It Never Gets Dull (5/5)
Title - It Never Gets Dull (5/5)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2
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 - Jackie wants a wedding. There are hijinks galore.
Author's Notes - Thanks to bouncy_castle79for the read-through, and Kristin for brainstorming.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
He was late for his own wedding. Rose should have predicted that. Rose, who had spent the night before at a small bed-and-breakfast in town, sat primly in her wedding dress on a seat in front of the church and thought up all the different ways she would keep killing his regenerations when he showed up. Brem and Athena and Fortuna, decked out in their finery, sat with her and amused themselves by naming the different historical eras of the planet Gyberg.
Here she was, she thought. On her wedding day. Waiting for her alien husband. Who was late despite possessing a time machine. Listening to her three children recite the history of another planet.
Not the sort of thing you imagined for your wedding day when you were eleven or twelve years old, now, was it?
She did not entertain the notion that he wasn’t coming. She knew he would come. She just wondered how late he was going to be. If she had to sit outside in this wedding dress for a whole year, she was totally going to do it.
But he was only an hour late, and he walked out of the TARDIS, in tux and Chucks, with his hands casually in his pockets, as if everything were peachy.
“Hello,” he said, smiling at them. “Isn’t it bad luck for me to see you in that before the wedding?”
“You’re late,” she bit out at him.
He hesitated, looking around him as if he expected an alien invasion. “Two o’clock, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But our wedding was at one.”
There was a moment of silence. “Oh. I…Oh.”
Rose stood and swept into the church. Athena and Fortuna looked at him. Brem scribbled in his journal.
Rose poked her head out the church door. “Hurry up and get to the front of the church,” she told him.
“Oh.” He was surprised. “You still want to marry me?”
“You bloody git,” she clipped out. “At this point I want to marry you just so I can divorce you.” She disappeared again.
The Doctor looked back at his daughters.
“She loves you,” Athena told him.
Brem stood up. “Come on,” he said. “Front of the church. Here we go.”
The Doctor may have made Brem go ahead and make sure the path was Jackie-free. But he denied that later.
The Doctor had not paid much attention to the details of the wedding. He hadn’t any idea what one even called the person Rose had gotten to marry them. And he had only a vague idea who all these guests were.
“Do you know who all these people are?” he hissed to Brem.
“Bend down,” Brem said, and straightened his father’s bowtie when he obeyed.
Fortuna and Athena made adorable flower girls, scattering petals as they walked and beaming at him. And then they called to Madrid and her four puppies so the dogs would bound in the right direction. The ring was tied to Madrid’s collar, and Brem walked down and retrieved it.
And Rose looked terribly gorgeous. Rose looked not at all like she’d spent an hour waiting for him to show up. He stared at her, as she was saying her vows to him, and he didn’t hear her at all. He heard himself, so many years ago he could hardly fathom it. What’s your name? he had asked. And why had he asked that? Had he known then, in a basement in a department store, looking at this pink-and-yellow human, that someday he would find himself going through the façade of a human wedding just because it would make her happy? Had he looked in her eyes and seen their children? Had he realized that she was going to save his life? So many times he’d stopped trying to count them? No, none of that had happened. She had just answered, Rose, and for a second he had no longer been aware of the Earth spinning or the Autons behind him or the pulse of time that thrummed through his brain. For that second, there had been her. Rose, she had said, and now someone was prompting him to say, “I, Doctor, take thee, Rose Marion Tyler,” and nothing seemed less appropriate to him.
“I, Doctor, take thee, Rose Marion Tyler,” he was prompted again.
Rose lifted an eyebrow at him.
The Doctor looked abruptly at the deacon-reverend-preacher-whatever-he-was. “I…I wrote my own vows,” he heard himself say.
He saw the surprise on Rose’s face.
“Ah,” said the equally surprised officiant. “Go ahead, then.”
The Doctor looked at Rose. “The thing is,” he said. “Here we are, on one piece of this tiny planet, saying vows that belong to this one period of time, that they won’t be using in a hundred years because someone will have re-written them and they’ll no longer be traditional, and that’s not us. I cannot say these vows to you, Rose, because we are so much more than this time, on this planet. We need words that encompass the universe, words that come from the beginning of time and stretch until the end of it. You and I, we don’t need these vows, we need all of space and time. But, you see, I have seen almost all there is to see, and I have heard almost every word in every language that any civilization anywhere has thought to dream up…And there are no words, Rose. There are just…I stood in the middle of chaos and I asked you for your name and you said ‘Rose’ and the entire path of history shifted, I felt it, though I didn’t know it at the time. All of space and time, Rose. All I can vow to you is that I will search all of space and time for a word to give to you that is anywhere close to what you gave to me when you told me ‘Rose.’”
Rose swallowed. “Are you done?” she said.
“I…Yes. I think so. Is it-”
Then she kissed him.
“It’s not time for-”
“Shut up,” she said to the stammering officiant, and went back to kissing him. And when she was done, she primly straightened his bowtie, wiped lipstick off of him, and said, “Okay. Now we may do the ring.”
The officiant timidly beckoned to Brem, who came bounding proudly up to hand his father the ring. The Doctor slid it onto Rose’s finger, obediently repeating the words the officiant told him to, figuring Rose deserved at least a bit of tradition at her wedding.
The officiant, sotto voce, said to Rose, “There’s no groom’s ring, is there?”
Rose grinned at the Doctor, tongue poking between her teeth. “No. But I’ve got a surprise.” She looked at Brem, who, looking pleased with himself, skipped over and pressed something into her hand. “Of course,” continued Rose, “it would be the one time you’re not wearing a normal tie.” She was fastening something to his shirt. “But…with this tiepin, I thee wed.”
The Doctor glanced down at it, gleaming silver in the cloth of his shirt, and smiled. “Well, that’s brilliant,” he said.
“You may kiss the bride now, you know,” said the officiant.
“Permission and everything,” said Rose.
He smiled and leaned down and brushed an extremely tender kiss over her lips. “Now we get to go be ordered around at the reception, right?”
“But there’ll be cake,” she promised.
********
He disappeared halfway through the reception. She found him outside, leaning on the balustrade. He was holding his tiepin and studying it.
She watched him for a second, before moving forward. “Doctor,” she said.
He jerked a bit, as he looked up at her, and she realized he must have been extremely deep in thought. He smiled as she walked over to him. “Hello,” he said.
She leaned against the balustrade and looked at him. “You’re ready to go.”
“I’m fine,” he denied.
“You’ve had enough of playing at being human.”
“Welllllllll, I…will be happy to get back on the TARDIS.”
She chuckled at him, watched as his gaze fell back to the tiepin he was holding.
“If you don’t like it,” she began.
“How did I get here?” he interrupted her. “I keep trying to figure it out. What I did right. To have everything I have today.”
“Well, to begin with,” she mused, thoughtfully, “you are pretty bloody brilliant in bed, so that helps keep me here.”
He smiled, but only slightly, turning fully toward her and ghosting his fingers carefully through her hair, across her lips. “Brem told you the Gallifreyan symbol for ‘always?’” he asked, in a low voice.
She glanced at the tiepin, where the Gallifreyan symbol winked at her. “Well, he said it was close enough. He said the human concept of ‘always’ doesn’t translate correctly in Gallifreyan. He said that the Gallifreyan concept of ‘always’ is larger. I got a whole lecture on it.”
“He’s right. The concept of ‘always,’ to us…It’s so different from the ‘always’ that your mind can grasp.”
“I know. I understand that. And that’s why I wanted the Gallifreyan ‘always’ on whatever I decided to give to you. I can only promise you the human ‘always.’”
“Rose, let’s not-” he started.
She cupped his cheek. “Look at me,” she said, forcing his eyes to hers. “But I don’t mean it in the human way. I know that I don’t. I know I mean it in the Gallifreyan way. When I’m gone-”
“I don’t want to-” he said, closing his eyes.
“Listen to me,” she begged him, moving closer so she could murmur into his ear. “When I’m gone, you will go on living. Living. And as you’re doing that, as you’re surrounded by our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren and our great-great-grandchildren, while you’re saving the universe and refusing to grow up and driving Brem spare and still being overprotective of the girls and falling in love again-”
“Rose,” he said, against her.
“But that’s the kind of always I mean. All of it, through all of that, you and I will always be somewhere, on some star. Always. I know, centuries from now, this will feel like a blink of an eye to you, a breath of happiness that you got to take one day. Promise me that you’ll never forget that it isn’t that. It isn’t this ephemeral gift you got to play with for a little while before it broke. It’s always. Promise me.”
“Is that the vow you want?” he breathed, and he gathered her to him, and she buried her head against his shoulder and stifled a sob. “Always,” he said.
The door to the balcony slammed open suddenly, and the girls, giggling, came tumbling through it. He opened his eyes, looked at them over Rose’s shoulder.
“Daddy,” Fortuna insisted, skipping over to them. “Come dance!”
It was Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, and he smiled. “In a second,” he promised.
Rose drew back, wiping at her eyes. “No, go now. I’m fine.”
“Did you make Mum cry?” Athena asked, resignedly.
“For once he is blameless,” Rose said, smiling through his tears.
“Come on,” he said, picking up a girl in each arm and twirling their way off the balcony. “Brem,” he said, as he caught sight of him. “Go dance with your mother.”
“I hate this song,” complained Brem, but obeyed and grabbed his mother and pulled her out to the dance floor.
The song transitioned into Kylie, which sent Athena into raptures, as she pirouetted between her mother and her father.
I should be so lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. I should be so lucky in love…
********
“We won’t be long,” Rose promised. “Ten minutes.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Jackie.
“It’s going to work this time,” the Doctor promised, indignantly, as Rose kissed the kids good-bye. “Ten minutes, and we’ll be back to pick up the kids.”
“If it’s only going to be ten minutes,” remarked Brem, “we can probably take care of ourselves.”
“Good point, Brem,” said his grandmother.
“Wellllllll, in case I’m just a tad wrong about that, be good for your grandmother.”
“If you show up twelve months from now,” threatened Jackie.
“Never,” said Rose. “I’ve missed too much time already.”
“Ten minutes,” the Doctor vowed, again, as he held the door open for Rose.
“Just don’t come back with another baby,” said Brem. “At least, not another girl.”
The control room was covered in rose petals. Rose smiled in delight and did a twirl in the middle of them. “Tell the TARDIS thank you,” she said.
“How do you know I’m not behind this?”
She grinned. “This is decidedly not your thing.”
The Doctor grumbled something about not knowing what that was supposed to imply and kicked his way through the rose petals. There was a light flashing on the console but he had to brush petals away to see it. “No one could ever argue that this ship doesn’t love you,” he commented, as he pushed the petals aside.
“No, this ship loves you,” she corrected, distracting him by sucking on his earlobe. “She’s just happy that you’re happy.”
“Can I ask you something?” the Doctor asked, as Rose blew in the hollow behind his ear and he closed his eyes reflexively.
“Yes.”
“D’you want to actually go somewhere for our honeymoon? Because the TARDIS has a beautiful trip planned for you.” He indicated, vaguely, the flashing light.
“Oh.” She moved away from him. “But that was lovely of her. Where is it?”
“A surprise,” he said, moving around the console, rose petals fluttering around him as he moved. He looked at her finally and grinned. “Further than we’ve ever gone before,” he said, and she barely had time to contemplate that before he flipped the last lever and they jolted through the Vortex and then landed. He gestured toward the door. “Go see,” he said.
She opened it cautiously and then grinned. Because they were back on New Earth, across from the city of New New York. She looked back at him. “Do you know what you’re going to do?” she asked.
He was pulling on his coat, over the tuxedo he was still dressed in. “What?”
“You’re going to make love to me on apple grass.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him outside.
“Now that’s a bit exhibitionist, don’t you think?” he said, good-naturedly, shrugging back out of his coat so he could spread it on the grass.
“You know what we haven’t done in a while?”
“What?” he asked, sprawling out on the coat and looking up at her.
“Get arrested.”
He laughed, and she sprawled on top of him and kissed him.
“What happens after I get two glasses of wine in you?” she asked him, as she nibbled on his lower lip.
“Mmm,” he said. “Anything you want.”
“But that’s pretty much what I get anyway,” she grinned against his mouth.
“Uh-huh,” he agreed, and rolled them twice, so she was still sprawled on top of him but they were no longer on top of his coat. He reached for the coat, pulling it up and over them. His hands went to the hem of the skirt she’d changed into, and she wriggled to help him pull it up her.
“You know what I don’t understand?” he said.
She dusted kisses over the freckles on his cheek. “Tell me.”
“Why you’re wearing knickers.”
“I didn’t think ahead,” she said, ruefully, and reached down to push them off her. Which apparently, from what the Doctor could understand, required her to squirm about on top of him. A lot.
He dropped his head back with a gasp and squeezed his eyes shut as he arched helplessly toward her. “Would you bloody hurry up?” he begged.
Which, of course, made her squirm in slow, undulating thrusts that drew a strangled groan out of him.
He was not really paying attention to the mechanics of where her knickers were and what she was doing with them. He was focused on her fingers, unbuttoning and then unzipping his trousers, pulling him free, sinking down on him in slow, measured degrees as he arched himself deeper.
He opened his eyes, and realized that she had sat up at some point in her manoeuvrings, his coat draped over her shoulders. He grabbed at its lapels, used it to pull her down into a kiss, and she moved against him, almost gently, and he didn’t feel the climax build so much as he sank into it, the scent of apple grass rising around them and the taste of her in his mouth and the feel of her surrounding him and the pleasure stole through him, crept through him, cresting suddenly and provoking him into a gasp. She followed him after a moment, an echoing gasp, and he let the feel of her climax ripple through him, as she rested her head against his shoulder, the coat falling heavily over and around them.
Under cover of the coat, he wrapped his arms around Rose and pulled her closer to him and murmured Gallifreyan into her ear.
“I love you, too,” she said.
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jackie, OCs
Spoilers - Through the end of S2
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 - Jackie wants a wedding. There are hijinks galore.
Author's Notes - Thanks to bouncy_castle79for the read-through, and Kristin for brainstorming.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
He was late for his own wedding. Rose should have predicted that. Rose, who had spent the night before at a small bed-and-breakfast in town, sat primly in her wedding dress on a seat in front of the church and thought up all the different ways she would keep killing his regenerations when he showed up. Brem and Athena and Fortuna, decked out in their finery, sat with her and amused themselves by naming the different historical eras of the planet Gyberg.
Here she was, she thought. On her wedding day. Waiting for her alien husband. Who was late despite possessing a time machine. Listening to her three children recite the history of another planet.
Not the sort of thing you imagined for your wedding day when you were eleven or twelve years old, now, was it?
She did not entertain the notion that he wasn’t coming. She knew he would come. She just wondered how late he was going to be. If she had to sit outside in this wedding dress for a whole year, she was totally going to do it.
But he was only an hour late, and he walked out of the TARDIS, in tux and Chucks, with his hands casually in his pockets, as if everything were peachy.
“Hello,” he said, smiling at them. “Isn’t it bad luck for me to see you in that before the wedding?”
“You’re late,” she bit out at him.
He hesitated, looking around him as if he expected an alien invasion. “Two o’clock, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But our wedding was at one.”
There was a moment of silence. “Oh. I…Oh.”
Rose stood and swept into the church. Athena and Fortuna looked at him. Brem scribbled in his journal.
Rose poked her head out the church door. “Hurry up and get to the front of the church,” she told him.
“Oh.” He was surprised. “You still want to marry me?”
“You bloody git,” she clipped out. “At this point I want to marry you just so I can divorce you.” She disappeared again.
The Doctor looked back at his daughters.
“She loves you,” Athena told him.
Brem stood up. “Come on,” he said. “Front of the church. Here we go.”
The Doctor may have made Brem go ahead and make sure the path was Jackie-free. But he denied that later.
The Doctor had not paid much attention to the details of the wedding. He hadn’t any idea what one even called the person Rose had gotten to marry them. And he had only a vague idea who all these guests were.
“Do you know who all these people are?” he hissed to Brem.
“Bend down,” Brem said, and straightened his father’s bowtie when he obeyed.
Fortuna and Athena made adorable flower girls, scattering petals as they walked and beaming at him. And then they called to Madrid and her four puppies so the dogs would bound in the right direction. The ring was tied to Madrid’s collar, and Brem walked down and retrieved it.
And Rose looked terribly gorgeous. Rose looked not at all like she’d spent an hour waiting for him to show up. He stared at her, as she was saying her vows to him, and he didn’t hear her at all. He heard himself, so many years ago he could hardly fathom it. What’s your name? he had asked. And why had he asked that? Had he known then, in a basement in a department store, looking at this pink-and-yellow human, that someday he would find himself going through the façade of a human wedding just because it would make her happy? Had he looked in her eyes and seen their children? Had he realized that she was going to save his life? So many times he’d stopped trying to count them? No, none of that had happened. She had just answered, Rose, and for a second he had no longer been aware of the Earth spinning or the Autons behind him or the pulse of time that thrummed through his brain. For that second, there had been her. Rose, she had said, and now someone was prompting him to say, “I, Doctor, take thee, Rose Marion Tyler,” and nothing seemed less appropriate to him.
“I, Doctor, take thee, Rose Marion Tyler,” he was prompted again.
Rose lifted an eyebrow at him.
The Doctor looked abruptly at the deacon-reverend-preacher-whatever-he-was. “I…I wrote my own vows,” he heard himself say.
He saw the surprise on Rose’s face.
“Ah,” said the equally surprised officiant. “Go ahead, then.”
The Doctor looked at Rose. “The thing is,” he said. “Here we are, on one piece of this tiny planet, saying vows that belong to this one period of time, that they won’t be using in a hundred years because someone will have re-written them and they’ll no longer be traditional, and that’s not us. I cannot say these vows to you, Rose, because we are so much more than this time, on this planet. We need words that encompass the universe, words that come from the beginning of time and stretch until the end of it. You and I, we don’t need these vows, we need all of space and time. But, you see, I have seen almost all there is to see, and I have heard almost every word in every language that any civilization anywhere has thought to dream up…And there are no words, Rose. There are just…I stood in the middle of chaos and I asked you for your name and you said ‘Rose’ and the entire path of history shifted, I felt it, though I didn’t know it at the time. All of space and time, Rose. All I can vow to you is that I will search all of space and time for a word to give to you that is anywhere close to what you gave to me when you told me ‘Rose.’”
Rose swallowed. “Are you done?” she said.
“I…Yes. I think so. Is it-”
Then she kissed him.
“It’s not time for-”
“Shut up,” she said to the stammering officiant, and went back to kissing him. And when she was done, she primly straightened his bowtie, wiped lipstick off of him, and said, “Okay. Now we may do the ring.”
The officiant timidly beckoned to Brem, who came bounding proudly up to hand his father the ring. The Doctor slid it onto Rose’s finger, obediently repeating the words the officiant told him to, figuring Rose deserved at least a bit of tradition at her wedding.
The officiant, sotto voce, said to Rose, “There’s no groom’s ring, is there?”
Rose grinned at the Doctor, tongue poking between her teeth. “No. But I’ve got a surprise.” She looked at Brem, who, looking pleased with himself, skipped over and pressed something into her hand. “Of course,” continued Rose, “it would be the one time you’re not wearing a normal tie.” She was fastening something to his shirt. “But…with this tiepin, I thee wed.”
The Doctor glanced down at it, gleaming silver in the cloth of his shirt, and smiled. “Well, that’s brilliant,” he said.
“You may kiss the bride now, you know,” said the officiant.
“Permission and everything,” said Rose.
He smiled and leaned down and brushed an extremely tender kiss over her lips. “Now we get to go be ordered around at the reception, right?”
“But there’ll be cake,” she promised.
********
He disappeared halfway through the reception. She found him outside, leaning on the balustrade. He was holding his tiepin and studying it.
She watched him for a second, before moving forward. “Doctor,” she said.
He jerked a bit, as he looked up at her, and she realized he must have been extremely deep in thought. He smiled as she walked over to him. “Hello,” he said.
She leaned against the balustrade and looked at him. “You’re ready to go.”
“I’m fine,” he denied.
“You’ve had enough of playing at being human.”
“Welllllllll, I…will be happy to get back on the TARDIS.”
She chuckled at him, watched as his gaze fell back to the tiepin he was holding.
“If you don’t like it,” she began.
“How did I get here?” he interrupted her. “I keep trying to figure it out. What I did right. To have everything I have today.”
“Well, to begin with,” she mused, thoughtfully, “you are pretty bloody brilliant in bed, so that helps keep me here.”
He smiled, but only slightly, turning fully toward her and ghosting his fingers carefully through her hair, across her lips. “Brem told you the Gallifreyan symbol for ‘always?’” he asked, in a low voice.
She glanced at the tiepin, where the Gallifreyan symbol winked at her. “Well, he said it was close enough. He said the human concept of ‘always’ doesn’t translate correctly in Gallifreyan. He said that the Gallifreyan concept of ‘always’ is larger. I got a whole lecture on it.”
“He’s right. The concept of ‘always,’ to us…It’s so different from the ‘always’ that your mind can grasp.”
“I know. I understand that. And that’s why I wanted the Gallifreyan ‘always’ on whatever I decided to give to you. I can only promise you the human ‘always.’”
“Rose, let’s not-” he started.
She cupped his cheek. “Look at me,” she said, forcing his eyes to hers. “But I don’t mean it in the human way. I know that I don’t. I know I mean it in the Gallifreyan way. When I’m gone-”
“I don’t want to-” he said, closing his eyes.
“Listen to me,” she begged him, moving closer so she could murmur into his ear. “When I’m gone, you will go on living. Living. And as you’re doing that, as you’re surrounded by our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren and our great-great-grandchildren, while you’re saving the universe and refusing to grow up and driving Brem spare and still being overprotective of the girls and falling in love again-”
“Rose,” he said, against her.
“But that’s the kind of always I mean. All of it, through all of that, you and I will always be somewhere, on some star. Always. I know, centuries from now, this will feel like a blink of an eye to you, a breath of happiness that you got to take one day. Promise me that you’ll never forget that it isn’t that. It isn’t this ephemeral gift you got to play with for a little while before it broke. It’s always. Promise me.”
“Is that the vow you want?” he breathed, and he gathered her to him, and she buried her head against his shoulder and stifled a sob. “Always,” he said.
The door to the balcony slammed open suddenly, and the girls, giggling, came tumbling through it. He opened his eyes, looked at them over Rose’s shoulder.
“Daddy,” Fortuna insisted, skipping over to them. “Come dance!”
It was Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, and he smiled. “In a second,” he promised.
Rose drew back, wiping at her eyes. “No, go now. I’m fine.”
“Did you make Mum cry?” Athena asked, resignedly.
“For once he is blameless,” Rose said, smiling through his tears.
“Come on,” he said, picking up a girl in each arm and twirling their way off the balcony. “Brem,” he said, as he caught sight of him. “Go dance with your mother.”
“I hate this song,” complained Brem, but obeyed and grabbed his mother and pulled her out to the dance floor.
The song transitioned into Kylie, which sent Athena into raptures, as she pirouetted between her mother and her father.
I should be so lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. I should be so lucky in love…
********
“We won’t be long,” Rose promised. “Ten minutes.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Jackie.
“It’s going to work this time,” the Doctor promised, indignantly, as Rose kissed the kids good-bye. “Ten minutes, and we’ll be back to pick up the kids.”
“If it’s only going to be ten minutes,” remarked Brem, “we can probably take care of ourselves.”
“Good point, Brem,” said his grandmother.
“Wellllllll, in case I’m just a tad wrong about that, be good for your grandmother.”
“If you show up twelve months from now,” threatened Jackie.
“Never,” said Rose. “I’ve missed too much time already.”
“Ten minutes,” the Doctor vowed, again, as he held the door open for Rose.
“Just don’t come back with another baby,” said Brem. “At least, not another girl.”
The control room was covered in rose petals. Rose smiled in delight and did a twirl in the middle of them. “Tell the TARDIS thank you,” she said.
“How do you know I’m not behind this?”
She grinned. “This is decidedly not your thing.”
The Doctor grumbled something about not knowing what that was supposed to imply and kicked his way through the rose petals. There was a light flashing on the console but he had to brush petals away to see it. “No one could ever argue that this ship doesn’t love you,” he commented, as he pushed the petals aside.
“No, this ship loves you,” she corrected, distracting him by sucking on his earlobe. “She’s just happy that you’re happy.”
“Can I ask you something?” the Doctor asked, as Rose blew in the hollow behind his ear and he closed his eyes reflexively.
“Yes.”
“D’you want to actually go somewhere for our honeymoon? Because the TARDIS has a beautiful trip planned for you.” He indicated, vaguely, the flashing light.
“Oh.” She moved away from him. “But that was lovely of her. Where is it?”
“A surprise,” he said, moving around the console, rose petals fluttering around him as he moved. He looked at her finally and grinned. “Further than we’ve ever gone before,” he said, and she barely had time to contemplate that before he flipped the last lever and they jolted through the Vortex and then landed. He gestured toward the door. “Go see,” he said.
She opened it cautiously and then grinned. Because they were back on New Earth, across from the city of New New York. She looked back at him. “Do you know what you’re going to do?” she asked.
He was pulling on his coat, over the tuxedo he was still dressed in. “What?”
“You’re going to make love to me on apple grass.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him outside.
“Now that’s a bit exhibitionist, don’t you think?” he said, good-naturedly, shrugging back out of his coat so he could spread it on the grass.
“You know what we haven’t done in a while?”
“What?” he asked, sprawling out on the coat and looking up at her.
“Get arrested.”
He laughed, and she sprawled on top of him and kissed him.
“What happens after I get two glasses of wine in you?” she asked him, as she nibbled on his lower lip.
“Mmm,” he said. “Anything you want.”
“But that’s pretty much what I get anyway,” she grinned against his mouth.
“Uh-huh,” he agreed, and rolled them twice, so she was still sprawled on top of him but they were no longer on top of his coat. He reached for the coat, pulling it up and over them. His hands went to the hem of the skirt she’d changed into, and she wriggled to help him pull it up her.
“You know what I don’t understand?” he said.
She dusted kisses over the freckles on his cheek. “Tell me.”
“Why you’re wearing knickers.”
“I didn’t think ahead,” she said, ruefully, and reached down to push them off her. Which apparently, from what the Doctor could understand, required her to squirm about on top of him. A lot.
He dropped his head back with a gasp and squeezed his eyes shut as he arched helplessly toward her. “Would you bloody hurry up?” he begged.
Which, of course, made her squirm in slow, undulating thrusts that drew a strangled groan out of him.
He was not really paying attention to the mechanics of where her knickers were and what she was doing with them. He was focused on her fingers, unbuttoning and then unzipping his trousers, pulling him free, sinking down on him in slow, measured degrees as he arched himself deeper.
He opened his eyes, and realized that she had sat up at some point in her manoeuvrings, his coat draped over her shoulders. He grabbed at its lapels, used it to pull her down into a kiss, and she moved against him, almost gently, and he didn’t feel the climax build so much as he sank into it, the scent of apple grass rising around them and the taste of her in his mouth and the feel of her surrounding him and the pleasure stole through him, crept through him, cresting suddenly and provoking him into a gasp. She followed him after a moment, an echoing gasp, and he let the feel of her climax ripple through him, as she rested her head against his shoulder, the coat falling heavily over and around them.
Under cover of the coat, he wrapped his arms around Rose and pulled her closer to him and murmured Gallifreyan into her ear.
“I love you, too,” she said.