Meeting the Family (1/1)
Title - Meeting the Family (1/1)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Ten, Rose, OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - What happens when your girlfriend's father is the Oncoming Storm?
Author's Notes - For twenty bucks during the last Support Stacie auction, you won a fic of your very own. This is Isabelle's (a girl after Kristin's heart as far as LJ-ness is concerned), which she has graciously agreed to share with all of you. Her prompt was a family dinner, Kate included, with (one of) Athena's boyfriend(s).
Thank you to jlrpuck, who is being very game about keeping up with all these Support Stacie fics and Kristin for the read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkat for me, commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
“I think,” said Rose, “we should have dinner with Athena’s boyfriend.”
“Why?” yelped the Doctor.
“Because you should get to know the boy your daughter’s dating.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s smart parenting.”
The Doctor thought for a second, then opened his mouth.
“You ask why again,” said Rose, “and I’ll smack you.”
“I’m just trying to figure out why she’s allowed to date in the first place,” he grumbled, and disappeared under the console.
********
“Yo,” said Brem, into his phone.
“Did you just say ‘yo’?” said Athena.
“I…Yeah. Maybe.”
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“Got it.”
“Brem. I have terrible news.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Mum and Dad want to have dinner with Fred.”
“Well, that sounds-”
“Dreadful. You have to come.”
“I…What?”
“You and Kate, that’ll take some of the pressure off.”
“You want Kate to come have dinner with all of us and your boyfriend?”
“Yeah. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fun. It’ll be-”
“Awkward. Theenie-”
“He’s scared, Brem. He’s not like Kate. He knows who Dad is. D’you know how much harder it is to try to date someone who thinks your dad is some kind of…”
“Oncoming Storm?” Brem suggested.
Athena sighed. “Pleeeeeeeeease, Brem?” she wheedled. “Pleeeeeeeeeease?”
The outcome of this conversation had always been inevitable, and he knew Athena had known that. “Fine,” he agreed. “I’ll be there.”
********
The Doctor was dreading the day. He had hoped to be able to ’accidentally‘ skip over it, to miss the day entirely. He suspected Athena would have been quite okay with this. But Rose was steadfast. They had had dinner with Kate, several times now. It was time that Athena was subjected to the same treatment. The Doctor, in the rare moments when he was able to be objective about his children, was aware that Athena was the most like Rose, and he was also aware that Rose had taken a rather hands-off approach to Athena’s teenaged rebellion as a result. Rose claimed it was lessons learned or some such rubbish. Whatever it was, Athena was now chafing a bit under the closer scrutiny, and the Doctor had the impression that Rose might be worrying about her approach, and the Doctor wished he had an opinion on the whole matter different from just the deep conviction that his children were quickly getting older than he would have liked.
He dropped Athena off on Fred’s planet, Athena looking as grim as if she was going to a firing squad, and wandered about the TARDIS, finding himself in the kitchen. He had expected Fortuna to be in there, the designated cook of the family, and was surprised to find Rose in there instead, peering into a pot with a look of the utmost confusion.
“Oh,” he said, drawing to a stop in the doorway, and he knew he’d done a poor job concealing his surprise.
She glanced at him. “I may be out of practice in the kitchen, but I’m sure I can remember how to make a dinner,” she remarked.
“Oh,” said the Doctor. That implied she had ever known how to make a dinner in the first place, but he had learned a few things in the years he’d been married to this particular human and said instead, again, just “Oh.”
Rose read between the lines, sighing at her pot. “I really don’t know how Fortuna does it.”
The Doctor went to peer into the pot. It looked like pasta sauce to him. “Fortuna would have cooked tonight.”
“I’m not going to have Fortuna cook dinner for Athena’s boyfriend,” replied Rose, sharply. “That is my responsibility, to be the mum and cook the dinner and evaluate the boyfriend.” Rose put the lid on the pot with a bit more force than was necessary.
The Doctor lifted his eyebrows at her, leaned against the counter, and folded his arms. “It occurs to me that you’re more worried about this dinner than I am, and that is not allowed at all, you know.”
“I’ve just been thinking,” said Rose, busying herself with something in the refrigerator the Doctor couldn’t fathom, “what terrible taste I had in boyfriends, and whether my mother should have told me that or shouldn’t have told me that or-”
“First of all, I do not disagree about your taste in human boyfriends. Second of all, maybe we’ll like Fred.”
Rose abruptly took her head out of the refrigerator to stare at him. “I didn’t expect to hear that out of you.”
“Welllllllll.” He tugged on his ear. “I’m not saying we will like him. I just suppose, you know, anything’s possible, isn’t it?”
********
“You know,” remarked Kate, squeezing Brem’s hand as they waited in a sheltered corner of the yard for the TARDIS to appear, “I like this.”
“Like what?”
“It’s a big deal for a girlfriend to reach the point where she’s so accepted that she’s used to make awkward situations less awkward. It’s a major milestone in our relationship.”
“Is it? We’ll have to celebrate, then, won’t we?”
Kate grinned at him and kissed the tip of his nose.
“I should tell you,” he remarked, “Fred has tentacles.”
“Well, I expected as much. Matt would be devastated if Fred didn’t have tentacles.”
“And he’s blue,” Brem added, almost as an afterthought, as the noise of the TARDIS preceded it into the corner of the Yard. Brem’s father poked his head out.
“Right on time, am I?” he queried.
“A bit late,” Brem answered.
“Damn,” said the Doctor, and then, smiling at her, stepped aside to let them into the TARDIS. “Everyone’s in the dining room,” he announced.
Brem paused. “We have a dining room?”
“Now we do, yes. Apparently the TARDIS deemed this an important enough occasion to provide us with a formal dining room.”
“And how are things going?”
“Oh,” answered the Doctor, smiling tightly. “Just fine.” There was a moment of silence as they walked together to the dining room. “Fred may be a touch nervous.”
Fred was indeed blue, and he did indeed have tentacles, although other than the tentacles, a pair of them, one just above each arm - almost like an extra pair of arms except not ending in hands - and the blueness, he looked fairly like a human. A nervous human. When the Doctor introduced Brem and Kate to him, he stood, extending one arm to shake their hands, but, in so doing, seeming to lose track of his left tentacle, which upset a pitcher of water onto the table.
“Oh!” exclaimed Fred, looking flustered.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rose said, smoothly, standing to pick up the upset pitcher and mopping at the water.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Tyler,” stammered Fred.
“It’s Rose. Really. I’ll go refill the water.” Rose departed.
Athena gave Brem a beseeching look accompanied with some mental begging.
“So,” said Brem, jovially, “what’s for dinner?”
“Mum made pasta,” replied Fortuna.
“Mum?” repeated Brem, unable to conceal his surprise.
“Yes, and I’m sure it’s going to be love-” began Fortuna, and then there was a shriek from the kitchen.
The entire family, too used to emergencies, leaped up and ran to the kitchen, where Rose was standing by the door, pitcher still in one hand, the other hand over her mouth. And the reason for that became clear very quickly, because what looked eerily like a bouquet of irises was settled happily in a pot on the stove and appeared to be…slurping.
There was silence from the audience, as they stared.
“Oh,” remarked the Doctor, finally. “They’re finnegans, aren’t they?”
Fred nodded miserably.
“They’re what?” said Rose.
“Finnegans. Flowers that eat. Tomato sauce.”
Rose stared at him.
“This is…” started Brem.
“Terrible,” finished the Doctor. “Absolutely dreadful. Horrifying. Let’s order takeaway from somewhere.”
The kids all agreed that this sounded like a fabulous idea. Rose frowned at them.
“I’m so sorry for the finnegans, Mrs. Tyler,” said Fred. “I should have warned you-I thought you knew-”
Brem clapped a hand on his shoulder in a friendly fashion. “Really, don’t worry about it. We wouldn’t want you to feel guilty about it. It’s fine.”
“Totally fine,” agreed the Doctor. “Not a big deal at all. Where are those menus again?”
“At least let me pick the takeaway,” said Rose, following him off to the corner of the kitchen where the menus were stored.
“Really, you saved us all from a terrible fate,” Brem assured Fred in a low and somber tone.
“Her cooking’s not that bad,” protested Fortuna, loyally. She glanced at her mother, ascertaining her distance, and then said, “But thanks, all the same.”
********
They settled on Chinese, which was apparently very exotic to Fred. Kate thought he never really stopped being nervous but he did relax enough to answer some basic questions about his background and life and how he and Athena had met (“Oh, flirting planetside,” drawled the Doctor, “what else does Theenie do?”).
“Take a breath,” Kate told him, in a friendly fashion, when Rose had retreated briefly to the kitchen with the last of the dessert plates and the rest of the family had gone to fly them back to Fred’s planet. “You did well.”
Fred did take a breath, visibly. “Do you think so?”
“Yeah. They can be…overwhelming at first, but they’re all really nice.”
“Well, I’ll admit they’re very good at acting like they’re nice.”
It was an odd thing to say, thought Kate. She smiled quizzically. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, I mean…He’s the Oncoming Storm, right? I’m sure he really isn’t ‘nice.’ Not entirely. He can’t be.”
“The Oncoming Storm?” echoed Kate.
“Yeah, you know. From, like, the myths and stuff? It’s what the Daleks called him. You know, if the myths are to be believed and all that.”
Kate knew, vaguely, about myths and Time Lords. She knew about the near-extinction of the race, knew that they seemed to be considered mythical creatures by the rest of the universe. She had not heard anything about any oncoming storms. “Oh,” she said, awkwardly, just to have something to say.
Rose reappeared. “Well,” she remarked, cheerfully. “Thanks so much for coming, Fred. It was so lovely to have you.”
“Thanks so much for having me,” he replied, tentacles flailing a bit with fluster at being addressed so directly. “Everything was delicious.”
The TARDIS gave a gentle bump as it landed.
“And we should be here,” said Rose.
Athena and Fred were given a few moments to themselves to say good-bye outside of the TARDIS, and the Doctor didn’t even spy on them, which he thought very open-minded of him, if he did say so himself. And then he took Brem and Kate home.
“Right on time, am I?” he queried, as he opened the door for them.
“A bit late,” Brem smiled at him, because it was true, as it was almost always true, and then he allowed his father to ruffle his hair in farewell and hugged and kissed his sisters and mother and then stood with Kate and watched the TARDIS de-materialize. “So,” he said. “We have a major milestone to celebrate, don’t we?”
“What’s an oncoming storm?” Kate asked him.
Brem frowned. “Where did you hear that?”
“From Fred.”
“It’s silly. It’s…a nickname of my father’s. It’s from the days before the war, when the Time Lords were fighting the Daleks. You know that story.”
“I know, I just had never heard Oncoming Storm before.”
“Because it’s silly,” said Brem again. “Let’s go.”
But Kate didn’t know how silly it was. Actions taken in the heat of a war, which she knew all about, were one thing. Having a reputation that resulted in such a nickname… Kate thought of the Doctor, cold as ice, handing the Bibliobolups over to the rhinoceros cops, and shivered a little bit.
********
“I thought that went very well,” said Rose, locating the Doctor in the library, sitting on the floor, parts strewn all around him.
“Welllll,” he said, peering at a part through his specs, “could’ve been worse.”
Rose sat on the couch and watched him for a second. “You knew they were finnegans.”
“What an absurd thing to suggest,” said the Doctor, lightly.
Rose chuckled. “I should punish you for that. But you behaved the rest of the day.”
“Really,” huffed the Doctor, looking at her over the top of his specs. “I do have manners.”
“Not very often,” pointed out Rose.
The Doctor huffed again and turned back to his parts.
“Well, the good news is that I don’t think it’s very serious. Not that I didn’t like Fred but Athena is too young to really get serious yet.”
“Athena doesn’t need to get serious for another six hundred years,” responded the Doctor, absently.
“I did ask her about protection, and she does seem to be safe.”
“Of course she’s safe.” The Doctor thought. “Safe from what?”
Rose looked amused. “Safe sex,” she clarified.
“What?” he yelped. “You cannot possibly mean that they are actually…”
“Yes.”
“Rose! This is important information! You should have told me this before dinner!” He considered. “Or never. Never would have been a good choice, too.”
Rose laughed.