earlgreytea68 | It Never Gets Dull (2/4) (Reply)

Title - It Never Gets Dull (2/4)
Author -

earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Jack, 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 -

jlrpuck , who honestly has no equal, deserves great thanks for the beta, as does

bouncy_castle79 for the read-through, and Kristin for brainstorming.

The gorgeous icon was created by

swankkat for me, commissioned by

jlrpuck for my birthday.

Part 1

Brem pestered him so much about the stag night that the Doctor finally went in search of Jack just to get a moment’s peace. He left Rose and the kids at Jackie’s, discussing the all-important topic of flowers, and hopped the TARDIS to Cardiff. Jack was waiting for him when he opened the door, leaning against the desk the TARDIS had landed in front of, arms crossed and looking smug.

“What?” asked the Doctor, the gaze making him self-conscious.

Jack began whistling, a tune the Doctor knew he ought to recognize and placed abruptly: Goin’ to the Chapel. “Very funny,” he said.

“Who knew you were such a romantic? Look at my beautiful invitation I received!” Jack pulled it out of his pocket.

“You keep it in your pocket?” asked the Doctor.

“Because I wanted it handy the next time I saw you.”

The Doctor took the invitation and looked at it. He hadn’t seen it before. He was trying to lay low, keep out of the planning. He spent most of his time under the TARDIS controls mumbling, “Yes,” when Rose asked him if he liked things. The invitation was actually very simple, its only piece of elaboration a symbol stamped at the top, opposite the curly-cue of Rose’s name. His name. Well, the best the printer could have done with it. And the Doctor stared at it for a moment, before smiling. He’d have to thank Rose for that later. “Well, have you RSVP’d?” he asked, briskly, handing the invitation back to Jack.

“Yeah. What I want to know is why you don’t just have it in the TARDIS.”

“Oh, Jackie keeps raising some fuss about how the ship is ‘weird’ and will ‘freak people out.’ I keep telling Jackie she’s hurting the TARDIS’s feelings, but nobody pays attention to me because wedding planning, I am told, is not my forte.”

“I’d imagine not,” said Jack, suspiciously close to smiling.

“This isn’t funny, Jack.”

“Absolutely not. So tell me how you proposed. Was it romantic?”

“I didn’t propose,” he grumbled. “Rose and Jackie just kind of…told me that we were getting married.”

“I bet they did.”

“It still isn’t funny.”

“Uh-huh. So what are you doing here?”

The Doctor looked around the Hub. It seemed to be deserted. “Where’s your team?”

“Probably getting into a million different kinds of trouble that you and I will have to swoop in and fix.”

“Brem says I have to have a stag night.”

Jack’s grin widened. This did not comfort the Doctor. “Oh, yes. You definitely do.”

“Not a wild stag night, you understand. Not a stag night with…liquor and strippers.”

“Doctor,” he said. “That’s the definition of a stag night. We can’t have a stag night where you sonic screwdriver the TARDIS console.”

“Be that as it may,” said the Doctor, “Brem is coming along on this stag night, so we all must behave ourselves.”

“You can’t invite a kid to a stag night.”

“Try telling Brem that.”

“Ah. I see your point. So who else do you want me to invite?”

“Oh, I dunno.” The Doctor waved his hand. “Brem says Ianto. And Rose says that means I have to invite Owen, too. Oh, and she says to tell you that she’s going to have a hen night and that Gwen and Tosh and Martha are invited.”

“Are they going to have a stripper at the hen night?”

“From what I can understand, they are going to paint their fingernails pink and eat pink cupcakes and do other things that involve the color pink.”

“Our party’s going to be better,” said Jack.

“I don’t want it to be better,” the Doctor protested. But he wasn’t sure Jack heard him.

********

When the Doctor arrived back at Jackie’s, he found Rose in the living room alone, scribbling in a notebook.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

“Mum took them to look at flowers.”

“You didn’t go?”

“I told Brem to take copious notes. But I think I want those things that looked like peonies on that planet with the fourteen suns, remember?” She looked up at him.

“Fifteen,” he said. “Mygg. The fujkilmps, they were called.”

“An ugly name, but a pretty flower. And we ought to have something alien at the wedding. Other than the groom, of course.” Rose went back to scribbling in her notebook.

“You’re as bad as Brem,” said the Doctor. “What are you writing?” He collapsed onto the couch next to her.

“Seating chart?”

“Seating chart? For what?”

“The reception,” she answered, as if this were nothing, and plowed over his sputtering reaction to that. “Brem’s got it into his head that Madrid and the puppies should be the ring bearers and he should be your best man.” Madrid had had four puppies that the children had named Seville, Valencia, Balbao, and Malaga. Rose had been insistent that they give away at least three of the puppies, and the kids had reluctantly housed them with Jack, Sarah Jane, and Kaj and Muj. But Rose had agreed, given Brem’s new plan, that the puppies could be distributed after the wedding.

“How are the dogs going to carry your ring?”

“He says it’s happened. He’s researched it.”

The Doctor sighed and decided to bite his tongue. “Hey,” he said, as it occurred to him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Jack showed me the invitation.”

“Oh, yeah, Jack. How’d that go?”

“Fine. He’s tickled by the stag night idea. He’s tickled by this whole thing, period. But, about the invitation.”

“Please don’t say anything about it to my mum,” Rose pleaded. “She’s very pleased with it.”

“No,” he said, in surprise. “It’s lovely. I wasn’t going to say anything bad about it. I was going to thank you for getting the printer to engrave my name. That couldn’t have been an easy feat.”

“Oh, it wasn’t. But that was all Mum. She was bound and determined that you have your ‘proper name,’ like at a ‘proper wedding.’ The engraver thinks she’s barking mad. Did he do a decent job with it? I was just worried he’d change it in such a way that it’d be completely unrecognizable.”

“It’s very nearly perfect. I mean, it’s not exactly my name, it’s a bit off, but I got the general idea.”

“Good. I’m glad you liked it.” She kissed his cheek. “Why was your name such a big secret? You could have told me it years ago.”

“I can’t tell you it. I mean, I’ve told you it. ‘Doctor.’ It’s my name. You’ve just never seen me write it out.”

The door opened abruptly, and the children spilled in, all talking at once and jumping around Jackie.

“Mum!” exclaimed Athena. “You should get roses!”

“They were pink!” added Fortuna.

“Did you talk to Jack?” Brem asked his father, clearly not interested in the pink flowers.

“I talked to Jack. He is going to plan the stag night to end all stag nights.”

Brem’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Absolutely. I said you were bound and determined to have a spectacular stag night.”

Brem leaped around the room. “I’m going to make us hats! Special stag night hats to wear!”

“I’m sure Jack will love that,” said Rose, trying to get a word in above the detailed description of every flower in the shop that the girls were giving her.

“So,” said Brem, abruptly calming down and opening his journal, sitting cross-legged on the floor in concentration. “Stag night planned.” He made a mark. “Mum’s still got to pick the flowers.”

“And lovely as they all sound, I think we’ll go off-planet for the flowers.”

“Good choice,” agreed Brem, wisely. “Earth flowers are dull. You could have fybinthia, maybe!”

“No,” said the Doctor, hastily.

“But, Dad—”

“We are not having exploding flowers at the wedding, Brem.”

“Exploding what?” said Jackie.

“They only explode if you wave them around,” Brem sulked. “I mean, I guess that might be a problem when Mum throws the bouquet, but otherwise—”

“No fybinthia,” the Doctor commanded, firmly. “Now what else is on your list?”

Brem looked down at it. “Song,” he said, brightly. “You and Mum need to pick a song to dance to.”

“Where do we have to dance to this?”

“At the reception,” said Brem.

“I don’t like the sound of this reception. Why are we being forced to sit where we’re told and to dance to pre-selected music? Where’s the spontaneity?”

“There is no spontaneity. It’s a wedding, not a free-for-all,” Jackie told him.

“I was thinking, at first, In the Mood,” said Rose, ignoring the rest of the debate. “But I don’t know, it seemed…” She looked over at him. “It seemed too ours. For the wedding. For everyone else. You know?”

He did know. In all honesty, In the Mood was so fraught with memory that they had never danced to it ever again. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“So I thought maybe that Juanes song,” Rose went on.

“Which Juanes song?” Brem asked, delighted.

“The one we danced to that night on the beach. And you sang it to me, remember?” Rose prodded the Doctor.

“Hoy me voy?” said Brem, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You can’t dance to that at your wedding.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a breaking-up song.”

“He’s right,” the Doctor affirmed. “We could pick another Juanes song, if you like.”

Rose looked crestfallen. “But I like that one.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Use it anyway. No one’ll know what the words mean. Since we’re not allowed to have the reception in the TARDIS, who would automatically translate if we asked her to.”

Jackie gave him a narrow-eyed glare.

“I would advise against using a breaking-up song at your wedding,” Brem suggested.

“You could dance to A Whole New World!” cried Athena, which was Fortuna’s cue to begin dancing about the room, singing. “A whole new world! A dazzling place I never knew!” Athena jumped in as well, joining in, as they performed an elaborate ballet to the song.

Brem watched them for a second, then, sighing heavily, began scribbling in his notebook.

********

The song issue was…well, it began to garner capital letters when Brem wrote about it in his journal: The Song Issue. It even had stars next to it on his list of wedding-related tasks. They had practically everything else settled into place. Rose had even managed to drag the Doctor to a jewelry store to pick out a wedding ring for her. He had been adamant about not getting a ring. “It doesn’t mean the same thing on every planet, you know,” he’d said. “And it’d be a bother to worry about getting it greasy or caught on a part when I’m working on the TARDIS. Or doing anything, really,” he’d added, as an afterthought. Rose hadn’t pressed the issue, and she’d let the Doctor talk her into an off-world jeweler, where the ring was better then platinum, he insisted.

But still The Song Issue loomed.

The TARDIS tried to help out. It played an endless selection of music for Rose to consider. One day the Doctor proclaimed that if he had to listen to one more soft, romantic ballad, he was going to move them all into a hotel room until Rose had chosen a song. The TARDIS shifted then, playing music Rose considered completely inappropriate for a wedding song, but that the Doctor delighted in. “Kylie!” he said, as he danced Athena and Fortuna in an elaborate jig to I Should Be So Lucky. “We can have Kylie at the wedding!”

“No,” said Rose, shaking her head. “Not for our song, at least.”

“I should be so lucky! Lucky lucky lucky!” chorused Athena and Fortuna enthusiastically, and Rose sighed.

“Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick,” he suggested, when the TARDIS played it.

“Not for our wedding song,” she said, as she reluctantly let him pull her into a dance around the TARDIS.

“I know this song,” Fortuna said, suddenly, watching her father twirl her mother dramatically.

“You should,” Rose said, trying to figure out exactly what beat the Doctor was following as he danced her. Sometimes he was too exuberant for such a thing as “dancing.” “We must have played it a million times while you were a baby.”

“Did you?” said the Doctor, and she realized she’d never told him that.

“Well. We wanted to have something for her that came from you.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant! We have to have this song at our wedding then!”

“Fine. But not for our wedding song.”

“It’s good to be a lunatic,” he sang at her.

“You’re a punk,” she told him. “A great big punk, with a little bit of rockabilly thrown in.”

He laughed and kissed her against the TARDIS console.

“Also,” she murmured against him, “this song is kind of filthy, really.”

“I was trying to send you subliminal messages. It took me a while to figure out how to get my point across to a being that’s not slightly telepathic. Turned out kissing was an effective technique.”

“That’s because you’re a decent kisser.”

“Oi,” he grinned. “Better than decent.” And then abruptly whirled away from her, toward their daughter. “So, Lady Fortuna.” Fortuna giggled as her father waggled his eyebrows dramatically at her. “Turns out you were raised on Ian Dury. Do you know what that means?”

“What?”

He swept her into his arms and around the console. “Innate good taste.”

Rose smiled, watching them. The Doctor was dipping the toddler now, as she broke out into delighted squeals. Brem wandered in, clutching a sheaf of papers. He didn’t even spare a glance at his cavorting father. He looked exhausted, as he handed the papers to his mother.

“Lyrics,” he said, wearily, climbing onto the captain’s seat. “I have found you lyrics of love songs. And then I wrote them out in English, which means they’re never as pretty as they would have been in Gallifreyan.”

Hit Me with Your Rhythm Sick ended. “Play it again,” requested Fortuna, clapping her hands together, and the TARDIS obliged her, starting the song again. The Doctor was still overacting for her benefit. “In the desert of Sudan,” he announced, dramatically, making her laugh, as they danced between Rose and Brem.

Rose waited for them to pass before sitting on the captain’s seat next to Brem and flipping through the papers. “We can’t use any alien songs, you know. The TARDIS won’t be translating for everyone, I need it to be something that’s recognizably…Earth-based.”

“I know. I’m just saying, if you translate these songs into Gallifreyan, they’re all much better.”

“I’m sure they are.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Has your father shown you how to write your name in Gallifreyan?”

Brem looked surprised. “Of course he has. Welllllll, the closest approximation he can get.”

Rose nodded, flipping through the papers. Homework, she thought. This song thing was getting to be homework.

So when she finally settled on it, none of them could quite believe it.

“I have the song,” she told them, finding them all clustered around an alien board game that the kids were fond of.

“You do?” asked Fortuna, excitedly.

“Is it Kylie?” asked Athena. “Pleeeeeeeease let it be Kylie.” Athena had developed a fondness for Kylie Minogue that the Doctor was doing nothing to discourage. She had even insisted on re-naming one of the puppies Kylie, which was confusing the poor puppy to no end.

“It’s not Kylie. It’s this. Are you ready? Go on,” she told the TARDIS, waiting for the music to pipe in.

Her family listened to her choice.

“It’s slow,” said Brem, critically.

“Well, it’s supposed to be a slow dance.”

“How are we going to dance to this?” asked the Doctor. “I’m not good at slow dancing.”

“You’re not good at anything slow,” she pointed out.

“I’m good at one slow thing,” he remarked. “Very good at being very slow. Which makes you very lucky.”

For a second Rose looked at him, not quite comprehending what he was referring to. And then blushing when she figured it out.

“What is it?” asked Brem. “What are you good at?”

“What do we think of the song?” Rose asked, hastily, trying not to wonder what Brem was now scribbling in his journal.

“I still think we’d be better off with Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick.”

“But listen,” she said, and sat on the floor next to him. “This is the whole reason why this is our song.”