I wrote a thing! It is actually not what it was supposed to be at all…that seems to be happening to my muse a lot lately. I wanted tipsy, strangers-who-meet-at-a-party Eight/Rose with shagging and it got…a bit different. But have not fear…there is a party, there is Eight/Rose, there is tipsy-ness and there will be shagging, but it'll take another chapter. If you don't want the smut, just read Chapter One as a one-shot. Also, if any of my wonderfully talented, artistically inclined friends would like to draw any of this…I would be really excited! (winks and nudges amazingly talented friends). Shout outs to X-Files, Serenity and a tinsy Big Bang Theory reference.

"Jack, I already told you. No," John said, shifting his mobile from one shoulder to the other and opening his refrigerator. He sighed at the nearly empty contents, picking up a questionable loaf of bread before dropping it in the rubbish bin in disgust. Grimacing, he took stock: a case of Guinness, some very suspicious fruit and a milk carton he really didn't want to open. Apparently, he was having takeaway for the weekend.

"C'mon, man! It's been forever since you've had a weekend off! You're not even on call! You need to come to my party. I'll make it worth your while," the voice of his friend cajoled on the other end of the line.

John rolled his eyes at the flirty line and began rummaging about for some menus. "Exactly. I haven't had a day off in 'forever' which is why what I 'need' is to spend the night alone, watching telly, eating sweets and sleeping in tomorrow."

"No, what you need is to get laid!" Jack replied.

"No need to be crass, Jack," he reprimanded, without much heat. He'd known Jack for years and Jack was just...Jack. He was hoping that his friend would take the hint and drop the subject but, as ever, he was persistent.

"It's been two years, John. Two years since you and Joan broke up and I know that you haven't had any since then."

"And how, pray tell, would you know that?" John replied, amused despite himself. He moved aside a few measuring cups and pots that he was sure he'd never used in his entire life, banging around a bit.

"Because I would know," Jack replied cockily, laughing on the other end. "I am like a sexy bloodhound for this sort of thing."

"Sexy bloodhound? Really? That's what you're going with?" John laughed.

"Hey, I could make it work," Jack defended.

"I'm sure you could. But I'm still not coming tonight." He finally found a large stack of takeaway menus under some old bills in a drawer and began sifting through them to find dinner.

"Oh, but you could. Multiple times, I'm sure," Jack answered lasciviously and John smacked himself for handing him that line. "All you have to do is find the right lady. Or the right gentleman. I'm not picky."

"Well, we all know that," he retorted. "Anyway, I find it hard to believe that there will be any one that could classify as a 'lady' or a 'gentleman' at a party thrown by you," John teased.

"All manner of man and beast are welcome in mine kingdom," Jack replied in a put-on ridiculous version of an English accent and John could hear the wink in his voice, could practically picture him posing in his flat as he continued, "And in mine bedchamber."

"Sorry, your majesty. But Scully is the only lady for me tonight. And Mr. Guinness the only man," John finished, finally deciding to just select a menu at random. Ah, Chinese, apparently.

"Ugh," Jack replied. "I don't see how you can watch that show. Way too much sexual tension for me. Will they, won't they? Did he see her take her shirt off? Did she touch his hand on purpose?" Jack sighed. "It's hell. Just shag already, you two."

"Hey, they just kissed!" John defended.

"Yeah? After how many seasons?" Jack teased. "And how many heated looks and near-undressings? Long, meaningful hugs and bedroom eyes?"

"Shut it," John replied, flopping down on his couch to look over the menu. Maybe he'd just order everything.

"Hey, that's what you need! A smart, hot firecracker of a girl that'll challenge you and your crazy alien beliefs. Although, you're more a blondes man, aren't you?"

"My previous remark still stands. Shut it, Jack. And aliens are real. Everyone knows that."

"John, seriously. The weekend after a man's ex-fiancee gets engaged to another man, he doesn't hang around the house eating crappy takeaway and watching telly. He gets off his butt, he puts on those jeans that make it look fantastic and he has some good, hard rebound sex with a girl he finds at his best mate's party," Jack continued, oblivious to the sudden silence on the other end.

"Oliver proposed?" John asked, weakly, after a long moment of silence.

"Oh, man. I'm so sorry. I thought you knew," Jack replied, sounding remorseful on the other end.

"No," he answered, quietly. "But it's ok. She...she's happy with him. She deserves that."

"Come to the party tonight, John. Seriously. You don't even have to shag anyone. Just...rejoin the land of the living," Jack said, seriously. "It's been too long."

"Ok," John answered, finally, after a deep breath. "Fine. I'll be there."

-

Five hours and four outfits later, John was holding his hand up to knock on Jack's door and regretting this decision already. He had heard the music pounding from Jack's flat all the way down on the street, but he also knew that no one was going to call the police on Jack because Jack had probably invited the whole block. And probably the entire police force. He was about to turn around and go back down for a cab, when the door swung open anyway and two amorously engaged people stumbled out, paying no attention to him whatsoever.

"John!" Jack's voice roared from inside as he was spotted and there was no way he could leave now. The whole party (and, wow. Jack must have invited the entire city not just the block) chorused his name and then immediately went back to their drinks and dancing.

Jack sauntered toward him, giving him a slow once-over as he approached. "Oh, excellent choice. I told you those jeans looked great. And the blue jumper - really brings out your eyes, my friend. You're going to have women throwing themselves at you even before they realize you're a mysterious, brooding doctor."

"I am not here for women to throw themselves at me," John answered, accepting the beer Jack offered him as he ducked inside, looking for the quietest (and apparently, nonexistent) corner of this this party.

"Suit yourself!" Jack answered, clasping him on the shoulder and then smacking him on the bum before disappearing back into the tumultuous crowd.

Now alone in the sea of strangers, John took a deep breath and swig of his beer, wondering if he knew anyone else at this party. Jack's range of friends was wide and extremely varied and it was just as likely that most of these people were complete strangers to Jack as well. Jack just seemed to attract people - in more ways than one.

Sighing, he made his way in the general direction of the kitchen, determined to at least have some food if he was going to stay. On his way through the crowd of writhing bodies, he was groped more times than he could count, ended up dancing with a man dressed as Cher for a few moments and, by the time he'd reached the door to the kitchen, had somehow exchanged his beer for a luridly bright, pink cocktail. Never a dull moment at one of Jack's parties.

An hour later, he was still in the kitchen, although he was now on his third beer (he'd poured out the cocktail in the sink - and it had fizzed up out of the drain, smoking). He was just working up his courage to make it back through the (now even more insane - was that a pig in a space suit?) crowd to leave, when the kitchen door swung open and he was suddenly knocked into the table by a rapidly moving body. His beer went onto the cheese tray and his arm shot out to catch the falling person on instinct.

"Oh, shit! I'm so sorry!" the girl in his arms said, straightening up immediately and picking up his rapidly emptying beer. "There was this guy out there and I was trying to get away from him and - sorry, sorry!" she said again, blindly reaching for a napkin and using, to his amusement, a bit of lunch meat to try and soak up the beer on the cheese tray.

She realized her mistake a moment later and began to giggle. "Turkey?" she said, offering him the oddly soaked deli meat.

"No, thank you," he replied, laughing as well and taking it from her to throw away. "Are you injured, miss? Is that fellow still following you?" he asked, peering toward the door.

"Nope. He got waylaid, I think," she replied. "By Cher, oddly enough."

John laughed once again and tried to decide if it was the two and a half beers or if this girl was really as enchanting as he was beginning to think she was. "Ah, well, you probably haven't seen the last of him, then," he quipped.

"Oh, I think I'm strong enough to resist," she replied, sticking her tongue in her teeth as she smiled this time and yes, she was definitely enchanting. And gorgeous. She was wearing a dark blue jumper that was just this side of clingy and the casual heeled boots she had on made her legs look long and toned. She also had a brown leather messenger bag over her shoulder and her trousers, while not extremely tight, showed off some very wonderful looking curves. His eyes darted up to hers as soon as he'd realized he'd taken a detour getting back up to hers and found her still grinning at him.

"John Noble," he said, holding a hand out to her. "Pleasure, I'm sure."

"Rose Tyler," she answered. "And that is yet to be seen," she continued teasingly, making him blush under the harsh kitchen lights.

"So, what do you do, Rose Tyler?" he asked, moving to grab another beer from fridge and offering her one as well, which she accepted easily. He moved in closer to her, wanting to continue their conversation, even over the raucous din of the music in the next room and the push of bodies all around them, coming and going near the food table.

"I'm a graphic designer at a firm downtown called Bad Wolf Publishing," Rose said, opening her beer on the edge of the countertop and leaning against it to smile at him.

"An artist?" he said, interested.

"Yep," she said, popping the 'p'. "Had to go back for the graphic design part later, though. Which was hard after listening to years of my mum's 'I told you an degree in art history wouldn't get you a job', speeches."

"But you like it?" he asked, leaning in a bit closer as the sound of 'I Gotta Feeling' ratcheted up even further.

"Oh, yeah!" she enthused. "And I still do a bit of freelance art on the side, got a website and all. 's how I know Jack, actually."

"Really?" he asked, frowning slightly, trying to think of what need Jack might have for a freelance artist. "OH! Did you those drawings of him that are hanging in his office?"

"That depends," she answered, coyly, leaning a bit closer to him now. She smelled like lager and sunshine and he was momentarily distracted by the particular shade of her pink lips.

"Hmmm," he said, blankly, and it was a moment before he yanked his eyes back up to hers and then he coughed. The beer seemed to be having a bit of an effect on his self-restraint, apparently. "Wait, what do you mean, 'that depends'? Is your involvement in their creation conditional?" he asked, attempting to regain his equilibrium.

She laughed gaily again, moving one hand up to rest on his shoulder. "Well, no, but it would make me feel better if you liked them."

"Jack wouldn't stop talking about them for months," John answered, shivering slightly at the feeling of her hand on his shoulder, but blaming it on the haze of the alcohol in his system. Jack really had enthused about the prints non-stop after he'd commissioned them and they decorated his entire downtown office. Each drawing depicted Jack in a different outfit or era, being heroic and manly, of course. Although John had rolled his eyes at his friend's narcissism, he did have to agree that they were good work. "Yeah, I do like them. The one of him as the RAF pilot is my favourite, I think."

"Oh! Mine too!" Rose said. "It just really fit him, somehow. Some men are born to wear long coats. Anyway, that's what I really love to do...take people and draw them in other settings, make them what they want to be. I have to say, though, Jack was really disappointed when I told him he didn't have to model that Greek one for me."

"I bet he was," John grumbled. "Was the figleaf your idea or his?"

"Oh, mine, definitely." Rose giggled and then moved the hand on his shoulder up to brush a lock of his curly hair from his eyes. "You've got really great bone structure," she said, tilting her head the side and assessing him. He wondered what she saw there. He needed a bit of a haircut, but this was nothing like the way he used to wear it in med school. Back then, it had been shoulder length and wavy. His face was a bit craggy and he'd probably cut himself shaving before coming here, but he wasn't terrible looking, he knew. In fact, there were always women eyeing him up in the hospital canteen, which he generally ignored. Rose's hand came up and brushed over his cheekbone and he shivered again, before she moved it down to turn his head gently by the chin. "You're really, properly gorgeous, actually. I'd love to draw you."

His eyes widened at the compliment and the offer and then, to his delight, she blushed. "I mean, if, if you wanted. I could. Sorry," she stammered, stepping back from him and bumping into the counter.

"I'd love that," he answered, smiling warmly. Her return smile lit up crowded, noisy kitchen and, to his great surprise, she hopped up onto the counter right in front of him and took a pad of paper out of her bag, which she dropped to her feet. "What, are you going to do it right now?" John asked, incredulously.

"No time like the present!" she chirped, grinning at him, pencil already flying over the paper. "Now, what would you like to be, John Noble? Actually, what are you already? What do you do, I mean?"

"I'm a doctor, pediatrics," he replied, shifting slightly and he tugged at the cuff of his jumper, pulling it over the tattoo at his wrist, feeling exposed.

"Oh, cool!" she answered and he sighed in relief. She seemed sincere in her admiration but not fawning or manipulative like some women he'd met after he told them his profession and she didn't say anything about the symbol on his inner wrist. "D'you like it, your job?"

"Very much so," John answered, honestly. "It gets a bit lonely, long shifts and longer hours...and it can be grueling, but I feel like I'm really doing something, you know? Like I'm helping people every day, even if it's just a little bit."

"A hero, then," Rose said, seriously, looking down at her paper. "I can work with that."

"No, not a hero," he said, quickly, reaching out to stop her hand for a moment. "Just a man trying to make a difference, in whatever way he can."

"How about an adventurer, then?" she smiled, her hazel eyes darting up to look into his soul through the blue-gray windows of his eyes. "Hmm...cowboy?"

"Not quite my style," he laughed, trying to picture himself in a cowboy hat with Jack's ridiculous accent. "I'm more of a Star Trek man than a Wild West fan. Oh, that rhymed."

"Ooo, a space cowboy," she teased, her eyes lighting up. "That's perfect."

"Wait a second -"

"Nope, nope! Space cowboy it is!" she grinned, flashing him that tongue-in-teeth smile and, oh, he had better finish this beer or he was going to reach over and snog that expression right off her face.

Which was completely ridiculous. He knew nothing about her (except that her name was Rose Tyler, she was a talented artist and the way she was leaning down over her paper, he could see down her jumper just a bit) and he certainly didn't go around kissing random women at questionable parties.

He stood, watching her unabashedly as her pencil flew across the page. She glanced up at him every now and then and his breath caught each time. While she worked, he catalouged the way her teeth bit slightly into her bottom lip and her left thumb became smudged black as she used it to blur elegant lines of graphite. "You can still talk to me, if you want," Rose said, suddenly, pulling him out of the rather brilliant fantasy he'd been creating about shagging her on that counter.

Oooh, where had that thought come from?

"Ok," he responded, trying desperately to think of something to say to her that wasn't 'You're gorgeous, too' or 'Would you care to come back to my place' or 'Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't have a boyfriend'. "D'you have a boyfriend?" he blurted out.

Oops.

Her head shot up and the pencil paused. "No," she said, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Do you?"

He sputtered out the relief-filled drink he'd just taken. "NO!" he said, quickly, loudly enough that a few people turned around to look at him. "No boyfriend. Or girlfriend. But definitely no boyfriend. Why would you think that?"

She shrugged one shoulder and her mouth quirked into a grin as she went back to drawing. "You're fit, and you're friends with Jack."

"All right, I'll give you that," he laughed. So, she thought he was fit and gorgeous. Then, and he would completely blame the beer, if someone asked, he announced, "I was engaged once."

The pencil slowed, but only minutely. "Oh?" Rose asked.

He slumped on the counter beside her as it seemed imminently important to talk about this all of a sudden and his inhibitions seemed to have flown away. "It ended two years ago. She was a nurse at the hospital where I did my residency and where I work now. She was pretty and older and I thought...I thought that was the way it was supposed to go. Finish school, become a doctor, get married, have kids, then retire to go on cruises and grow tomatoes. We met when I was doing rounds. She expected me to ask her out, so I did. She expected us to date for a year, so we did. She expected me to propose, so I did. But it wasn't….we just weren't…"

Rose wasn't drawing anymore, she was just watching him with kindness and interest and it gave him courage. He hadn't talked about this with anyone, actually, not even Jack, but it seemed like Rose would be a good person to tell even if this seemed like a ridiculous place to discuss it (the peeling sound of Katy Perry was now blazing from the other room) and most of the people around them were in some state of undress and well on their way to shagging on a bowl of crisps.

"Jack tells me I watch too much television, but...but, you know like in films or on the telly, when the main characters meet for the first time and their hands touch and it's like...it's like they can feel the earth turning? Like the world is spinning so fast, revolving just around them? Like every brush is exciting and every glance means something? Like they just couldn't live without each other if they ever let go, if they ever lost one another, they could never forget, never move on, never, ever..." He peered up at her earnestly and, if his vision was a bit blurry, that was because of the lager not because of any tears. "Do you know what I mean, Rose?"

To his enormous relief, she answered, quietly, "Yeah." And he thought she really did know, as the sounds of the party faded away a moment and it was just the two of them, caught together in that one finite moment. Then someone(s) knocked a tray of food to the floor and she went back to her drawing and he took a deep breath to continue, relaxing further without her direct gaze on him but with her comforting warmth nearby.

"It wasn't like that with...with Joan. I wanted it to be, honestly I did. I wanted it to be like that so badly. But it wasn't. And I thought, 'Well, that's the way it's supposed to be in real life'. 'You're an adult now, John, hang up those silly notions. There aren't fireworks, there isn't a grand sweeping soundtrack and there certainly isn't love, not like that.' After a few months, she broke it off, didn't say why...but I was relieved. How rubbish is that? I was relieved that she'd ended it, that she'd left me. I saw her a few times, passed her in the halls or saw her in the canteen. She'd met someone else...Oliver Redfern. He's a general surgeon. They just got engaged. Yesterday, according to Jack."

"Are you ok?" Rose asked, and his heart swelled again at kindness in her tone.

"Actually, yeah. I mean, it's a little hard because I cared for her, you know, and I'm alone now. But I've seen them together. And...and they're just so happy together. She's a lot happier with him than she ever was with me. So, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think I am ok," he finished, nodding to himself and feeling a hell of a lot more sober than he had just a few moments before. He nodded along to the strains of the Killers for a moment, thinking to himself and he was just about to say something else to Rose, when she looked up at him.

"Done," Rose said, hopping off the counter and presenting the sketch to him with a flourish. He looked at her over top of the paper and there was that warmth and understanding there again, smiling gently back at him. She understood.

John held her gaze a moment longer and then looked down at the pencil drawing in his hand, his jaw dropping. The sketch was him, undoubtedly, but she really had recreated him as though he had just stepped out of a science fiction film. He was wearing sturdy, brown boots that laced up to his knees and patterned britches with a matching waistcoat, over an open-collared oxford. He could practically feel the textured surface of the material in the exquisite rendering Rose had made. At his waist was a leather belt with an infinity symbol buckle (ah, so she had seen the tattoo) and around his neck was simply-knotted, navy scarf. His outfit was completed with a long, double breasted jacket that she had shaded in dark and it was billowing behind him a bit, as though she had just caught him mid-step. Every line of his face was in place, there was a bit of scruff on his chin and the curl that she'd just brushed from his eyes a moment earlier had fallen back down. But what arrested him even more than all of those flawless details, was the expression on his face. He looked determined and resolute and yet a bit tired and lonely, exactly how he felt inside. His right hand was outstretched toward the viewer, as if he were reaching for someone, looking for someone to fill that space between his fingers with theirs. It was as though his every emotion was staring up at him through the grainy veneer of Rose's drawing.

He was speechless.

"Do you like it?" she asked, quietly, fidgeting with the strap of her messenger bag as she tucked it back over her shoulder and then moved her thumb up to her mouth to chew on the nail.

"Like it?" he breathed. "Rose, it's -"

Suddenly the door to the kitchen burst open, and the pig - yes, it had been a pig earlier, huh - followed closely by Cher and then Jack came barreling into the kitchen, sending the table flying and scattering people and food everywhere. John clutched Rose's precious drawing close to his chest and reached out for her automatically, trying to keep from being separated in the mass chaos that was following the strange trio. His hand connected with hers, and a frisson of excitement shot from his hand up his arm and straight into his heart.

His eyes darted over to meet hers, knowing that she felt it too. He grinned widely and then, though she probably couldn't hear him over the incredible din, he mouthed, "Run!"

And they did.