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"I go letting you live in sin under my own roof, and what do I get for it? More sin!"
"Well, isn't that just wizard! What happened to, 'Stay here as long as you like, look, we'll even renovate! Family belongs together!'?"
Pete Tyler sighed and gave up looking at the book he was ostensibly reading. Jackie and the Doctor could, between them, cut granite with their voices alone. Walls were no barrier; no sense pretending not to be listening anymore.
Rose's voice, lower in volume and less audible overall, rejoined the fray. It was a grand old three-way battle this morning.
Pete sighed again and considered the living room's two other occupants. Security was getting an earful, too, but they would take it in stride.
Little Tony, veteran of many family screaming matches, was lying on his stomach on the carpet, coloring studiously in his dinosaur book.
Jed Holbrook was pacing the floor like a cat in the proverbial roomful of rocking chairs, jumping and twitching every few seconds. He was clearly restraining himself, but not from fleeing -- from running headlong into the breach, more like. In Pete's view, that was the more impressive option. Anyone who was willing to get between Jackie Tyler and the object(s) of her displeasure had more balls than any six polo teams.
"They'll sort it out," Pete said aloud, aiming for a reassuring tone. "Believe it or not, this is fairly normal."
Jed turned wide, harried blue eyes on him, distracted.
"They yell a lot," Tony affirmed, with a long-suffering veteran's sigh. "Even if we aren't playin' Steeplechase inside." He continued coloring without a break.
"Just relax. It'll be over soon enough," Pete added. Steeplechase was Tony and the Doctor's favorite game. It involved the Doctor plunking Tony down onto his shoulders and running full-tilt in all directions. They'd been playing it in the house this morning; Pete wasn't sure if the nine-hundred-year-old alien was a bad influence on the five-year-old or the other way 'round. That wasn't the source of this particular argument, however.
"It's just . . . it's my fault," Jed said. "I should be there."
Pete snorted, turning his forgotten book over on his knee to mark the place. "You, my lad, are the innocent victim in all this so far as my wife is concerned. I wouldn't be so quick to give up that status if I were you."
Jed blinked at him, completely out of his depth.
"Jacks doesn't like surprises," Pete clarified. "She gets loud about them. But she loves Rose, and -- even though neither of them would admit it for anything -- she loves the Doctor, too. Add in that she likes you, and I don't forsee any real stumbling blocks. It's all over but the shouting, really."
A sudden crescendo of voices jerked Jed's attention away from Pete. The younger man's body language was eloquent with the barely-restrained urge to run to his . . . lovers' aid.
Pete's eyes narrowed with approval. He'd followed Rose and the Doctor's lead in regards to Jed, had sanctioned forging new identification papers and fast-tracked Torchwood's newest recruit through all the approval processes. The gamble seemed poised to pay off; Jed had been invaluable during the Nestene incident a few days ago, displaying a hard-edged, icy professionalism under fire.
But now, that same man was completely flummoxed by a simple domestic dispute; it had all started when Housekeeping, innocently enough, had asked Jackie whether they should make the additionally-requested towels to Rose and the Doctor's suite a standing order or not, oh, and by the way, nobody had been using the blue room for the last week and a half.
Jackie, being well able to add one and one and get three, hadn't needed more information to draw the correct conclusions.
Pete often wondered how he would have felt about his surprise daughter if he'd raised her from a baby, rather than meeting her as a mostly-grown, competent adult, and if maybe he'd have been more protective of her, more inclined to crack skulls when blokes showed up seeking her favors.
Even so, he thought, he'd like what he was seeing from Jed.
"I'm twenty-five-bleeding-years old!" Rose screamed, almost on cue.
"You're living under my roof!" was Jackie's immediate rejoinder.
Jed was twitching like a racehorse at the starting gate. Pete was about to say something reassuring when Tony cut in.
"What color is this one?" he asked Jed, pointing at an illustration of a Stegosaurus on a fresh page in his coloring book.
Jed, distracted, switched gears with admirable speed. "Huh?" He'd been Tony's hero for several days now, since he'd told the story of encountering a Tyrannosaur in person. He considered the black-and-white line illustration seriously, dropping down to the floor next to Tony with a graceful ease that spoke of much military training. "Oh, that one's from the Jurassic -- I was only in the Cretaceous. I don't know what color it was. Big animal like that, you can guess it was probably grey or brown."
Tony considered. "I like red," he declared, reaching for that crayon.
"Red's a good color," Jed responded, without the slightest trace of irony.
Rose knows what she's doing, Pete thought, giving up the last of his reservations.
That was also the point at which the din from the nearby room quieted -- indicating that the argument was entering genuine negotiation phase, as Pete had learned. A few minutes later, the living room door opened. Jacks was in the lead, followed up by Rose and the Doctor, all looking a bit pale and ruffled.
Jackie spoke first. "I'll talk to Housekeeping about those towels," she said, looking only at Pete.
A moment's beat, then Jed asked, rising from the floor in one trained movement, "Does this mean you can keep me?" His voice was joking and hopeful at once.
Pete saw Rose and the Doctor move to affirm that question, out of the corner of his eye, but then he had his arms full of Jackie.
"You're making the right choice," he said into her hair, breathing in the familiar scent of her, lost and then found again. "We always knew she wouldn't bring home your average bloke; she's just gone and found more than one . . ."
"Oh, hush," Jackie mumbled into his chest, deciding the matter for once and for all.