project had to involve the astronomy department so she could get in here. To have access to this.
John understood and smiled down at her, shining eyes reflecting her own. “I can do even better.”
They used the remainder of their free time until final exams working on a special project together. A thank you gift from Rose to her mum. They presented it on graduation day, a beautiful painting done by Rose with John’s help and expertise. It showed the night sky as they could see it today through the telescope, and they showed her mum the real thing to prove it, but the painting featured special metallic paint over the stars on the map Rose’s dad had left behind.
The painting of the stars was passed on from generation to generation, with Rose and John’s kids and grandkids and great-grandkids eventually receiving their own adopted stars for each birth, until Rose had painted all her aging fingers would allow.
They never forgot those nights together in the astronomy building, however: studying and sketching, takeaway and pizza, laughter and tears and revealing their hearts to each other until their love was as vast and deep and infinite as the stars they counted.
