A/N: (Phew) Sorry about long wait and rubbish chapter, but it can't be helped. Like I said, drowning in fluff here! It was eight WHOLE chapters and I didn't lay a finger on him! Phew, glad I finally got some Doctor torture in, good for the body, soul and mind :D Though it's not really torture. It's cotton candy misfortune. Man, I can't wait till after the wedding when my wrath shall return! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I figured out a way to get Nine in this story, but not Nine's Rose, because then it just gets confusing...

Chapter 9 – First Sign Of Madness...

He woke up the next morning on the floor of his bedroom, feeling hot and uncomfortable. Jackie's heating must still be on the fritz. He sighed, pulling himself off of the floor and getting dressed, picking up his Sonic to go and mend the heating before Jackie swotted him around the head for not doing it instantly.

He scratched behind his ear, thinking hard as the sound of Jackie's footsteps rung out from down the corridor.

"What're you doin'?" she yawned, crouching down next to him and the heater. He buzzed away with the Sonic, making a loud point.

"I'm going swimming," he said sarcastically, wiping off the sweat clinging to his forehead.

"So…why'd you need to mess with the 'eater to do that?"

He sighed loudly, implying her lack of brain cells as he continued to buzz away again.

"It's bloody hot in here Jackie, or hadn't you noticed?"

"No, I hadn't." This was really getting her alert. A cold…fever…grouchiness… "Shirt off." She came out with immediately, running a hand through his hair to check his scalp.

"Isn't it a bit early for that?" He sighed, unbuttoning his shirt for yet another time infront of his own mother-in-law.

She quickly checked over his chest.

"Anythin' been a little itchy sweetheart?"

He frowned. "My back's been a little…nah! That's just stupid." Jackie turned him around and cast her eyes over his back. "I can't have the…"

"You got the chickenpox," Jackie cut over the top of him, confirming everything he dreaded. He stared at her, anxiously.

"What?"

"You've got it."

"But…but…" he stuttered, reaching a hand over his shoulder to his back and feeling something lumpy in the place it seemed to be itchy. "It can't…"

"I'll phone Rose," Jackie said shortly, handing him back his shirt and starting off down the corridor into the sitting room. She didn't hear a word from him as she dialled for the TARDIS – and then just as she pressed the phone to her ear, the alien language string of blaspheme started up from the corridor, accompanied with crashing footsteps as he marched angrily into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. Unfortunately, the wall wasn't soundproof.

"Hello?"

"Hello Rose sweetheart. I've got some bad news."

"Oh God. He's got it, hasn't he?"

"Yup."

"How is he?"

There was suddenly a loud crack of splitting wood from the kitchen, accompanied with an agonised yelp and another few crashing sounds of tumbling pots and pans.

"I think 'e just kicked a hole through one of my cupboards," she answered mildly. There was another yell of frustration as apparently the 'knife was too straight' and then another thud – as suddenly all went quiet.

"…And I think he just fainted."

"Did daddy catch the Turkeypox?"

Rose looked down at the infected child as she held the blue ice pack to the Doctor's head, lying in his bed back on the TARDIS where Jackie had managed to drag him to from her flat. His temperature was thirty and rapidly gaining – though Rose couldn't really be sure whether that was average for a Time Lord or not – it was definitely less than a human but he looked so hot.

"Yes, he did," she answered the boy, beckoning him up onto the bed next to his dad.

"Please Jackie…don't make me take my shirt off again…" came the sudden voice of the person in question, breathing in deeply. Rose giggled and his eyes shot open in alarm, registering her and Rory in his vision – before smiling as closing his eyes again, reaching up to the ice pack Rose held to his head.

"Blimey, that feels good," he breathed, resting his hand on Rose's and pressing it firmer down to get more of the cold. "What the hell is the temperature in here?"

"You're currently making up thirty three of it yourself," Rose said casually, and his eyes widened.

"Thirty three?!" he gawked, checking himself over. "Thirty three?!"

"I take it that's not good?"

"Not likely!" He reached a hand over his shoulder to itch at the rash – but Rose quickly scolded him, slapping his hand.

"Don't scratch them!"

"Why not?" he demanded, reaching up again. She grabbed his hand and wrenched it down firmly, holding it rigid in her grip.

"Because they'll scar and you'll get worse."

"That doesn't compensate for it!"

Rose rolled her eyes, clutching his hand even tighter. "Look, stay here and I'll go get the itching cream. It hasn't even spread from your back yet, you're such a moaner!" She turned to her son, giving him his father's hand. "Rory, if daddy tries to itch himself, you know what to do."

He nodded, and the Doctor immediately felt unnerved by his own son. As Rose exited the room he stared at Rory, unexplainably scared as the boy stared blankly back at him. Slowly, he reached up his hand not held by Rory, extending it over his shoulder to his back where the rash lingered.

Rory watched him for a moment, narrowing his eyes slightly. He let go of the Doctor's other hand and reached both his own up to his eyes, starting to make sniffling sounds.

The Doctor instantly knew what he was planning. "Aww no, don't…don't…don't do that…"

"WAAAAAAAAA!" Rory cried, tears spilling down his cheeks as the Doctor's hand instantly flew away from his back and instead reached out to Rory, pulling him towards him and hugging him tight.

"Aww no…stop…please? I wasn't really going to! Rory, stop!"

"WAAAAAAAAA!"

"Rory! This isn't fair! Stop crying now…"

"Good boy Rory!" Rose's voice praised as she appeared in the room again, and within an instant Rory's tears had cleared and he was beaming up at Rose, his set of perfect teeth apparent. Rose took her place on the bed again, handing Rory a lolly by way of a reward.

"Thank you mummy," he said politely, shoving it into his gob before jumping off of the bed and running speeding out the room. Rose looked back at the father, laughing at his deflated expression.

Jackie, the kind dear that she was had taken responsibility of arranging the wedding whilst the Doctor was infected with the Chickenpox – or rather, what he liked to call it: 'Varicella Zoster'.

Rose soon found out that the Doctor made an extremely bad patient: she'd resorted to duck taping his hands into oven mitts and tying them to the head of the bed to prevent him from both itching the blisters and to stop him walking around every three seconds to fix something on the TARDIS.

Even Mickey and Howard had come to visit, to which he'd spent the entire meeting hiding under the covers pretending he was light sensitive. If Mickey saw him like this he'd never live it down…

But then he started to get worse: sore throats, headaches, nausea…he had a custom to joining her a few times during her morning sickness routine whilst the rest of the day he just slept off. She wanted her hyperactive Doctor back; he spent far too much time with his eyes closed nowadays.

Rose got the feeling if she kept up this act for much longer she'd end up becoming 'the Nurse' by name. The Nurse and the Doctor, it was all very medical…

His fever had got worse, now starting through the early fifties. That wasn't healthy – not even for a human. Rose was worried, but knew she needn't have been. If he still had common sense somehwere in that fried brain of his he'd know regeneration would be a very, very, very bad choice if he was hoping Jackie and Rose had stopped with the slaps.

But now he spent fifteen hours in deep sleep a day, the rest as his usual bouncing self.

But the Doctor had not been without his doubts. The only person that didn't seemed to squirm whenever they touched him apart from Rose (who was kind of forced not to anyway, after all, this man was her husband), was Bob. The Doctor had always wanted a Delorion ever since his old one died, back on Gallifrey. It had been a good luck present from some friends to his brother the day he'd graduated the Academy - the Doctor himself had been only five years old but his brother had been so busy with the new Time Lord duties that he'd given it to him. He'd named the Delorion 'Bill', after his Uncle on his mother's side. So yes, he and Bill tended to get in a little trouble from time to time, especially with the strict Time Lord retired official living next door.

The day he'd left for the Academy himself was the day his little Delorion died, killed in a freak automobile accident under suspicious circumstances...

All the way through his time at the Academy he'd hoped someone would think to get him a Delorion when he left - though he supposed being expelled probably wasn't really a rewarding way to leave.

Bob began to lick him up the face, not even caring for all his disgusting blisters. That Delorion would lick anything.

"Good boy," the Doctor applauded, rubbing Bob's fluffy mane with his head as his hands were still restrained. "At least you love me. I haven't seen another living person for hours now...I think I'm going mental."

"Yip, yip," Bob answered, sitting down on his lap at looking up at the Doctor, tail wagging as he panted with his tongue hanging out.

"Really," the Doctor carried on, "she just ties me up and leaves me for days on end, starving, thirsty...needing the toilet badly..."

"Yip..."

"I mean, if you were on an ethics commitee and you happened to wander in the room at this precise moment in time, what would you think?"

"Yip."

"Exactly. A perfectly nice man extremely ill and taped into oven mitts tied up to a bed talking to a Delorion. It's surely the first sign of madness! Probably the second, third, fourth and fifth too!"

"..."

"I may be a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord from outer space but that doesn't mean I don't have a part in the Geneva Convention!"

"..."

"Nowhere does it state that Convention only applies to humans! I'm just claiming my rights, and I'm fully entitled to that action too!"

"..."

"I know! It's absolutely preposterous! AND...and...and..." he glanced around, trailing off ineffectually as he seemingly finally noticed the lack of Delorian in the room.

The Doctor sighed, and lean back in his once more lonely room. Now, where was he?

"One million twenty two thousand nine hundred and eighty six bottles of beer on the wall, one million twenty two thousand nine hundred and eighty six bottles of beer..."