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Rose perches on the edge of the sofa, bracing herself for what she’s about to watch on the telly.
As she waits for the Doctor’s interview with the show-runner to begin she wonders, and not for the first time since landing on this horrible planet, how something could be her dream come true, but also her worst nightmare, all at the same time.
Sighing, Rose shakes her head and glances down at the lace doilies she’s supposed to choose between by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Stupid bloody things. They all look the same to her. She puts them aside and turns her head back to the television, waiting for the first television episode of many to begin.
Rose and the Doctor had been on this planet less than ten minutes — the dust from their arrival, so to speak, not even fully settled — when they suddenly realized why the TARDIS had been in such an irritable state when it landed here.
“Welcome!” a large man with a booming voice and strange purple hair greeted as they exited the little blue box. Three armed guards flanked him on each side. “So glad you could join us! So few visitors willingly come to our little game planet anymore.”
A sickening feeling of déjà vu and dread clutched Rose as the man — “you can call me Malfinda!” he insisted, jovially — slapped thick, iron handcuffs on their wrists.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the Doctor asked angrily, trying, in vain, to wriggle free of his restraints. “We’re just visitors here, just passing through. We only need a day or two to pick up supplies for our ship. We’re certainly not here to cause trouble…”
Malfinda only laughed, waving his hand dismissively.
“You’re not in any danger,” he assured them both, smiling cheekily. “We just haven’t had many willing contestants on our show in some time, and…. well.” The man scratched at the back of his neck. “We could tell the moment we saw you two that you would be perfect. Simply and utterlyperfect!”
“Perfect for what, exactly?” the Doctor demanded.
Their captor didn’t answer right away. He just laughed as the guards marched them, single file, into a large room filled with nothing but television cameras and white, frilly wedding dresses.
“Why, perfect for ‘Let’s Plan a Wedding!’ of course,” Malfinda said, still laughing. “The highest-rated show this side of Woman Wept. And you, my little lovebirds, are going to be its next stars.”
Rose started at the man in horror.
“He’s not —” Rose spluttered, dumbfounded, pointing to the Doctor. “That is to say, we’re not —”
Rose wanted to shout, “But we aren’t engaged! The Doctor has never even properly snogged me!” But the frantic words stuck in her throat as she and the Doctor were ushered out of the studio and shown the small flat that would be theirs for the next four days. Whether they liked it or not.
When the first of their three televised pre-wedding interviews finally begins, the Doctor looks more comfortable and relaxed in the television studio, sitting right next to Malfinda, than Rose can ever remember him looking before in her life.
What the devil is he playing at?
“So tell us, John,” Malfinda begins conversationally, one leg crossed over the other. “The audience at home is just dying to know how you and the lovely Miss Tyler first met. Can you tell us how the magic started?”
“Well, sir,” the Doctor begins, tugging a little on his left earlobe. “It’s… well. It’s a funny story, really. I was walking along a busy London street — that’s back on our home planet, London is; back on Earth — very late at night, just minding my own business…”
The Doctor trails off meaningfully, pretending to be lost in the memory. Back in their temporary flat Rose rolls her eyes. The Doctor can never resist an audience, no matter how ridiculous the situation. (She normally finds it endearing, this trait of his, though she’d never admit that to him.)
“Yes?” Malfinda prompts. “Do go on, Mr. Smith. You were walking along, late at night, and then…?”
“… and then without any warning at all, the prettiest pink and yellow girl I’d ever seen before in my life pops out of a shop and walks right in front of me.” The Doctor looks directly at the camera, then, and gives it a broad smile. The smile that lights up his entire daft face and never fails to turn Rose’s knees to jelly.
The studio audience (which sounds a fake, canned, completely recorded audience to Rose) awwws predictably.
The Doctor’s smile only broadens.
“And then what happened?” Malfinda asks eagerly, leaning forward on his knees in anticipation.
“Wellllllll,” the Doctor says, drawing out the word as he draws out the story. “I looked right at her, I did. And I asked her her name.” He turns to the camera again. “She told me her name was Rose. I said, ‘It’s nice to meet you, Rose.’” The Doctor laughs a little. “And the next thing I knew, I was telling Rose that she should… she should…. well. That she should go for a run with me.”
The Doctor laughs again, more sheepishly this time. The canned audience follows suit.
“Well, Mr. Smith!” Malficious says, laughing too. “That sure is a memorable first meeting!”
“It was,” the Doctor agrees. “Rose grabbed my hand that night, and we ran and ran. We’ve been inseparable ever since.”
The studio audience breaks into canned thunderous applause.
“Wonderful, Mr. Smith!” Malficious intones warmly. “Simply wonderful! Now. Before we let you get back to your beautiful fiancée, I have one final question to ask you.” Malficious flips through the stack of cards in his hands absently. When he’s reached the one at the very back, he lays it out on the table between them and clears his throat.
“That’s fine, sir,” the Doctor says easily.
“Very well then,” Malfinda breezes. “When would you say you knew for certain that you were in love with Miss Tyler?”
The Doctor freezes noticeably on stage, and Rose’s heart clenches a bit in her chest.
Oh, blimey.
It’s not that Rose doesn’t believe the Doctor cares for her. She knows he does, in his way. Knows it down to her very bones. But despite all the hugs and gentle touches — despite all the quiet moments they’ve shared and the hours they’ve spent together in laughter — the Doctor has never once shown any indication that the feelings that have been burning a hole in Rose’s chest since the day she met him were feelings he shared.
It’s why everything that is happening to them right now is such a horrible nightmare. While she longs to have the Doctor all to herself, forever, having a wedding forced upon him when clearly he views her as nothing more than a special friend is the cruelest possible joke the universe could have played on them.
The Doctor is silent for a long moment after Malfinda’s question. He leans back in his chair a bit and rubs his chin as if in deep thought.
“Oh, that one’s easy,” the Doctor eventually says, very quietly, but no less earnestly for that. “When did I know for certain I was in love with Rose Tyler? I knew it from the very moment she agreed to take that mad midnight run with me.”
Rose is halfway to wearing a bare patch in the carpet from pacing by the time the Doctor finally returns to their flat from the interview.
“You enjoyed that, Doctor,” Rose accuses the moment he walks in the door.
“Well,” the Doctor says, shrugging. He takes off his overcoat and lays it down on the sofa. “I’ve had worse afternoons.”
Rose continues pacing the small living area, worrying the scrap of lace she finally chose for their wedding centerpieces between her fingers.
“I don’t like this,” she murmurs under her breath. “At all. I want to go back to the TARDIS. I want to get out of here.” She turns on her heels to face him. “What is the matter with you, Doctor? After what we went through at the Game Station the last time, why is it you seem so… I dunno,relaxed about all this? Why are we doing interviews and engagement photoshoots? Why am I picking out stupid bloody lace doilies?” She looks down at what she’s holding and throws it to the ground for emphasis.
The Doctor swallows thickly but says nothing in response to her outburst. He runs his hands through his hair and lets out a loud sigh.
“I guess…” he eventually begins, but then trails off. He shoves his hands deep in his trouser pockets and looks down at his feet.
“You guess what?” Rose presses.
“I guess I thought… maybe it would be… I dunno…” He trails off again and coughs into his hand. “Maybe it would be kinda… fun? To do all this?”
Rose stares at him.
“Fun? You thought being forced to get married on live television millions of miles away from home would be fun?”
To her surprise, the Doctor looks crestfallen at her words.
“Well… all right,” he concedes, palms raised towards her. “I guess the forced aspect isn’t so much fun. Or the live television bit, either. Or the… or the, uh, millions of miles away from your mum bit.” The Doctor blinks once, and then again, before folding his arms in front of his chest and closing his eyes.
“Doctor?” Rose says, very tentatively, her heart hammering in her ears. She approaches him and gently puts her hands on either side of his face. He opens his eyes at the contact, giving her a soft, unfocused look she can’t quite read.
“Hmm?”
Rose clears her throat and works up the courage to ask her next question. “Are you saying that you think… that you think the getting married part of all this would be fun? Is… um. Is that what you’re saying?”
The Doctor’s eyes flutter closed again. “I guess so. Maybe. Yeah. I…. I dunno, I just was thinking, when we first got here and they showed us all those pretty white dresses, that it might be… might be nice to…” He stops talking abruptly and opens his eyes. “Because what I said just now on the telly, about loving you from the first night I met you — that was true, Rose. Every bit of it.” He closes his eyes again. “I know I’ve never said it before, but… but it’s true.”
Rose tries to ignore the butterflies his unexpected words set loose in the pit of her stomach, although it’s difficult. Operating on pure instinct, and before she can talk herself out of it, Rose presses a gentle kiss to one corner of his mouth. The Doctor’s lips are smooth and inviting, and he smiles a little in response.
Encouraged, Rose kisses the other side of his mouth, a little more firmly this time. His smile grows.
“I wouldn’t say every bit of what you said on the telly was true, Doctor,” she teases him gently. “You told them we went for a run the night we first met. You completely left out the part about the living mannequins trying to kill us.” She grins at him. “That was the most important part, too, really, don’t you think?”
The Doctor laughs a little. He wraps his arms around Rose’s waist and pulls her close. Very close. Her arms wind around his neck of their own accord and she finds herself drowning in his beautiful brown eyes.
“I guess I did leave that part out, didn’t I,” he murmurs quietly, his words little puffs of air against her lips.
By the end of the evening (which they spend alternately talking, cuddling, and snogging on what turns out to be the very comfortable living room sofa), Rose and the Doctor work out a plan for how to handle the next few days on this game planet.
They’ll play along with Malfinda’s scheme. For now. After inspecting every nook and cranny of the station — “why do you think it took me so long to get back here after the interview, Rose?” — the Doctor is convinced there’s nothing really harmful that should come to them while they’re here.
“This isn’t like the other game station,” he assures her. “There are no Daleks. Only rubbish television programmes trying to drum up viewers any way they can. We aren’t even being guarded any more, haven’t you noticed? So why not play along for a bit, eh? Have a little fun?”
Rose will do her interview tomorrow morning, they decide. She’ll gush about their hosts’ hospitality and fret like an idiot over how impossible it is to decide on the right colours for bridesmaids’ dresses with only forty-eight hours notice. And then, at the end of her interview, she will select the perfect wedding dress with her adoring fans looking on, back home, on their television screens.
Tomorrow afternoon will be the cake sampling (”I want banana cake,” the Doctor insists), and then the ring shopping. And then, finally, in the evening, will be the hen party. Each of these events will come complete, of course, with a television crew and “friends” Rose will only have just met an hour prior.
And then after it’s all over and done with — after the entire planet is safely tucked inside their beds, and the station is shut down for the night — Rose and the Doctor will sneak out of their now completely unguarded flat and run straight for the also unguarded TARDIS, making a beeline right for London before Malfinda or anyone else on this wretched planet is the wiser.
“We’ll have matching rings to take back with us, pictures of silly dresses to choose from, and loads of ideas on what we can do for our actual wedding when we do get married,” the Doctor enthuses to her in bed that evening as he traces invisible, circular patterns on her arm. “All on Malfinda’s dime. What do you say, Rose Tyler?”
Rose rolls over a little and pulls him to her. She buries her face in the crook of his neck and breathes him in, still unable to quite believe that any of this is actually happening.
“It’s a good plan,” she says, drowsily. “But let’s just chuck Malfinda’s rings in the bin, though, yeah? I figure we won’t be doing this for a little while, right? We can just get rings somewhere else when we’re ready. Nicer ones.”
“Very true, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor says, grinning, pressing a tender kiss to her forehead. “We can indeed.”
Rose drifts off to sleep that night in the Doctor’s warm embrace, images spinning through her head of a future, slightly older version herself walking down the aisle in a small, nondescript church in London, towards her beautiful Doctor, waiting for her and beaming at her with the light of a thousand suns.
This mad life is like nothing she’d ever imagined before. But she knows, in this instant, that it’s everything she will ever need.