How do you marry a Time Lord?

Rose sat at in a rickety wooden chair in the kitchen, staring at a cup of tea. This problem hadn't really been an issue before, and she'd never had to consider it so, well, seriously.

Not that she hadn't ever thought of it before, but they'd been the fantasies of her romantic pipe dreams—everything all very human. She with the Doctor, wearing a white dress, in a chapel somewhere, maybe a beach on some beautiful planet. He'd be wearing a tux, likely—no, probably not, he'd probably stick with his suit and she would have preferred that anyway.

And her mum would be there. She'd have dragged her from London onto the TARDIS if they were going off-planet and maybe she'd invite Mickey too. She'd've invited Shareen if they'd have married in London.

But now those things were out the window, so to speak. It would just be her and the Doctor, not that she minded, really, but it did make things decidedly more difficult to think through.

If Rose were being honest, she missed her family very much. She missed her mum, and Pete, and Tony, and every day on the TARDIS felt like a cruel reminder of how she was likely never to see them again. Her mum could never help her plan her wedding, hell, her mum would never know that she was going to marry the Doctor—but perhaps she suspected all along.

So she sat in the kitchen, wearing her pyjamas and staring at a quickly cooling cup of tea, wondering how one usually went about marrying a Time Lord and how she was going to do it without her mother.

The Doctor waltzed into the kitchen wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist, his hair damp and messy and quite clearly fresh from the shower.

"There's still hot water in the kettle," she said absentmindedly as he grabbed a mug from the cabinet and made himself a cup of tea.

"Excellent," he said, and sat in the chair across from hers.

They'd been back in the old universe for a couple of weeks, adapting to their new dynamic, which now might be called, apparently, the It's-Normal-and Encouraged-to-Wander-Around-the-TARDIS-Naked-In –the-Morning-Thanks-Very-Much Factor.

"I like this," she said.

"You like what you see?" He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Well, yes, of course, but I meant that I like this. All of this."

"How do you mean?"

"I like that we wake up together in the same bed. And that when you're done in the shower you come into the kitchen and we drink tea together. And that after we've finished breakfast, if tradition holds, you'll kiss me before I go get in the shower. You may or may not follow me there, depending on if you want to tinker with the console or not, at which point you may or may not take your second shower of the day, but with present company included. And then we'll likely get dressed and have an adventure. And you'll love it and I'll love it. And it will be amazing. And it's all so domestic even if you once told me that you don't do domestic."

He took a sip of his tea and smiled widely.

"Domestic isn't so bad when it's with you, Miss Tyler. It's a bit the same, really, only there's a bit more shagging."

"There's a lot more shagging."

"And it's great."

"Toast?" she asked, pushing herself up from her chair and grabbing a loaf of bread from the counter. "I bought some new marmalade the other day. And it isn't alien. It's from Fortnum's."

"Hey, big spender."

She popped their toast in the toaster and reached into the refrigerator to extract the marmalade.

Without turning around, and while struggling with the lid of the marmalade, she said, "So how exactly are we going to go about getting married?"

He sputtered in his tea as she managed to open the jar with a thick popping sound.

"I—uh…we'll just say our vows, right? And then we'll exchange rings and kiss. That's typically how it's done, yeah?"

"Well, yes. But what I meant was when and where and if I'll need to hire some alien wedding planner or if you wanted to get married on Earth or New Earth or literally anywhere else in the universe. And if I should get a dress, like a proper white one, and if you wanted a tux—I know how you feel about tuxes."

He remained slack-jawed during her barrage of words, which had clearly been bottled up for some time.

"We can get married wherever and however you'd like, just so long as we get married." A fierce look of possessiveness came over his eyes, and it made Rose go temporarily weak at the knees.

"I wish my mum were here to help," she said quietly, returning to the table with toast and marmalade.

"Ah."

"Ah?"

"This isn't so much about the wedding so much as missing your family."

"What? No. Maybe a little. It's just weird to think that my mum won't be here when I get married. But I'm not sad, really. I made the right choice, Doctor. I love you. I want this. What we have here. You're my family. You're all I need."

He smiled, albeit weakly. "I wish your mum could be here, too. Even though I know that she'd try and force me into a tuxedo, and she'd probably take complete control over the wedding. I just wish you could have both of us. I just hope that in the end, you'll think I was worth it."

He reached across the table and took her hand in his and ran his thumb over her knuckles.

"You're always worth it, Doctor. Don't think for a minute that you aren't. I chose this. I chose you. I chose us. Plus, I think mum might have suspected we'd wind up married all along. She probably thinks we're off and married already."

"Wouldn't want to disappoint Jackie Tyler. Do you suppose we ought to get married today?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Oh," he sighed, hanging his head and looking quite dejected and adorable.

She burst into a fit of giggles and nearly choked on her toast.

He stood up and looked at her with fear in his eyes, thinking that she was in fact choking, which would not have done either of them any good at all.

"Oh, Doctor. I'm sorry, but you should have seen the look on your face. I was going to say that I don't think that we should get married today because I think I might have a much better idea-" He opened his mouth to interrupt her, presumably to say something about how nobody ever had ideas that were better than his (except, if he was being honest, Rose). "I was thinking we might go back to 2005. London?"

The Doctor halted what was about to be a deluge of some speech or another and simply stared at her, looking almost confused.

"When we first met?"

"Yeah, thought it might be romantic."

"Don't want to initiate a paradox."

"I'm not saying we get married in the basement of Henrik's. Maybe there's a nice chapel in Chiswick or something, something out of the way from all of the…mayhem that we started."

"You, Rose Tyler, are absolutely fantastic."

A/N: I love reviews! They help me write more. I'll update the next chapter whenever it is that it gets written.