amberfocus | You're What?: Chapter Twenty-four

Of Great Worth

Jack, of course, had been the one to come pay their fine. The Doctor had hoped to avoid the other man finding out about the incident altogether, but if the fine hadn’t been paid within the hour before the courthouse shut down for the day, they’d have been confined in the jail, separately, overnight. He didn’t fancy that idea one bit. Rose was a beautiful woman and things could happen in a prison, things he wouldn’t be able to protect his pregnant wife from. She’d had a bad enough experience in Justicia for him to ever leave her side in a jail again if he could help it.

No escort could be spared to usher them to the TARDIS and back until the morning, and if they waited until then they’d be booked into the general prison population, so the Doctor had used Rose’s super phone to call into the TARDIS’s phone. A very surprised Jack had asked no questions at the time, simply accepted that they’d been arrested without being given the reason why and brought the Doctor’s secret stash of gem stones with him so the Doctor could pay the fine Rose and he had earned with their passionate not so private rendezvous.

As on many planets the Torvian government preferred precious metals or gem stones as a form of payment over cash or credit bars, which were what the local merchant population used. In the end the Doctor had selected two of his finest black diamonds, a chunk of turquoise the size of Rose’s fist, and a flawless five karat ruby so deeply red that any other color previously labeled as red had merely been a pretender to the throne of rouge.

As the charges against them were read out, the Doctor paid the fine and tried to avoid the smirk now being directed at him by the younger man. Rose had turned bright red and kept hiding her face in the Doctor’s shoulder.

Jack teased them both mercilessly. “You know, for a couple who have always turned me down when I asked if I could watch, the two of you sure did an abrupt turnaround having sex in public like that.”

“We weren’t in public, Jack,” the Doctor said in an irritated tone. “We were in a hidden little alcove between two tents.”

“Not that hidden according to the testimony of the constables who found you. Although maybe if you hadn’t been making so much noise you wouldn’t have gotten caught,” Jack smirked.

“We weren’t that loud,” protested Rose.

“Oh, please. I know every time the two of you are having sex. I can hear it through the walls.”

“Maybe we need to find you a new bedroom then,” snapped the Doctor.

“I can hear it from the kitchen, too,” said Jack. “Oh, Rose, oh, my beautiful Rose!” mimicked Jack. “Oh, yes, Doctor, yes, right there, yes, yes, yes!”

Rose buried her face in the Doctor’s shoulder yet again. The kitchen was several rooms away from the bedrooms. And Jack had her inflections down perfectly.

“Knock it off, Harkness,” the Doctor growled out. “You’re embarrassing my wife!”

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”

“You’re embarrassing my wife,” the Doctor repeated.

“No, I heard you, just…your wife?”

Rose overcame her embarrassment and looked over at Jack. “We…we decided to not get the annulment,” she said softly.

“We were celebrating,” muttered the Doctor, “and kind of forgot ourselves.”

“You’re still married?” Jack said stunned. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I didn’t think the two of you were ever going to figure it out! The TARDIS wanted to lock you in earlier, you know. She thought you were just going to keep mucking things up. Glad to see you got your heads on straight. Though, you know, if you had wanted to have sex in public, there are places where it’s legal on Torvian. I could have taken you there.”

“We weren’t wanting to have sex in public!” Rose burst out. “It just sort of…happened. Now leave off.” Jack stopped teasing them then, but he didn’t lose his smirk.

They walked along in companionable silence for a while when suddenly the Doctor blurted out, “You want a ring, Rose?”

“A ring?”

“Wedding ring,” he clarified.

“Oh,” said Rose. She clearly hadn’t thought about it, but up until a few hours ago, there would have been no need to.

“I’d like to give you one, Rose. I’d like you to wear one,” he said almost shyly.

Rose smiled at him. “I will if you will,” she said. He nodded.

“There’s a jeweler not too far from where we parked the TARDIS. They’ll have a privacy booth and you can look through my gem stones and see if you fancy anything and we can have it set into a ring, or you can find something in their shop, but it probably won’t be quite as nice as these.” He shook the bag. Rose nodded.

“Okay. I’m going to take her over there then, Jack. We’ll meet you back in the TARDIS after we decide on rings,” he said.

Jack nodded and said, “Just remember, the privacy booth is not for shagging,” as he walked off.

Rose shook her head. “He’s never going to let us live this down, is he?” she asked.

“It’s unlikely. Come on.” He tugged on her hand and a moment later they were in the back booth of the shop. The Doctor spilled out his stones onto the white velvet lined table and Rose began to look through them. She was very thorough setting aside the ones that caught her fancy most, but when she came across a deep blue rounded stone she gasped in amazement. She fingered the asterism on the two karat stone tracing the six white rays that shot out from the central star.

“Can I have this one?” she asked him.

“’Course you can,” said the Doctor. “It’s even got a mate somewhere.” He rooted around in the remainder of the pile she hadn’t checked yet and pulled out a flatter stone that was the same color. “This one would work best in a man’s ring.”

“What are they?” Rose asked.

“They’re star sapphires,” the Doctor told her.

“Why do they do that, with the star in the center?” she wanted to know.

“It’s got needle-like inclusions of a mineral called rutile. Rutile is made up mostly of titanium dioxide with two rarer polymorphs anatase or octahedrite, which is a tetragonal mineral of pseudo-octahedral habit, and brookite, which is an orthorhombic mineral,” the Doctor explained to her.

“Huh?” said Rose. “What’s pseudo-whatsis?”

“A tetragon that acts like an octahedron,” the Doctor said.

“Okay,” said Rose, “in English now please.”

“That is English,” said the Doctor.

“That’s math,” said Rose mutinously.

“It means it’s a four-sided object that acts like an eight-sided object,” he said.

“But it’s got six rays,” Rose objected.

“The star sapphire does, not the rutile that causes it. Shall we take them to the jeweler?” he asked her.

“Yes. I love them. Thank you,” she said.

The Doctor separated the two stones out and then scooped the rest of the gems back into his bag and stuck them in his pocket. They met with the jeweler who showed them a variety of bands and settings and Rose settled on something in a round setting that would be surrounded in diamond chips in a platinum band. The Doctor picked a flatter beveled ring and chose to have his stone made into an emerald cut that would also be surrounded by recessed diamond chips in a platinum band. The bands themselves were covered in twisting vines.

They left the rings and stones with the jeweler who assured them he’d work through the night and they’d be set by morning and could be picked up then. In exchange for his services the Doctor would pay with 2 large uncut yellow diamonds, very rare in this portion of the universe, though easy enough for the Doctor to come by in his travels. For the jeweler it was a major coup to come across the yellow diamonds and he had no problems working overtime to finish the job.

They left the jewelers and had dinner in a little pavilion that specialized in seafood from the ocean planet Divo before heading back to the TARDIS. There was no sign of Jack when they entered the ship, but a trail of rose petals littered the ground. Rose smiled in delight and they followed the path to a bed chamber neither had ever seen before.

“Guess Jack and the TARDIS were in on this together,” said the Doctor. He pushed the door open and Rose gasped at what she saw inside. A king size four poster bed dominated the center of the room. Where a canopy would normally be the top was woven with flowering vines and climbing roses, which also layered the posts. The scent of jasmine was heavy in the air. Vases full of flowers filled the rest of the room in a riot of color.

The bed itself was covered in thick Egyptian cotton sheets in sky blue with embossed golden threads shot through in a vining pattern. A thin duvet of the same pattern rested at the foot of the bed and the pillows at the top were in a darker but similar shade of blue.

To one side of the bed was a cast iron table with plates full of chocolates, fruits, and nuts. Propped up against the central dish was a card. Rose read it aloud. “Congratulations to the newlyweds. Enjoy! Love, Jack and the TARDIS.” She sighed. “I love them for doing this for us,” she said on a sigh.

The Doctor gave her a soft smile. “Me, too.” Slowly he moved to her side and began to undress her. When she stood naked before him his eyes roamed down her body, taking no short cuts. “You are beautiful, wife,” he said.

With shaking hands Rose returned the favor, her own eyes trailing methodically over his form. “You are beautiful, husband,” she told him. He snorted at her. “I think you are,” she insisted. “I love everything about your looks.” She reached up and trailed her hands over his face lovingly. “Now take me to bed and make love to me.”

He reached out and lifted her into his arms and did just that.

Ch. 25: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/109432.html