This universe had gone too bloody far. First, there was the ridiculous price of chips, then there were the Harry Potter films that stalled after movie three when the actors went on strike, but now it was mucking about with her wedding music, and Rose was very unhappy.
She wasn't fussy about the flowers, the dress, or the decorations, but the unavailability of music was beginning to irritate her. At first, Pete had offered to hire a string quartet, and when Rose responded sarcastically that she'd rather have a mariachi band, he asked whether she'd prefer the music sung in English, Spanish, or Esperanto. So, Rose declared she would take the task upon herself, and was now regretting the decision. She leaned back in her office chair with a huff and stirred her tea angrily.
After a few more minutes of fruitless online searching and mumbled curses, she felt a pair of strong hands on her shoulders. Her expression softened immediately, and she leaned backwards to look up into the Doctor's face.
"Lunch?" he asked. There was still a bit of today's rain in his hair.
Rose sighed, "In a bit, these songs aren't cooperating. There's one more thing I'd like to try."
"Alright." The Doctor pursed his lips and rocked back on his heels. "I brought chips," he said in a perfectly offhand tone.
Rose was out of her chair in a flash. "Where?!" She inhaled deeply, "Oh God, I can smell them. Gimme!" She heard the crinkle of a paper bag, and saw the Doctor's hands were now behind his back. As she circled him, he turned to continue facing her.
"Now, now, Miss Tyler, that's not very polite. What would your mother say?" he chided teasingly. Rose made a frustrated sound and reached both arms around the Doctor's waist, trying again for the bag. "Ooh, that's much better." The Doctor winked at her. "But it's still good form to ask nicely."
If that's how he wanted to play, then fine. Rose sighed theatrically and nuzzled into the Doctor's shoulder, putting a free hand on his chest, smoothing the fabric of his shirt and batting her eyelashes. "Please, Doctor?" As he looked down at her, Rose put on her best pout. "I want some chips…"
The Doctor exhaled sharply, irritated with himself, but didn't look away from her. "Every bloody time…" he mumbled as he sat the bag of chips down on the conference table next to them. Rose's face split into a wicked grin. "That's entirely unfair, you know," he complained, "and not at all civil."
"But it works," Rose contended as she pulled out a chair and sat down to unpack their lunch. "It got me chips. Tell me again why they're so steep here?"
The Doctor sat down next to her, pulling a serving towards himself. "Great Famine in the 1800's, never quite recovered in this universe. They won't grow anywhere in Europe after the blight tainted the soil, so potatoes are imported from Idaho in the United Territories."
Rose nodded, finishing a mouthful of chips, then asked, "When do you have time to learn this stuff?"
The Doctor slipped a hand into his front pocket and brandished an iPod, which he twirled once before replacing. "Encyclopedia Britannica, audio edition." The cord from his earbuds was still sticking out of his pocket. He attempted to poke it back in, and scowled when it didn't cooperate.
"Oh?" Rose snagged one of the Doctor's chips with her fork while he busied himself untangling his headphones. "Where've you got to?"
"Mid-J's or so, should manage learning the sum of human knowledge by the time we leave."
"Four more months?"
"Four more months."
Four more months until the wedding. Four more months until the TARDIS coral was finished growing. Four more months, and the universe was theirs to explore.
They ate in silence for a few moments, each pondering their upcoming ventures in the newly completed TARDIS when Rose was struck with a brilliant idea. "When's the computer going to be up?"
The Doctor finished his soda with a slurp and looked disappointingly at his empty cup. "Eh?"
Rose rolled her eyes. "The TARDIS computer, when will it be online?"
"Any day I expect," he said, eyeing Rose's drink. She slid it out of arm's reach, leaving a streak of condensation on the table. "Once the console room's done growing, she'll start up the computers and re-create the rest of herself just as she was."
"My room, too?" Rose asked, curious. "Half my clothes were still in there, and they don't sell my brands here."
"Should do. We can head back to Norway this weekend, check up on Her. What's wrong with the Torchwood mainframe?"
Rose shot a glare at her desktop. "I can't find the songs I want, even using some less-than-ethical methods. Some of the songs are just really obscure here, but I'm beginning to think one of them doesn't exist at all."
"Oh, really?" The Doctor's interest piqued, and he paused in the act of grabbing a napkin to wipe up their lunch mess. "Which one?"
Rose wavered, embarrassed. "Well, don't laugh… but it's an old Frank Sinatra song."
"Oh, I'd never, he was brilliant," the Doctor reassured her.
"He really was! I mean I've always loved—" Rose paused. "Wait, you meant personally, didn't you."
"Well…" the Doctor admitted as he finished cleaning the table.
"Of course you did. Anyways, it's an old song called 'Fly me to the Moon', and I've always loved it, and I thought it fit well with the ceremony, and… are you alright?"
The Doctor had choked on Rose's drink, which he'd swiped when she'd given her computer the evil eye, and was now coughing into his napkin.
"Fine, it's just," (Rose could tell that the Doctor was trying his best to force nonchalance,) "I know that song, is all."
"You think it's in the TARDIS computers?"
"Oh, I know it is," the Doctor reassured her with an affirming nod.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Well, there's a few reasons you wouldn't be able to find it here." The Doctor leaned back in his conference chair and ticked them off on his fingers. "One, you've got the title wrong. It's actually called 'In Other Words', but the publisher changed it because no one called it that. Then, you've got Frank Sinatra singing it a full ten years after it was written, who knows where that timeline could have been derailed. And," the Doctor pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table, not quite meeting Rose's eyes, "I may have been directly involved in its composition, so naturally it wouldn't be here."
Rose expected the outlandish when it came to the Doctor, but the thought of him writing music came as a pleasant shock. "You're serious? But I love that song! Don't you think it's perfect?"
The Doctor shrugged again. "It should be, shouldn't it? I wrote it for you."
"You wrote my favorite love song?"
"Commissioned it; a fellow I knew by the name of Bart wrote it. Shame he didn't have any astronomical knowledge past the Solar System, but then I imagine it's quite difficult to find a rhyme with Raxacoricofallapatorius."
"And you did this when?"
"Nineteen fifty-four."
"You know what I mean, when for me?"
"Oh, your chronology? I took a bit of a detour when you were sharing cronk burgers with the open-minded one."
"Open-minded one?"
The Doctor clicked his fingers and mimed a hinged door in his forehead.
"Oh, Adam!" Rose laughed. She hadn't thought about Adam in years.
"Was that his name? I'd forgotten. Bit of a tosser, really. Good to know your taste in men has improved since then.
Rose poked him playfully, "You know very well that I had you picked out from the start. You were just a bit surly back then; Adam livened things up a bit."
"And nearly changed the course of history!"
"Because I'd never fall for a man that'd do that."
"Quite right, too," he vehemently agreed, "If he'd managed—" the Doctor caught Rose's implication. "Oi, that's not fair. I'm a proper time traveler; I know what I'm doing. I don't go 'round messing with the development of microprocessors or getting people elected for office or—"
"Or mucking about with 1950's music charts?" Rose added innocently.
"Exactly." He nodded in agreement. "Well, maybe just the once." The Doctor was silent for a few seconds, fiddling with the opening of the paper bag that held the remnants of their lunch. "Did you really like it?"
"Wanted it in the wedding, didn't I?" Rose reassured him. "And I'm fairly sure that song gave clear instructions." She held out her hand, wiggling her fingers, and he took it.
"I s'ppose I did. What comes next? 'In other words, hold my hand. In other words'…" he trailed off.
"'Baby, kiss me'," Rose completed with a grin as she leaned forward.
Pete Tyler, C.E.O. of Torchwood and eponym of this particular universe, was marching purposefully towards his daughter's office. He knew she'd been staying after work hours to plan her wedding—Jackie often helped—but the abuse of the computer system had to stop. She was taking advantage of the top-security clearance given her during her dimension travelling to look up low-quality sound files of bad music that no one had ever heard of. The dancing at the reception was going to be an absolute nightmare.
Pete arrived at the correct door and rapped his knuckles three times in succession before opening it. "Rose, we need to talk about your inappropriate use of the—"
The words 'computer systems' died on his tongue. "Conference table…" he completed instead, unheard by the couple in the room. He squeezed his eyes shut as the Doctor murmured something in Rose's ear that made her giggle and exited the room as quickly and quietly as possible.
Pete loved his daughter, and the Doctor's contribution to the understanding of alien tech was unparalleled, but he was quite ready to return to business as usual. "Four more months," he said to himself. "Four more months."