Chapter 1 - Good Morning
Idris Tardis Who was a very patient woman.
She insisted on being called with her maiden name, Tardis, because she could and she preferred it to her given name. She was also the wife and the mother of the geniuses today, whom, despite being top in each their areas of expertise, still made it a point to act like children on a daily basis. It was entertaining, she once thought, to see all of them to be so very childish while also being equipped with intelligence with knowledge that would have destroyed the brains of many people within their generation and beyond.
Not to mention the only similar part of their odd personalities came from the fact that they were possibly the biggest egomaniacs of the century.
It wasn't easy to take care of five year olds whose actual ages were beyond the level of nursery education. If she had lacked any amount of patience that she held today, she might have walked out on this family a long time ago for a very sweet vacation that was very much needed.
Instead, she woke up at six o'clock in the morning every day to take a hot shower. Then she dressed herself, wrapped her long curly hair in a towel around her head, and set out for the kitchen in their small apartment where she set out plates and other kitchenware before inserting bread into the toaster, and the eggs into the frying pan.
She would have placed the bacon onto separate plates by the time three mobile phones rang their separate morning alarms in the bedrooms.
Of course, that didn't necessarily mean that all three of them would step out for breakfast at the same time as well.
The door to the bedroom that she shared with her husband would open and reveal a very groggy Christopher Eccleston Who, the current Head of the Astronomy Department in the university he worked in. He would smile and kiss her on the nose before shuffling back into their room to the attached bathroom where he washed himself in cold water. When he came out, he would be fully awake with a serious, but a charming grin on his features, ready for another day.
"Are the boys not awake yet?" he asked his wife as she opened a new bottle of orange juice.
As soon as Chris's question left his mouth, David and Matt's bedroom door opened with a click and out stepped David Tennant Who, ready with a change of clothes and walked straight across the hallway to the washroom without bumping into anything. An incredible feat, if you consider that his eyes were closed during the entire journey.
"Well, there goes David, dear."
"So I assume that Matt is still in bed?"
"Yes. I need to get him up so he won't be late for work again."
"Thank you. Oh, and when you do, do make sure to see what he's been up to last night, won't you, Idris? I could hear things falling to the floor from around two to three in the morning."
Tardis smiled. "Of course, my dear."
The eldest Dr. Who smiled back before reaching out tousling her hair automatically, only to find a slightly damp towel around it. The towel fell to the floor, and without it, so did Tardis's wet hair.
She smiled in acceptance when Chris muttered an apology before replacing the towel and moving on to the bedroom that the boys shared.
It was always a half-a-mess in the boys' room. It wasn't until after David's twin brother moved out to live with his girlfriend that the family moved into the apartment where the two boys had to share a room, and the personality of the other two brothers didn't exactly make living together easy. The apartment itself wasn't so small but after they created offices for each of the doctors in the family – three, excluding the aforementioned twin brother – the lack of bedrooms were apparent. And Chris insisted that the "grown-ups" would at least have a room for themselves, which left the boys on their own to figure out how to share their own.
They figured it out eventually. The entire room was divided into half where David and Matt had stuck long strips of paper tape on the floor to mark their own separate areas of privacy. Matt's part of the bedroom was a literal landmine; nobody could walk around in that part of the room without stumbling over stacks of albums, bits of this and that, clothes that included fezzes and bowties and everything else. The David half of the room could not have contrasted more. It was spotless, absolutely clean. Papers were organized into folders, the bits of this and that were all separated and put away in small boxes and containers, clothes were folded neatly into drawers or were hung in closets. The room was divided between black and white with no gray in between.
The top most part of Matt's side of the room was currently occupied with a fez, probably picked up from a cultural fair on U.N day last year, laid on its side with undone bowties draped across. A bowl that once held custard lay at the head of the bed, and even without looking into it Tardis could already predict that the possibility of bits and crumbs of fish fingers being stuck to the sides of the bowl were very high. And the most present junk of the room were parts of a radio that were clearly picked up from the junkyard. Why Matt might have picked that up, Tardis had no idea.
"So that was what you were doing, weren't you, you little thief?" said Tardis fondly as she knelt down and rolled a screw from the disassembled radio between the fingers.
The bed currently held a very sleepy Matthew Smith Who, still in his daily clothes, braces hanging awkwardly from his shoulders. His right arm dangled off the bed, his beloved "sonic" screwdriver hanging limply in his hand. Apparently, he had fallen asleep while working on his radio. When Tardis walked over to the curtains and opened them wide to reveal the dazzling brightness of the sunshine, her youngest child groaned and stuffed his head within his pillows to avoid the sun.
"Come on now, my dear thief. It's time to rise and shine," she said, over the pillows, waiting until the air between them would get stuffy and eventually lead to Matt sticking his face out.
"'M tired," came the reply.
"Well, if you hadn't stayed up till three in the morning to take apart that sad excuse for a radio signal receiver, you might have gotten some more sleep. Speaking of which, you have an office in this flat where you could do that instead of taking everything apart in your room beside your bed."
"Wanted to put it back together," mumbled Matt. "Wanted to make it send signals as well."
"That's still available to do in your office, dear. You could always have done that some other time as well. Right now, you need to get to your work, or you'll be late again," said Tardis as patiently as she could while stroking her youngest son's floppy hair. Matt stayed still for a moment longer before pushing himself up and off the bed while groaning as the blinding summer morning sun hit his eyes.
"That's the spirit," smiled Tardis as she led the clumsy man to the kitchen table.
"Good morning, Matt," greeted Chris from behind his sunny-side-up eggs and bread.
Matt merely nodded sleepily, blinking stupidly at his father, before reaching for something then pulling his hand back.
"What's the matter, dear?" asked Tardis, although she knew perfectly what the problem was.
"There are no fish fingers, and I need fish fingers and custard."
"That's because you're not supposed to have fish fingers for breakfast," said David as he appeared at the table, shaking off the excess water from his naturally spiky hair, dressed in a shirt and a pair of pants from his brown pinstriped suit. His favorite patterned tie hung from around his neck, still waiting to be worn properly, and he was still barefooted from the shower.
"But I still need some to kick start my day," retorted Matt.
"But it's not healthy for you to have fish fingers in the morning, you have to eat a meal that actually has good nutrients in it, any old doctor would tell you – "
"Excuse me, but I believe that if you want a meal with good nutrients with it, you could always live off potatoes and milk. Mashed potatoes. Bloody mashed potatoes, which consists of solely of Solanum tuberosum and either milk or butter, which can provide for vitamin A and D which the potatoes cannot," snapped Matt, glaring at the elder Who brother with no traces of sleepiness that inhabited him until now. "Any old doctor would tell you that."
David cocked his head slightly and pushed out his lips to give what looked like a little pout before giving the young engineer his signature grin. "Alright, don't get angry, little brother, but really, you should consider getting eyebrows for that glaring thing before you start doing it right."
Tardis sighed. If there was one thing that her youngest son lacked apart from his ability to keep his things straight and tidy, were his eyebrows. Of course David would go straight for them. Of course.
She glanced at her husband, who sipped his tea and was apparently very focused on his bacon that he kept trying to roll before putting his fork through. His large ears, however, were strained to listen to his sons as they argued on and forth. She nudged him with her elbow to tell him to stop the boys from a possible fight, but Chris just shook his head and went back to his plate.
But his ears still twitched.
And the boys kept arguing.
"My eyebrows? All right, big brother, why don't you tell us about the time where you nearly cut your bloody hand cut off from so we can be reminded of how dumb you are?"
"It wasn't my fault that the guy was more aggressive than I thought, and I didn't know that he had a knife in his hand. And really, are you sure that I'm the one who's dumb?"
"If you're asking me that question, yes, I believe so."
"If that's really all you can come up with – "
"Because if I do, you wouldn't be able to handle my hell of a genius mind."
David gasped in mock surprise. "Excuse me? Did you just say your genius mind? You're just an overgrown giraffe face with a less than average human intellect."
"A giraffe? Me? Do you know that you look like an owl, has anyone mentioned that before?"
"Boys!" The two of them looked up at the sound of their father finally interfering. "I don't want to hear you two trying to find out who has less intelligence than the other during breakfast. So for Rassilon's good sake, both of you will sit down and have a decent breakfast without any snide remarks in the conversation. And," continued Chris as Matt opened his mouth. "No fish custard for breakfast. You know the rules. They specifically state, 'No fish custard for breakfast'."
The two sat down at the table. Matt grumbled something about rules being meant to be broken under his breath while looking defeated in his chair, but still managed to shoot looks full of resentfulness towards his brother. David smiled, not too secretly from behind his already half-eaten toast, his face threatening to crack from ear to ear.
Tardis sighed affectionately and pushed the plate with eggs and bacon towards Matt before pouring David a cup of hot water with his favorite flavored teabag. She smiled at both of them, for David to try his tea and to encourage Matt to start his breakfast.
"Anyways," Chris declared, smiling as he popped the last piece of his bread dipped in the egg yolk into his mouth. "I think we can all agree that I am the most fantastic and the most intelligent one in this family. Don't you think?"
Tardis sighed again, this time in exasperation as both her sons raised their heads from their breakfasts to give their father incredulous looks. Oh, the egos in this family.
