Chapter Text
Rose wakes to the feeling of something hard and uncomfortable beneath her cheek. She makes a mental note to feed the Doctor an extra sandwich, rolls over, and promptly falls two feet.
The impact startles her fully awake, eyes popping open as a headache screams to life and, oh, not the Doctor, then. A coffee table. She’d fallen asleep on a coffee table. Whose coffee table is this?
She rubs at her eyes, everything swimming in and out of focus for a few moments, before she’s finally able to see. Ah, the hotel suite, Vegas. Of course.
Jesus, what had they done last night?
The suite is trashed, the very expensive suite, the one the MGM Grand had so gleefully taken the Doctor’s credit card for, and is that – that’s Jack.
Wearing only his pants and lying spread eagle in the hallway.
Rose pushes to her feet and the room tilts, floor now seemingly a steep incline as she staggers toward Jack.
“Jack,” she hisses, nudging his shoulder with her foot. It’s hard to tell with the leopard print, but her loafers appear to be covered in glitter.
With a groan, Jack opens his eyes. “Rose?”
Before she can answer, Jack’s rocketing up from the floor, barreling into several walls before finally tumbling into the bathroom. A few seconds later and she hears the sound of a stream of liquid hitting a basin, before it’s muffled by Mickey’s voice in strangled protest.
Mickey comes charging out of the loo, thankfully wearing clothes, but they’re hopelessly rumpled.
“Rose,” he says, catching sight of her. “Did I sleep in the bathtub?”
She searches her memory, but there’s nothing there. Nothing after standing on the balcony to their suite last night, toasting Jack’s good fortune at being inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame yesterday evening.
Rose shrugs. “I slept on the coffee table, if that makes you feel better.”
Mickey cracks his neck, twisting to stretch out his back. “It doesn’t.”
His eyes scan the room. “Where’s my wife?”
Rose shrugs again, more concerned with the pounding in her head. “Check your room.”
Mickey nods and moves toward the hallway, sticking his head inside the bedroom they were supposed to sleep in, even if he ended up in the bath.
“Found her,” Mickey says.
If Martha made it to bed, maybe Martha has some answers, and Rose joins Mickey at the doorway, stopping to snag the Doctor’s sunglasses off the bar and slip them on her face. She might just keep them, if it’s the Doctor who let her drink this much.
Martha’s lying on a fully made bed, in her bra and her jeans, with a dark splotch on her bicep that Rose can’t make out with the sunglasses on.
Mickey crosses to the bed, shaking Martha by the ankle. “Wake up, babe.”
Martha groans and rolls over, the arm with the splotch making contact with the duvet, and then she’s yelping, flinging herself from the bed and grasping her bicep.
Jack comes running into the room, still in only his pants, just as Martha moves her hand.
It’s a tattoo.
“Hey, Mickey Mouse!” Jack says gleefully, pointing at it.
And it is, it’s Mickey Mouse, surrounded by the outline of a heart.
Whoops.
~~~~~
It smells like eggs. And bacon. And pancakes. Oh, Rose Tyler and all the ways he loves her.
Except, oh, no, no, no, that’s not good, no food, food’s a terrible, rotten, awful idea right now.
The Doctor shifts to clutch at his stomach, the movement hampered by the way his face seems to stick to the vinyl of his pillow.
Why did they buy vinyl pillows? Probably Jackie, he thinks, opening his eyes only so he can roll them.
Except he stops. Because there’s no pillow, no bed, no Rose – there’s a booth, and a table, and he’s apparently slept at it.
Sitting up, he’s able to see several booths and tables, and, oh, shit, did he pass out in a restaurant? He slips out of the booth, staggering to his feet and, fuck, not a restaurant, a buffet.
His eyes dart back to the table, a small tabletop advert for the Golden Nugget poker room sitting on it.
Yes, right, they’re in Las Vegas, for Jack. But he’s apparently downtown, and their room is back on the Strip.
A few of the employees are looking at him as they bustle by, preparing to open the restaurant for the day, he assumes, and one finally stops.
“Never seen them let anyone sleep in here before,” the bloke says. “You two must be pretty high rollers.”
The Doctor stares at him.
“Anyway, your friend’s by the salad bar,” the bloke tells him, pointing in the direction of the food.
The Doctor nods and tries to thank him, but his throat’s too dry, the words lost as he forces himself to swallow a few times instead.
He walks toward the salad bar, turning the corner to see a riot of white fabric and ginger hair slumped against the side.
Donna?
Stooping down to put a hand on her shoulder, the Doctor shakes Donna awake, backpedaling in a hurry as she comes to with a jolt and a flail of limbs.
She’s on her feet, unsteadily, in a matter of seconds, and it’s only then that he gets a good look at her.
The white fabric is – oh, god, it’s a wedding dress. Donna notices at the same time he does, her voice loud and shrieking at him.
“What did you do?!”
“Nothing! I don’t know anything!” Facing an accusation like that from Donna, those exact words would be coming out of the Doctor’s mouth regardless of whether they were true, purely in the interest of self-preservation. In this case he happens to be in earnest. “I woke up in a puddle of pancake syrup over there in booth ten. Where’d you get the dress?”
She scowls at him. “There’s no need to shout,” she mutters, even though he hadn’t been the one raising his voice. Of course, given the pounding at his temples and the fact that the soft hubbub of activity from the kitchen sounds like World War Three in his ears, Donna’s probably in as rough shape as he is. She plucks at the shiny taffeta skirt in bewilderment, still swaying a bit. “I don’t … I don’t remember.”
“Well when did we get here? We must’ve come for dinner and … gambling?” He squints at the entrance to the buffet, and at the flashing, glittering casino floor beyond.
“No. Not possible. I don’t gamble,” Donna replies, gingerly letting go of the salad bar and bringing a hand up to rub her forehead.
Her ring finger glints at the Doctor.
The pounding in his head stops as his heart skips a few beats, his blood frozen in his veins, his knees wobbling even more than the rainbow-colored jello on the salad bar beside them. Eyes wide, mouth hanging open, he reaches out for Donna’s hand, pulls it in between them.
“No.” It’s the only syllable he can manage, although there’s a far more colorful litany of words spinning through his head right now.
He knows that ring, down to the number of carats and the purity of the platinum setting and the price tag. He’s been carrying it around in his pocket for two weeks now, waiting for the perfect moment to present it to Rose. There have been several close calls: after a bottle of wine at Rose’s favorite restaurant in London; two in the morning, when he was already on his knees mopping Joanie’s spit-up and Rose got out of bed to help; during their last interview on Jack’s morning show; in the studio, when she played him the new song she’d written for their next album; every time she pins him down on the bed and does that thing with her tongue.
“You … are …kidding me.” Donna snatches her hand back from the Doctor, pulling off the ring and brandishing it in his face. She sucks in a deep breath, winding up for a good shout. “If you try selling me that line about not knowing anything one more time, I’m going to murder you. And let me make things very clear, Rock Boy: if this is your ring, and you’re the reason I’m in this dress, I’m going to murder youslowly!”
“That’s not your ring, it’s Rose’s,” the Doctor snaps, snatching it from her and fishing in his pocket for the ring box.
“Then why isn’tshethe one wearing it?”
“I hadn’t gotten around to the ‘asking her’ bit yet!” the Doctor says, his volume ratcheting up at the same pace as Donna’s. A few elderly patrons on the other side of the restaurant turn to stare. The Doctor pulls Donna to the far end of the salad bar, away from prying eyes. He crams the engagement ring in the box and tucks it safely back in his pocket.
Taking her by both shoulders, he leans down just enough to meet her gaze reassuringly. “Donna, trust me. There is a reasonable explanation for all of this. We can’t be married, Donna. We wouldn’t. Wearen’t. I’m not wearing a ring, see?”
The Doctor is, in fact, mistaken. On the ring finger of his left hand is a plastic thing, neon pink with a garish orange rubber jewel, the sort of prize kids get from a claw game at an arcade.
“I’m going to cut your heart out with a salad tong!” she howls, backing away from him.
“Bugger.” The Doctor drops into a crouch, tugging the plastic ring from his hand and pitching it across the restaurant (it lands in the vat of Bacon Bits) before he bows his head and buries his fingers in his hair, waiting for the death blow from Donna. Because dying now sounds a far sight better than facing Rose later. “Bloody Vegas.”
~~~~~
Some sort of argument has erupted in Mickey and Martha’s bedroom, finger-pointing and raised voices and who’s responsible for whom when they’re out drinking.
It’s too much for Rose’s head, making it throb and ache, and she only endures it for a few moments before staggering back out to the living room and collapsing on the sofa.
Jack follows her, sprawling wide across the cushions next to her.
“You gonna get dressed?” She says, raising the sunglasses and her eyebrows pointedly.
“Why? Afraid the Doctor will get jealous? Where is he anyway?”
The first two questions don’t merit a response, but that last question – it’s a good one.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe he’s in our room.”
She pushes up off the sofa and makes her way, as gently as possible, back down the hall, passing Mickey and Martha and the argument that’s thankfully devolved into quieter voices, and Martha wearing a top.
Opening the door to the room she and the Doctor were assigned, it’s clear no one’s slept there. The bed covers are slightly rumpled, but they did that together, before they’d even left for the evening, wrestling and kissing and filthy promises for later that clearly weren’t kept.
No, if the Doctor had even attempted to sleep here, everything would be untucked and it’s possible the sheet wouldn’t even still be on the bed.
“Not in here,” Rose calls, raising her voice and immediately regretting it.
“He’s not in my room either,” Jack says, sweeping up next to her in a way that makes her startle, which, in turn, makes her stomach roil. At least he’s clothed now.
There’d been no discussion of where Donna would sleep, but Rose had assumed she’d end up with Jack, which usually happened when those two got to drinking.
“Was Donna in there?”
Jack shakes his head. “Much to my regret, no.”
Rose chews on her lip. “I didn’t see them in the living room either.”
It’s starting to make her anxious, not that the Doctor and Donna can’t take care of themselves, but there’s such a gap in her memory, and it’s completely unsettling.
Jack shoulders by her to check the room’s closets and en suite, but they’re not there either.
She walks back out to the living room, checking every conceivable spot, as Jack does the same in the rest of the bedrooms.
A few minutes later, and she’s standing with Jack, Mickey, and Martha in the entryway to the room.
“Maybe they’re at breakfast?” Jack’s voice is unbothered and Rose tries to cling to that. If there were really a problem, Jack would be worried, too.
“Maybe,” Rose says. “Wait, I’ll just call him. Jack, you try Donna.”
All four mobiles are in a bowl on the the suite’s kitchen table, fruit strewn haphazardly beside it, and each of them fish out their own.
Rose dials the Doctor, smiling briefly as his grinning face takes over the screen, but it clicks immediatley over to voicemail.
“His phone’s off,” Rose says, looking to Jack.
“Donna’s, too.”
Rose’s stomach clenches again, demanding food. “Let’s go downstairs and get something to eat. We’ll ask the front desk if they’ve seen them.”
Everyone agrees, and they take the lift downstairs, Martha scowling at the reflection of her new tattoo in the mirror that lines the back of it.
“I can’t believe you got a tat–” Jack starts, but Rose steps on his foot, cutting him off. If that argument starts up again, in this confined space, Rose’s head is going to explode.
The lift dings and they exit out on to the casino floor.
“Lobby’s this way,” Mickey says, and they follow as he picks his way by the banks of slot machines.
There’s a massive queue at the front desk and they file in, watching adverts and Twitter streams play on the giant screens behind it.
Plenty of inanity scrolls by, obnoxious tweets from tourists, apparently “psyched” to be in Vegas, and Rose lets her eyes slip shut, taking a series of deep breaths to try and clear out her headache.
“Oh my god,” Martha gasps, and Rose’s eyes pop open, zeroing in on the main screen.
There’s a tweet from the Master’s Twitter account, usually a source of endless amusement for her and the Doctor, but this one – it’s not amusing at all. It’s horrifying.
“Look who I saw out on the town in #Vegas!”
And there, underneath it, is a picture of her, of Rose Marion Tyler, clinging to a stripper pole.
Mercifully, she is mostly dressed, although Jackie might have something to say about the height of those platform heels and the shortness of that sequined skirt, if she was here. It is most definitely not the skirt that Rose woke up wearing a few minutes ago, either.
Jack and Mickey’s heads tilt sideways as they track the picture scrolling across the screen.
“Rose, I had no idea you were so flexible,” Jack says brightly.
Martha punches his shoulder. “Not so shabby yourself, Jack. Look behind her.”
Rose squints at the screen as the picture slides into oblivion on the far end of the ticker — sure enough, in the shadows beyond the range of the flash, Jack Harkness is on the stripper pole next to her, wearing nothing but a thong and his body bent at a startling angle.
“My ass looked amazing!” he says, grinning cheekily. “Do you think we could get a better angle on that and use it for station promos?”
“Jack!” Rose hisses, snagging his arm with a tighter grip than is necessary and hauling him across the lobby, toward a potted plant and a little bit of privacy. Martha and Mickey follow, and they end up in a small circle beside a ficus tree.
“Right. Does anyone remember anything?”
A round of blank stares meet Rose.
“Room service brought the champagne, we stepped onto the balcony for a toast, and that’s it. That’s all I’ve got,” Martha says.
“Same,” Mickey echoes.
Jack shrugs. “I remember calling for a fourth bottle of champagne, but everything’s blank after that.”
“Mickey, let me have your mobile,” Martha says, holding out her hand. “You go ask if anyone at the front desk has seen the Doctor or Donna. We’ll see if we can ring them again, and see if any of us have any photos that might help us figure out what happened“All right, babe,” he says, depositing the device in her hand and walking away. Four little screens flicker to life, and Rose can’t tell if her nausea is because of the hangover, or dread.
~~~~~
“Get up.” Donna’s foot digs into the Doctor’s hip, more of a kick than a nudge. “Give me your mobile. We have to call the hotel.”
The Doctor slowly rises to his feet, obligingly digging in his pockets. The only things he finds are the ring box and a piece of paper, wadded into a tiny ball. “It’s gone,” he says, instinctively patting his back pockets too. “My wallet, my mobile, everything’s gone. Where’s yours?”
“I’m in a wedding dress; it doesn’t have pockets. Who has pockets? Have you ever seen a bride with pockets? Let’s go talk to the front desk, maybe they have a phone we can use.”
The nasally, exasperated tone of Donna’s voice is hitting precisely the wrong chord, jangling on his last nerve, the one that’s holding his sanity in place. The one that informs him exactly how bad an idea it is, calling the hotel, talking to Rose.
Maybe at some point last night, he’d had a moment of lucidity and he tried to hide some damning evidence of what they’d done – or stop himself from calling Rose and confessing everything – by pitching their mobiles into traffic on the Strip or throwing them into the fountain at Bellagio.
“No! No calls, we aren’t calling anyone. Not until we sort all of this” — he waves vaguely at the both of them — “out. I know exactly what we’re going to do.” He pauses, not particularly for dramatic effect (although she rolls her eyes at him), but to gather the words in his pounding head, to make sure they come out in the right order. “We’re having pancakes and coffee.”
“What about your wallet?” Donna says in a loud whisper, trailing behind him as he walks back to the booth he woke up in.
“I’ll think of something,” the Doctor replies.
Twenty minutes, a short stack of pancakes, and two cups of coffee later, things are looking up. The Doctor still can’t recall what happened last night, but his nausea is beginning to fade. Donna’s still unhappy, but she isn’t shouting.
“I was obviously not in my right mind when I picked this dress. Can you imagine me actually getting married — properly married — in a sweetheart neckline?”
“You look lovely,” the Doctor says absently, pulling out the ball of paper he’d found earlier in his pocket and painstakingly flattening it on the table, smoothing out the creases until he can read it.
It’s a marriage license. The signatures in the groom and bride spaces are completely illegible, but the name of the chapel is printed in a rounded handwriting at the bottom, along with the name “Henry van Statten” on the witness’s signature line.
The sight makes him go queasy again.
“We have to go here,” he says, pointing at the name of the chapel. “We have to go to The Love Bunker. They’ll sort this out.”
Just then, the waiter comes by with the coffee pot again. Topping off Donna’s mug, he asks, “Can I clear any of these plates for you?”
“I think we’re done,” the Doctor says.
“Will you be paying with cash or credit, or charging to your room?”
“Room charge,” Donna says before the Doctor can reply. “We’re in 1425.”
The waiter smiles, nodding toward Donna’s dress. “Not the honeymoon suite, then?”
“No,” they answer in unison.
They’re out of the restaurant in a hurry, but navigating the casino floor with a woman in a wedding dress proves to be a nightmare. Well-wishers stop them every ten feet, cooing out congratulations and compliments.
It’s an older crowd, too old to have been the demographic for even his first album, and he’s thankfully only recognized as “a lucky guy,” and not as the Doctor.
The bloke at the taxi stand recognizes him though, dashing across the line of cars in valet to retrieve his mobile and insist on a picture before securing them a ride. He takes the photo himself, arm stretched out in front of him as he crowds to get them both in the frame.
The Doctor catches a glimpse of himself in the phone’s screen and winces. Stubble on his jaw and bags under his eyes – he looksrough. He briefly considers cleaning himself up in the restroom before heading out for “The Love Bunker,” but Donna’s already got him by the arm, pulling him into the cab that’s finally been secured.
Donna barks out their destination, and the Doctor tips his head back to the seat, closing his eyes as the cab pulls into traffic.
~~~~~
The phones give away next to nothing.
Jack’s only got one picture on his, and it’s not anything Rose needed to see, ever. Jack crows about it, but ultimately admits he doesn’t remember taking it. Bunched up at the bottom of the frame, though, barely visible, are his pants, and it’s the pair he’d had on that morning. They’re Iron Man-printed, and apparently new, which means wherever the photo was taken, it’s somewhere they were last night.
Mickey’s phone contains a rapid-fire succession of Martha-getting-tattooed photos, the two of them smiling and laughing and kissing as the needle moves and her tattoo grows. There’s a logo visible on the wall in the background of some of them, and Rose instructs Jack to get on the internet and try and locate the shop.
Between Rose’s own phone and Martha’s, there’s a hazy progression of events, but nothing definable. Nightclub lights, stripper poles, colorful cocktails, it’s a mess of information. There are poker chips and roulette wheels, French-Canadian acrobats and Elvis impersonators, scantily clad men and scantily clad women, but hardly any clues as to where all these things happened.
Or why. Because Rose has been well pissed before, they all have, and it looked nothing like this.
There are some photos that they’re actually in, and there’s a point where Rose and Martha have both changed outfits, and then the Doctor and Donna stop appearing. Had they split up to get changed? It’s not anything either of them had packed, and not anything either of them are wearing now, and it presents more questions than it answers.
By the time they’ve gotten through all the photos, Mickey’s rejoining them.
“No one’s seen them,” Mickey says.
Jack taps his mobile a few times. “And their phones are still off.”
Rose sighs. Of course it couldn’t just beeasy. Why would it beeasy? “Did you find anything on the tattoo shop?”
Jack tilts his phone toward her. “There are three shops in town with a devil woman logo, it could be any of those.”
Rose is leaning in for a closer look when Martha’s hand begins tapping her shoulder rapidly.
“Look, look,” Martha says. “I found him.”
Rose wheels around, expecting to see the Doctor standing in front of her. Her eyes dart through the crowds on the ground, searching for him.
“No,” Martha says, pointing at the Twitter screens. “Up there again.”
It’s the Doctor’s face, looking haggard and vaguely green, next to a tan, young bloke who’s smiling widely.
“Rock star at work this morning! #Baller #ILoveMyJob”
“Well,” Jack says. “At least we know he’s alive.”
Rose scours the picture before it scrolls out of view, looking for any sign of where it was taken. The timestamp is recent, within the last twenty minutes — maybe the Doctor is still there.
Although why he hasn’t at least called to check in, Rose can’t imagine. Well, maybe she can, but she doesn’t particularly want to. Like the time they were on a tour stop in Tokyo, and the Doctor vanished for twenty-four hours without a word, only to reappear and sheepishly admit he’d bought a karaoke nightclub and a snow monkey rehabilitation center. Here in Vegas, where nearly everything and everyone is for sale, who knows what sort of trouble he’s gotten himself into.
“The Golden Nugget. Where is that?” she asks.
“Downtown,” Jack replies. “I’ll have the valet pull the rental car around.” He steps out the hotel door.
“Should we split up and cover more ground? Martha and me could follow up the tattoo shop lead, and you and Jack can go to the Chicken Nugget place, see if he’s still there?” Martha shoots Mickey a look, but for some reason he seems very excited by the idea.
“I suppose that couldn’t hurt,” Rose says. “You two take a cab, we’ll take the rental.”
“C’mon, babe,” Mickey says, his arm sliding around Martha’s shoulders before he hustles her away.
Rose stares after them for a minute before joining Jack outside at the valet stand. She finds him holding a set of keys and staring in utter confusion at an enormous red Ford F-350 truck, complete with chrome bumpers, flashing lights on top, and a seal on the door that reads “City of Las Vegas — Fire and Rescue” and underneath that, “Battalion Chief Canton Delaware.”
“I gave the valet my ticket, and he brought me this,” Jack says, eyes wide.
“Martha and Mickey are on the tattoo shop situation, we’re covering the Golden Nugget. Buckle up, Jack. We’ve got ground to cover.” With hardly a hitch in her step, Rose snatches the keys from his hands as she walks by, circling around to the driver’s side. If she lets every little thing faze her today, she’s never going to find the Doctor or figure out what happened last night, so she’s decided to roll with whatever comes their way.
Jack climbs into the truck beside her. With a turn of the key, the engine roars to life and she maneuvers the massive vehicle into traffic on the Strip. It occurs to her, two blocks later, that she has no idea where downtown Las Vegas actually is, or which direction she should be driving.
~~~~~
The Doctor dozes off in the cab, and wakes up to the sound of Donna arguing with the driver. He sits up, wiping drool away from the corner of his mouth and blinking. His headache has dwindled to a manageable level, but Donna’s agitation and the swaying motion of the cab on a bumpy road triggers the churning in his stomach again.
“I won’t be given the run-around, you’re legally obligated to take us the most direct route to our location, not haul us out to the middle of nowhere so you can squeeze more fare out of us!”
The Doctor had forgotten about paying for the cab — he’s fairly certain they can’t charge it to a random room, like they did their buffet breakfast.
“What is the name of your supervisor?”
“Lady, I’m telling you, the Love Bunker is here,” the driver retorts. “It’s an old missile silo, some nutjob bought it and converted it into a chapel-slash-bomb shelter-slash-museum.”
One glance out the window and it’s obvious they’ve left the city. They’re surrounded by rocky terrain, bluffs and buttes made of striated colors of stone. It’s beautiful, in an eerie and isolated way, like nature had created a massive layer cake in every shade of red and orange.
Out Donna’s window is a small concrete building with a round metal door. “That’s it?”
The driver twists further around in his seat to regard the Doctor. “That’s it, buddy. The fare’s forty-eight dollars and fifty cents.”
Donna’s head swivels and she stares at the Doctor, too. “I paid for breakfast,” she says. “Now it’s your turn.”