Disclaimer: Not mine. Wish it were, but it's not. Same with the songs mentioned in here. I own nothing.

Author's Note: A piece written for John Lennon's death anniversary, and something kinda light because I've been pretty dark lately (you can blame that on boy troubles). Lennon may not be as cool as Paul McCartney but he deserves respect all the same. Rose's mobile... I've forgotten whether it can take pictures or not. If it doesn't let's assume she got a new one or something. (At this Fanficworm grins hopefully at the readers)

Cellophane Flowers and Marshmallow Pies
By Fanficworm

The Doctor awoke to a dull, throbbing ache in his neck which just seemed to ignite and combust with every shift in position. He groaned, because it seemed that not only his neck was awry. Swirling, abstract colours obstructed his sight, and he blinked a few times to try to identify just what he may have taken to cause all this to come about. The blur in his vision sharpened and the room stopped moving, and he realised he was looking at some sort of painting. Or fresco, now that he thought of it, since what he was looking at what seemed to be a ceiling. His confusion worsened, and a headache blossomed somewhere in the back of his brain.

"This definitely isn't the intergalactic fair of fish and chips," he said, looking around the room. His Scottish voice came out hoarse. "Where is--?" He let his eyes wander around and reality bit him hard on the arse. "Right, bollocks. That was a dream. I must've fallen asleep redecorating the TARDIS." Really, who would've thought it was actually possible to hit the state of such mind-numbing boredom that he would actually find it entertaining to watch paint dry.

He propped himself up on one arm. "What d'you think, Old Girl? Eh? New new abstract paint job? You finally look as pretty as you deserve."

The TARDIS creaked obligingly.

He grinned. "Aye, it's an improvement, I'd say. Much better than how all the other versions of me decorated you before, innit?"

Silence. It was as if she were hesitating.

He let himself stand. "I'll take that as a yes." He yawned a great, gaping yawn, scartching the back of his head, and ambled over to her console. "How long've I been asleep then? Feels like almost an hour, which mind you, wouldn't be surprising, I'd think."

Ihr 37min 28sec, the console monitor read.

He blinked. "That long?"

Creak.

"No wonder I feel like Rip van Winkle." he stretched out his arms and surveyed his modifications to the already very abstract room. "You know, just after I woke up, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I'd taken Dermidsar insanity peppers by accident again, lookin' up at all this, and hearing all that Beatles music in the background." He caught himself. "Beatles music?"

He frowned. "Maybe I had taken a few peppers before nodding off."

Though his ears told him different. He could swear he heard Money Can't Buy Me Love blasting from the direction of Rose's room. He raised an eyebrow. "I mean, Rose would never like this stuff."

He continued following the sound, cautious, just in case his initial suspicions were right and any time soon the insanity peppers would start turning things unpleasant for him.

He frowned. "Would she?"

Can't buy me love
Everybody tells me so

Since when did the TARDIS corridors seem so long?

Can't buy me love
No, no, no, no!

She'd left her door wide open. Her less-than-perfect voice screeched to the song in a perfect example of why karaoke was always a bad idea. Now he knew he couldn't rule out the insanity peppers, because there was no way a normal human being could sing--if "sing" was really the right word for this--like that. He peeked inside, just to make sure there wasn't a dying animal in there, and the moment he did he instantly regretted it. She was there, all right, but... singing into a hairbrush... and if that wasn't enough, dancing around in her frilly underwear. And they just had to be pink. Pink. Matching her room, her wardrobe, and now, his cheeks and ears.

He should've moved. He should've at least shielded his eyes, or shut them. His body, though, seemed insistent that he watch this accidental burlesque show and refused to allow him to budge. He tried blinking. No, that didn't work, either.

He blamed this on his human side, really. There was no way he could imagine Borusa or The Castellan like this. Omega, however, now he was insane, so that was probably another matter...

"Tell me that you want the kind of things," Rose 'sang', letting her frazzled drying hair thrash along with her head, "that money just can't buy! I don't care too--" she struck a pose, "much for money! Money can't buy me love!"

He stood there, petrified and yet strangely fascinated. Somewhere in his infinite mind a tiny voice pleaded for this to be unreal. Please let this be insanity peppers, it said. Oh dear Rassilon, that insanity pepper-induced Dalek popping out of the ether singing Gilbert and Sullivan and waving its ray gun at him would've been plenty welcome right then, especially since in the middle of her dance she just happened to look at her conveniently-placed dressing mirror and see him. Directly behind her. Gawking. Jaw dropped to the floor and eyes watering from the lack of blinking, and which were fixed, until now, on certain jiggly bits of her that the frilly lingerie accentuated excruciatingly.

She stopped.

She screamed.

He screamed.

She screamed, covering herself.

The Doctor shielded his eyes, a little too late. "Rose, I'm sorry!"

"Get out!" She slapped him. "Get out!" She shoved him out of the doorway. "GET OUT, you nine-hundred-year-old PERVERT!" The door slammed in his face.

It took a second, but the searing pain that followed the slap assaulted his left cheek, and the ache in his neck exploded into a red blast of pain. His eyes bulged. "Ow." He moved his jaw up and down to try to flex the pain out of it, to no avail. "Rassilon, Rose, you slap worse than your mother!"

"Serves you right for being a dirty old man!" came her muffled reply.

"I'll have you know I'm still young by Time Lord standards!"

"Well then, serves you right for being a horny teenager!"

He sputtered. "You left the door wide open!"

"I locked it!" she said. The door flew open. She stood in the doorway, fully dressed this time, though a bit dishevelled in her rush to put on clothes. She and her Union Jack T-shirt glared up at him. "The TARDIS must've opened it somehow!"

"Why would the--?" He stopped and looked up at the ceiling. "This is because I haven't fixed those errors in the flight dismount system yet, innit, Old Girl?"

Creak.

He nodded. "Thought as much."

The song ended and changed.

Rose's glare remained, though, much to the Doctor's chagrin. "Well?"

His eyebrows knit together. "Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to apologise for watching me dance in me underwear?"

"Actually, I was thinking of thanking you for the entertainment," he said. He stopped and grimaced. It was weak, and he knew it. "No?"

"No."

"Would it help if I said I'm a doctor and--"

"No."

He leaned back on his heels and changed his tone. Right, time to change tactics, then. "Well, emm, all right," he said, "since what I did was wrong, I'll have to say..." He stopped, frowned. "Sorry."

"Thank you."

"No, sorry, is that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Those two songs shouldn't be next to each other; they're on different albums."

She sighed. "Closest thing to an apology, then." She listened to the song, brushing her hair with her impromptu microphone. "Yeah it is, yeah they are, and to answer your other question, this is a bootleg compilation CD."

He eyed the cover of the album, which lay on her violently pink bed. "Aren't you a little young to be a Beatles fan?"

"They remind me of Mum," she said. "Before she tried to turn back the clock she used to play the Beatles all the time 'round the house. And to tell the truth I've been missing her a bit lately."

"So will you be wanting to visit her someti--"

"No," she held up a hand. "It's okay. I wallowed enough in self-pity after your regeneration. And if I remember right, I visited her shortly after then, too."

"Oh, thank goodness." He sensed his error and corrected himself. "I mean, I think it's wonderful that you're finally moving on."

"Shut it, Doctor."

...Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift by the flowers
That grow so incredibly high...

"You know," he said. "I should've been credited with that song, at least in part."

She snorted. "Right, you're saying that you wrote Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?"

"No, don't be daft," he said. "I helped give them the idea."

"Unbelievable," she said, starting back into the room. "Doctor, you're full of it."

"No, really," he said, letting his feet rest back to a more normal position. "Lots of people think that song was inspired by drugs or Lewis Carroll. All bollocks. They actually got the idea from a drawing by Lennon's son Julian, who drew a portrait of a girl he had a crush on floating around among the stars." He straightened his stance and puffed out his chest slightly, though there wasn't much to puff out, thanks to this new regeneration. "And guess who provided the scenery."

She stared at him. " You kidnapped John Lennon's--"

"Ah-ah," he said. "Rescued."

"Rescued," she said.

"Rescued," he said, "from aliens from Orion's Belt who thought that the Fab Four were the rulers of the Earth. Him and his little friend Lucy, they're the ones I rescued. Inseperable, those two. It was absolutely precious."

She shook her head again, crossed her arms.

"And then I brought the two to another planet to make them think it was all a strange dream, or that maybe they'd accidentally been into Lennon's..." he searched for the word, "'mind-expanding drug', and the rest is history."

She was silent awhile as she stared at him. Her glare melted and dissolved into choking laughter.

He looked at her. "What?"

"Nothing," she said, looked at him again, suppressed another laugh. "Nothing."

"You think I'm lying--"

"No, I--"

"--don't you?"

"'Sort of, yeah'," she mimicked in a weak Northern accent.

He held a hand to each of his hearts. "Rose Tyler, I'm hurt."

"Can you blame me, Doctor?" she said. "You always were full of it, this you even fuller of it probably more than all the other ones combined."

"Now that's not fair, Rose," he said. "All the other me's were bloody full of it, too. I'm probably as full of, or less full as, two of the others combined, tops."

"Yeah, whatever." She seemed to soften a little more at the sight of what she termed a while ago as his 'abused puppy' face. "Aw," she cooed. "Now see who's being unfair. You know I can't to see you with that face." She pecked him on the cheek. "There. I believe you now. Happy, you sodding berk?"

He rubbed at the spot she kissed, which, incidentally, was also the sport she slapped just a few moments ago. "Not really, but I know what'll fix that."

"What?"

He grabbed her hand and led her towards the console room. "Proving that I'm right and you're wrong."

Later...

Rose jumped on the giant flower petals. It was weird. Here she was, jumping on a flower petal bigger than her room in London, the flower she was on being about sixty feet tall, and she wasn't the least bit scared of falling to her death. Ther petals looked just like cellophane, felt like it, too, except that it was bouncy. And the colours! Yellow and green, just like in the song! And they were so big and thick she could treat the petals like one of those jumping castles she sometimes saw at kids' birthday parties and still not fall off.

Speaking of which...

She jumped with renewed vigour, squealing with delight, the petal crackling under her weight. Oh, and her weight was much less than it was on Earth. On this planet she could jump as high as a storey if she tried hard enough. And with all her jumping and the weird flowers taller than trees, and orange skies with actual diamonds in the sky ("giant rocks of carbon orbiting the planet", the Doctor said), it all felt like some surreal dream. Her marshmallow pie, bought earlier (from rocking horse people, no less), sat beside the Doctor. It wobbled from the vibrations her jumping sent across the petal and would've slipped in between the gaps between the petals if it weren't for the Doctor's quick reflexes.

The Doctor looked up from his pie. A white marshmallow mustache glistened on his face. "Oi," he said. "That's enough, young lady. I didn't bring you here to act like a small child."

"You should try this, Doctor," she said.

"Bit too hungry to play right now, Rose," he bit into his pie. "Besides," he said, cheeks partially full, "dirty old men like me don't have the energy to indulge in childish games."

"Don't be like that," she said. "I had every right to shout at you. You just stood there, gawping at me like your jaw became paralysed and your eyelids were glued to your eyebrows. And who're you to tell me to stop acting like a child? You're talking with your mouth full."

He swallowed. "I said I was sorry. Why is it that human women can never let things go?"

"You're the nine-hundred-year-old," she said. She jumped towards him. Surprisingly it only took one bound for her to cover the five metres between them to land beside him. "You tell me."

He opened his mouth as if to correct her, but then shut it again, apparently thinking better of it. "Believe me, not even the White Guardian would know," he said.

"Who?"

He shook it off. "Never mind." He looked at his pie and mumbled something about marshmallows being an improvement over insanity peppers before taking another bite.

She took a picture of the surreal landscape with her mobile, making sure to take the newspaper-looking spaceships cruising around nearby into the shot. "There. That should be about twenty pictures now. More than enough to show Mum."

"I'm ever so happy for you."

She let herself fall and lie down beside him. "Marmalade skies, and all the time, too, not just at sunset," she said. "A year ago I would've never thought planets could come in colours like this. I mean, can you imagine a planet like this, with really weird vegetation to match? Well, just listen to me, yeah? You've probably been to like thousands of weirder planets by now, haven't you?"

"Yeah." His smile faded a bit. "Thousands."

Gallifrey. The way the light in his eyes faded and his smile disappeared and he got that look that reminded her of her granddad and his war flashbacks, he could've only been thinking of Gallifrey. She shut her mouth. This Doctor may have been a lot more playful than the other one, but some things hadn't changed.

He cleared his throat. "So, now that you've been to this fair planent, with its cellophane flowers and marshmallow pies and people with kaleidoscope eyes, what d'you think? D'you believe me now?"

She scrusnched up her nose, considering for a moment. "Yeah, I guess you were right."

He lay down beside her, his arms stretched out onto the cellophane-like petal. "Ah, the best word combination in the universe. I never get tired of it, not in all my many centuries of wandering both sides of the universe and the space in between."

"What's that?"

He grinned. "You were right."

She jabbed him on the arm. "You're full of it."

"Now that one I'm not so fond of," he said. "So, forgive me now?"

She deliberated a second, and then happened to glance at her mobile's camera lens. An idea flashed in her head and she suppressed an evil laugh that threatened to burst out of her lips. "Not yet."

His eyebrows arched upwards.

She stood. "Get up, Doctor."

He did so, confused.

She straightened herself up, and looked deep into those still confused brown eyes of his. Her eyelashes lowered as she pulled him closer. She felt the warmth of his breath, and saw his Adam's apple twitch, slightly. A breeze made his beige coat almost envelope the two together, and their heads tilted as they moved closer still. The cloudy confusion in his eyes cleared and gave way to something else. Fear, maybe. It looked like fear. "Rose," he said. "Rose, I don't think we should, I mean it's not ri--"

"Shut it," she said. "You want to make my embarrassment up to me, yeah?"

He swallowed, nodding. "But not like--"

"Fantastic." She took a step back and promptly pulled down his trousers.

"Steady on!"

And then she pulled them off entirely, literally sweeping him off his feet.

"Rose, what the bloody hell--?"

"You saw me in my pants," she said, shoving them down a gap in the petals, "my turn to see you in yours." She looked on in satisfaction as the brown pinstripe trousers--though they looked green now thanks to the petal's colour--began to drift the sixty feet to the ground, and then looked up and tried not to laugh. "Really, Doctor?" she said. "Smiley face boxers?"

"That's not funny," he said. "Rose, that isn't--"

"You'll have to go get them, you know," she said, pulling out her mobile and recording him on video. Much better for the memories than still pictures, she reckoned. "I'm your plus one, not your servant."

"What's that?" he said, looked like a deer in headlights at the mobile. "It didn't go 'click'! It didn't go 'click'! Rose, are you taking a video?"

She looked up from her mobile and grinned. "Lasts longer than a gawk, don't you think?"

"Aw," he said. "Aw, you right little ba--"

"Oi!" she said. "Camera! Anything you say can and will be shown to me mum if you choose to send me into another strop." She zoomed the lens in closer at the smiley faces. With him shuffling about the faces almost looked as if they were laughed with her. "And just what'll she say if she knew I saw you in your underpants?"

After a brief spout of sputtering, he gave up, slipped in between the gap, and slid down the stalk to fetch his lost apparel, Rose following him with her mobile the whole way. Her grip on the camera wobbled and the picture on it moved up and down as she quiverred with silent laughter.

"Oh, and by the way, Doctor?" she said.

He looked up at her, not in the mood for this. "What?"

"I forgive you now."

He shook his head and continued downwards. And she followed him, humming the tune to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds with utter glee.