What Happens in Vegas...
Aug. 24th, 2011 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timelord1The Doctor opened his eyes a crack and was foggily aware that something was wrong. He had no shirt on and there was something in his mouth – a gag? The question woke him up the rest of the way and he sat up, hands flying to his face to find that his tie was tied around his head and had slipped down to his mouth while he was sleeping. He slid the tie off his head and smacked his tongue to get it some air. The inside of his mouth felt like a shredded wheat biscuit. And, oh dear, the room was swaying a bit in that ‘you got drunk last night and didn’t expel the alcohol’ way.
He rubbed his face and squinted through the sunshine to get a look at the room he was in. Hotel room. Big hotel room, judging from the expanse of windows to his left. Out the window he could see the spires of buildings and the tops of neon signs. Penthouse hotel room. There was the Eiffel Tower, in smaller scale, and a large fountain not far from it. Las Vegas Penthouse hotel room; the Bellagio, if I’m not mistaken. Now we’re getting somewhere.
The doors were a considerable distance from the bed where he was sitting, but he could see a large cart laden with breakfast, a bottle of champagne, and two dozen roses waiting there. He swung out from under the covers and stood on shaky legs. Shaky legs that were wearing white spangled bell bottomed pants. Blimey.
Until that moment it had not occurred to him to check to see if he was alone in bed. The covers were a thick pile of starchy white down that could easily have hidden several bodies. He yanked them back and was only mildly surprised by what he found there.
Rose Tyler and Captain Jack were wound together as if they’d collapsed in the middle of a game of Twister. Rose was using a brightly colored feather fan for a pillow, and had smears of makeup and glitter all over her face. Jack, who appeared to have been similarly made up, was sleeping with his mouth open and consequently a small stream of drool was pooling on Rose’s left hand. At the sight of her left hand, the Doctor’s eyes went a little wide.
She was wearing a large, tacky, ridiculously fake diamond ring on her ring finger. He looked at Jack’s left hand and saw a jeweled band there as well. He raised his eyebrows and whistled softly, grinning at the two of them.
“Good luck with that,” he muttered as he made his way to the waiting breakfast cart. There was a large card sticking out of one of the vases of roses. ‘Congratulations, Mr. Tarantino!’
The Doctor felt his fabulous pants for pockets and found none, but spied his trenchcoat thrown over a table in the living room area of the penthouse. The folder with his psychic paper was in one of the pockets. He pulled it out and glared at its blankness.
“What did you do?” he demanded, then threw the folder back on the table. Something caught the sunlight that drew his attention and threw him so intensely for a loop that he had to sit on one of the couches.
He held out his left hand in front of him to get a better look at the silver band on his ring finger. Also, he noticed that the palms of his hands were covered in glitter and smears of what looked like eyeliner. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand and it came back sparkly.
“What?” he blurted, looking back at his sleeping companions. Captain Jack was awake, watching him.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Jack whispered, waving at him. “Sleep good?”
He scrambled over to the bed. “What happened last night?” he whispered back.
Jack gave him a cheesy grin. “I knew you wouldn’t remember. I said it, and you kept insisting the idea was preposterous – your word, not mine – and that you would remember everything in precise detail.”
“Well, I lied,” the Doctor whispered sharply. “What happened?”
Jack rolled out of bed and put his finger to his lips, pointing at Rose. “Don’t want to wake the wife, do we?” He nodded towards the breakfast cart and walked towards it. He was wearing the same kind of pants as the Doctor.
“What happened?” the Doctor repeated, hurrying after Jack, who was enamoured with the roses.
“These are lovely,” he said, drawing one out for the Doctor to sniff. He slapped it away.
“If you don’t tell me what happened in the next fifteen seconds,” the Doctor growled.
Jack put up his hands. “Easy there, darling. I wouldn’t have pegged you for the abusive husband type.”
The Doctor held up his left hand to show Jack the ring. “Who is the husband? Who’s the wife? And why can’t I remember anything and you can?”
“Technically,” Jack said, lifting the tray on the breakfast to nab a piece of bacon, “we’re all a little of both, which is just the way I like it of course. You and Rose will get used to it.”
“Who got married?” the Doctor shouted. Rose groaned and pulled the covers over her head.
Jack gave the Doctor a slow smile and winked. “We all did. You and Rose got married around midnight, and it looked like so much fun that Rose and I got married, and we figured since we were most of the way there already, you and I got married a couple hours later.”
“Oh dear,” the Doctor said, snagging a piece of bacon for himself.
“I never saw anybody pound tequila the way you did last night. Except maybe Nicholas Cage in that goofy old movie.”
The bacon landed in his stomach with a dull thud. “I don’t drink tequila,” the Doctor said.
“You did last night, baby. We were all hitting it pretty hard after the show,” Jack said. “You were fantastic – I didn’t know you could sing, you sneaky devil.” He reached out and trailed his finger up the Doctor’s abdomen.
“Yes, in nine hundred years I never took time out for voice lessons,” he snapped. “Really, what do you people think I did with my time before you came along?” He really should have been asking ‘What show?’ and he didn’t know why he was getting indignant about his vocal talents, but he was so rattled by the inability to remember anything that he wasn’t thinking straight. It was beyond abnormal for him to not be able to remember at least something.
“Do you want to see pictures?” Jack asked.
“If you have any,” he said.
Jack smirked. “You have them all, actually,” he said. He got up and took the sonic out of the Doctor’s trenchcoat pocket and pointed it at the wall. It projected a slideshow of pictures onto the tan hotel wall, giving the pictures a dreamy sepia cast. The Doctor sat on the couch to watch the show. The first picture was of Rose and the Doctor, heads together, arms around each other as they danced.
“That’s one of my favorites,” Jack said, tilting his head to one side.
The next one was of all three of them; Rose was in the middle, head drooping just a bit but still smiling, leaning into the Doctor who was holding her up as well as a bottle of pale brown liquid with – oh yes – a worm at the bottom. Jack was on Rose’s other side, licking her shoulder.
“Also one of my favorites,” Jack said. The Doctor only sneered at him.
The next one made the Doctor’s eyebrow raise slightly. It was of himself and Jack at the altar of a cheap wedding chapel, kissing. Jack was holding a bouquet that looked like it was made of fiber-optic flowers. Rose was in the background, throwing rice at them.
“My favorite of favorites.” Jack put his hands on the Doctor’s shoulders and kissed his neck, and that’s when the Doctor knew for certain.
“Your lips are cold,” the Doctor said, pushing himself out of his seat. He had to fight the muscle-binding effects of the drugged piece of bacon he’d just eaten, but it was a poor choice of drug to use to stop a Time Lord and only slowed him down a little. “Where’s Jack?”
Jack-that-was-not-Jack shrugged. “Dead, I think. He didn’t look too good after I cut his throat in that alley behind Circus Circus. You should be more careful when you drink, Doctor. Don’t you know Vegas is a haven for alien life?”
The Doctor smiled as the door to the penthouse opened. “You should be more careful when you cut someone’s throat,” he replied. “Make sure they’re dead. Hello, Jack.”
“Good morning, darling,” the proper Jack said, putting his sonic blaster to his double’s temple. He was also wearing the remains of glitter makeup, fabulously spangled white pants, and a glittered wing-collared shirt to match, though his outfit was stained with blood. “You really should have registered under ‘John Smith.’ It would have been much easier to figure out where we were staying.”
“Blame the psychic paper,” the Doctor answered. “It was our designated driver last night.”
“Blimey, what did I miss?” Rose’s groggy voice asked from the bed.
The Doctor stepped up to Jack’s double and took a deep sniff, then winced. “How did I miss the stench of a Yaggaruah? You stink like urinal cakes.”
Jack’s double began to quiver and slowly morphed from a perfect copy of the Jack that was standing with his blaster to the Yaggaruah’s head to a creature that looked like a large raisin with five insectoid limbs and a ring of nine eyeballs in the center of what was presumably its face.
“And I could smell the stench of Time Lord rolling off you from the moment you three stumbled up to my blackjack table,” it gurgled.
“Oh, the blackjack!” the Doctor cried. “I do remember that. I did very well, but I always do because I can count cards. Don’t tell anybody.” The first memory opened the door to the others and the whole night unfolded like Rose’s feather fan.
“We made a stopover in Las Vegas last night for a bit of fun,” the Doctor began. “Which led to Jack and I daring each other to see who could drink the most vodka the fastest.”
“Men,” Rose huffed.
“Which in turn led to you snagging a few hundred dollars from an ATM so we could hit the casinos,” Jack added.
“Which eventually brought us to the blackjack table, where the Yaggaruah was posing as a dealer,” the Doctor said.
“You were on a hot streak,” Rose put in.
“I always am,” he answered, looking back at her with a grin. “I won an obscene amount of money on a blackjack…and our friend the Yaggaruah gave us a round of drugged tequila on the house in congratulations. Oh, you snake, you! And I walked right into it.”
“He was taking pictures with the sonic, which would explain why we’re together in most of the shots,” Jack said, pointing at the slide show still playing on the wall.
“It also presumably goaded us into performing ABBA at Open Mic Night at the Cellar Lounge,” the Doctor said, indicating a picture of the three of them standing onstage, singing with grinning, drunken abandon. “Which explains the pants and the glitter.”
“I did our makeup,” Rose said, giggling.
“Nice job,” Jack said. “After the show, we apparently began gargling the drugged tequila, stumbling from casino to casino.”
“Until we decided to stop off at the quaint little chapel at the back of the liquor store,” the Doctor continued. “Once that was over, we then headed out to find a hotel room. Even for me, by this point in the evening, events are a bit hazy to recall, but somewhere in there the Yaggaruah cut Jack’s throat and copied his form while I posed as apparently Quentin Tarantino to get us the penthouse suite at the Bellagio, while Jack slept his death off in an alley behind Circus Circus. The only question I have is why. What did you want with us?”
“I could feel the love you had for one another,” the Yaggaruah replied. “I’m so lonely – the only one of my kind on Earth – and I wanted to be in the embrace of those who truly loved and understood one another.”
The Doctor nodded for a moment before speaking. “Cack. Try again.”
“I wanted the girl for myself.”
The Doctor shook his head. “Lying,” he sang. “Once more, please.”
“I needed a lift off this planet,” the Yaggaruah said.
“And you couldn’t have just asked?” Jack said.
The Yaggaruah glared at him, which was a formidable thing to do with nine eyes. “Is the Doctor in the practice of transporting fugitives from justice?”
“So you thought it would be best to drug us and trick us into giving you a ride?” the Doctor said. “Add to your list of crimes, whatever they may be?”
“Yeah – like murder?” Jack asked.
The Doctor frowned at him. “Murdering you doesn’t really count for anything.”
“That’s a nice thing to say about your husband,” Jack muttered.
“You two got married?” Rose asked. She sat up and looked at her own hand. “Oh, bloody hell.”
“We are all married,” the Doctor said. “Congratulations all around. We’ll have dinner out later to celebrate, but in the meantime, we’re giving this fella a lift right back to Yaggaru.”
The Yaggaruah sighed, sinking into his seat. “Any chance you’ll-“
“None,” the Doctor snapped. “So stop talking and sit there until we’re ready to go.” He walked over to the bed and sat next to Rose to make sure she was all right.
“So, you and I are married?” she asked, looking at the ring.
“Apparently,” he replied, brushing her hair out of her face. “At least in the state of Nevada.”
She smiled. “Makes me like Nevada all that much more. Mrs. The Doctor.”
He chuckled, wiping a streak of eyeliner out from under his eye with his thumb. “Bearing in mind that you are also Mrs. Jack Harkness in Nevada, and apparently so am I.”
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Date: 2011-08-25 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-09-09 02:05 am (UTC)I don't know if you're familiar with
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Date: 2011-09-09 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-09-10 05:32 am (UTC)That's one of my favorite things about these characters - you can throw some strange stuff at them and most of the time they just roll with it.
Thanks for reading and for the comment!!! :)
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Date: 2011-09-10 06:50 pm (UTC)Peace,
-Joel
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Date: 2011-09-10 07:00 pm (UTC)Thanks for taking the time to read and thanks for the lovely comment! Have fun reading more!!! :)
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Date: 2011-09-22 02:10 am (UTC)Brilliant ending! Brilliant throughout, actually. I so much needed to read this right now. Thank you!
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