Work Text:
The Doctor arrived home from work much later than usual. It wasn't entirely unexpected. He had told Rose not to wait up. But he still couldn't help the guilt of sneaking in to their nearly dark flat past midnight and finding her on the couch.
She had fallen asleep with the lamp on and an empty mug of tea on the end table. Her laptop rested precariously between her bent knees and the couch cushions. The Doctor let out a soft sigh of contentment to see her so peaceful and dreaming happy dreams. Goodness knows they had both had enough nightmares to last them a lifetime.
He carefully picked up her laptop, intending to shut it and carry her to bed, but as he lifted it he hit a key, which turned off the screen saver. He caught sight of her screen and couldn't help his curiosity. It was one of the things Rose loved about him, he consoled his conscience. It wasn't like he was reading her diary or something, right? After all, he and Rose shared everything with each other. They were even building a bit of a telepathic bond, though it would never be as strong as it could have been had they been a fully Gallifreyan couple, married under the ancient ceremonial rites...
At that thought, the Doctor finally registered what he was scrolling through on Rose's laptop. Image after image sent his heart rate higher and his eyes wider. White dresses, diamond rings, cakes, decorations, flowers... Some images contained text like "101 tips for keeping a simple wedding simple" and "What every bride NEEDS to know." He swallowed and scrolled to the top of the page. There, in bold black letters, was the title "Rose+Doctor=Forever." Underneath, a padlock and smaller font reminded the viewer this was a "secret board," hidden so others wouldn't be able to view its "pins" or find it in search results.
"Board?" The Doctor thought. "What is a 'board'? And I suppose that makes these images the 'pins.' Why are they pins? And why does Rose have secret ones? Better question: why does Rose collect images of weddings?!?"
His brilliant mind finally caught up with his panic. There was only one reason a young female human in a committed relationship would have such a "board." He had centuries of experience with humans and was quite familiar with their societal behavior in the theoretical sense, but somehow he had never applied that construct to his Rose. She had always seemed... Different, somehow.
He glanced once more at her sleeping form. The way her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. The curve of her lips. The soft hands clutching the blanket she had cuddled up with while looking at these wedding-themed pictures.
Stupid, stupid Time Lord. Of course Rose wanted a wedding. And a human wedding, with her family and friends. Not the sneaky trip to another planet with a "surprise-we're-married!" wedding he had planned for when the TARDIS was fully grown. Some planets' couples just danced a waltz or sang a song or... He knew they could still do all that. But it wouldn't ever be the same for her as the traditions of her home culture, or as close as they could get to "home" in this universe. If these images were any indication, she had been thinking about this wedding for a while.
More than that, she wanted to marry him. This was no mere female recreational activity. This "board" had their names at the top.
He grinned manically at her with all the love in his heart. He wanted to marry her too, of course, but it honestly wouldn't change anything for them from a practical standpoint. They were already living like any other couple who had promised each other "forever" over and over again. The one thing that had almost led him to propose on more than one occasion was the lack of rings. Particularly a ring on her finger shining boldly to let other men know she was taken. Of course, everyone who knew them was well aware of their commitment and several of their coworkers helped her build a dimension cannon to reunite them across space and time. But there was always the drunk male at the pub. And it was a running joke between them to count how many times they would get hit on while traveling for work alone. His brow furrowed remembering some of her stories that weren't as funny to him as they were to her.
Yes, rings were a necessity.
Luckily, she had only a few on the board and they were similar in design. He committed them to his (luckily, still eidetic) memory. He was so excited at the prospect that he nearly leapt off the couch to head to the jewelry store right then. Until he remembered it was the middle of the night. His exhausted body sunk back into the couch. He was just about to close the laptop and begin planning a fantastic proposal when some of the text on the higher (more recent?) images caught his eye. These were different. Instead of practical wedding tips, these were focused on the marriage itself.
His excitement sunk to the pit of his stomach as he read the article title open in the next tab: "Be a Better Wife Today." He clicked over to read the list. They already did some of the more mild items for each other, but others disturbed him. Did Rose think she needed to do this stuff for him to get him to marry her? What if she was planning to prove to him how good of a wife she could be? But she was already a wonderful wife!
He considered rousing her just to reassure her she didn't need to read online lists to get him to propose, but reconsidered as that would reveal his current snooping. It was supposed to be a secret board, if the warning at the top meant anything, and it occurred to him that she might not be thrilled that he was invading her privacy like this.
He carefully clicked back to the website and squinted at the URL. Pinterest. Huh. So Rose had a secret wedding "board" with secret wedding "pins" on something called Pinterest. Perhaps that's what women did on Pinterest. Exchange domestic things like wedding images and to-do lists for their marriages. Hm. No matter how long he studied them and lived among them and shared life with them, he would never understand human females.
But there was one thing he was certain of no matter what: he would love this particular pink and yellow human until the day he died and beyond. Forever. And he would tell her in as many ways as she liked, including a proposal and a ring and a wedding and a marriage, if she wanted them.
He closed the laptop before setting it on the end table, turned off the lamp and gingerly removed the blanket from her grasp. He gathered her up in his arms and she stirred a little, enough to wrap her arms around his neck and nuzzle his shoulder. He kissed her forehead and carried her to their room, where he would tuck her in and spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling with one crucial part of his plan to marry her yet unresolved: how on earth was he going to dazzle this woman with a proposal without a functioning TARDIS? He eventually drifted off, dreaming first of supernovae and grand star clusters, then the beautiful planets of his travels, and finally, briefly, a garden of red grass and silver trees and a sense of home he only regained when he looked in her eyes.