Third Breakfast

Of Time Lords And Sugar

Rory Williams has known for a very long time that he is the most normal person in the universe. In retrospect, his fiance Amelia might not have realized this immediately.   She might not have known until she saw him right up against the most un-normal person in the universe. He really wished that he could- as Amy put it- 'get over it', but he couldn't. He couldn't tell whether it was still just childish jealousy or still the lingering two-year-old shock that aliens existed and were trying to make him breakfast. Okay, so the last part had just come into play this morning.

The Doctor, on the whole, didn't seem to be a bad cook. After all, as Rory's father often insisted, the best cooks are the messiest. By that standard, the Doctor was a very fine cook indeed. No, Rory decided, it wasn't that he was messy, it was just that that messiness was a symptom of the far more serious ailment of being rather endearingly absent-minded. Sadly, that kind of absent-mindedness was rather less endearing after the Doctor had walked up to him, offered a spoon of something, and then immediately jerked it away, having very suddenly remembered that humans couldn't have hemlock.

At which point he had tasted it himself. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

"Shame." he'd murmured, and walked away.

Only twenty minutes, (and three dishes deemed unsafe for humans) later, the kitchen caught fire. Rory couldn't even remember how. It was like molecules in the air sensed the Doctor in the near vicinity and combusted.

The Doctor, though he seemed to pout just for an instant at the sight of his latest exploit catching fire, nevertheless plowed forward in his Grand Breakfast Plan.

"We could go to cafe instead, wouldn't that be wonderful?" he'd said, waltzing off to his favorite room in the titanic ship, the control room.

Rory was a tiny bit worried about what planet the cafe could possibly be on, but he figured that if it was made by someone who cooked for a living, it would be better than whatever the Doctor whipped up.

"So." he began. "This cafe..."

"Yes!" cried the Doctor. "The greatest cafe in the universe. Well, no. Not the greatest. Third greatest. Fourth greatest. Right after the one on Rax- well- if you count the one on Karn, they don't really have 'cafes' but the food is the same and they also have this other dish that you have really got to try-"

"Doctor." Rory tried.

"Just take us somewhere. It's nearly lunchtime anyway." Amy whined as she walked into the console room.

"Ah, but Pond, don't you see, that makes it brunch. Brunch is just like breakfast but nobody's tired."

"They would be if they were eating it while supervising you..." Interrupted Amy.

"Come, to the fourth-slash-fifth best cafe in the universe. I've taken loads of my friends before, it's practically an initiation ritual- I should have more of those, initiation rituals, there could be Jamie Dodgers and... AND MARMALADE. Pond, we should get an initiation ritual with marmalade!"

Rory was still trying to pinpoint the point in the conversation it had become about marmalade, but wasn't making any progress. Finally, as the Doctor rambled further on, the time machine shuddered to a stop and the Doctor ran out like a puppy that was being taken for a walk, uneasy skipping as he ran into the door and all.

The Doctor had successfully managed to park the TARDIS a good half a mile away from the cafe, but at this point Rory had learned to be glad the Doctor had managed to hit the right country and century at he same time and took the opportunity to enjoy the fresh Earth air instead of the air in the TARDIS, which always seemed a little off to him.