watch_is_me | RP Log: "Deck the Halls," for anyone whatsoever!

It's Christmas! Or close to Christmas! And given the terrible record he has with Christmases, the Doctor has decided to spend this Christmas in the TARDIS, right outside of the normal stream of time and space. This also ought to help Astrid get over her fear of Christmas, kind of ease her into the whole "you don't always die on the holidays" thing.

HOWEVER! Before he can zip the TARDIS out beyond time and space for a very merry unChristmas, it must be properly decorated. With EVERYTHING. Lights, and tinsel, and more lights, and more tinsel, and a tree, and holly, and boughs, and presents, and stockings, and nutcrackers, and there will be so much DECKING. The TARDIS will be DECKED OUT. Like woah.

And it's always more fun to decorate with friends. It makes things go quicker, and you can play in all the boxes and the wrapping paper and argue over where the ornaments should go.

SO! There's a Christmas decorating party in Ten's TARDIS and everyone's invited! Anyone he knows, anyone who he hasn't properly yet met but might wish to make his acquaintance or the acquaintance of anyone else who might show up, whatever. It'll be assumed he's parked it somewhere with some kind of mild Anti-Violence Field, so there'll be no chance of sabotaging the TARDIS or hurting anyone ~~too~~ badly while in it. ~~Unless of course fun plot happens, what with Masters and Brendan and such-like and then, hey, Christmas violence and season's greetings!~~

Threadjacking and hopping is go, unless folks lock threads; and threads can take place at different times, so characters can come back to the party more than once. AND. Folks can thread in any combination, even without Watch!Ten being involved. It's a party, the doors are open, mingling will happen, and he's a terrible, terrible host who may be in a back room ~~snogging Astrid~~ trying something clever with Christmas lights and Hallmark electric ornaments that might repair the Chameleon Circuit. Maybe. Possibly. Not.

The doors of the TARDIS are flung wide, open to the multiverse. It's the same old coral theme indoors, the look familiar to all Ninth and Tenth Doctors and their companions and acquaintances, warm golden light and the gratings over the floors, covering the workings of the TARDIS and the chests full of odds and ends.

But something’s a little different.

To one side of the console room, a fir tree, full and green and healthy, no bare spots, no tilt to its height, no branches out of place, a study in natural symmetry, extends its boughs. It hasn’t been cut; the Doctor’s thoughtfully grown its roots down into the TARDIS’ floor, giving it a place to live for the holiday; when the season’s over, he’ll take it home—it will live longer, much longer, than even a tree should live, and the TARDIS will retain a few of its slow, quiet, contemplative memories, memories of wakings and sleepings that last seasons and mist in the mornings and reaching towards high clear skies and the Doctor will share them through her—his strangest, most peaceful Christmas memories.

Its branches are bare, still—not even any lights. But all around the console room, in open chests and cardboard boxes and Tupperware containers and metal mixing bowls and velvet-lined caskets and lone file-cabinet drawers, ornaments lie in glittering heaps, ready to be hung. They’re from all eras and all planets—some of the objects might not even be Christmas ornaments proper, just glittery, beautiful odds and ends that caught his eye while he was going through the TARDIS. There are feathery birds with wires on their feet, Hallmark ornaments that sing, old glass balls from the 1950s, boxes of clinging silver tinsel, intricate blown-glass creations that look like they might break at a touch, ornaments made out of popsicle sticks and construction paper, doodads secular and religious and pop-cultural, hanging holograms from the 3010s, tree salamanders from New Noel in the Hallelujah Cluster, garlands and strings of lights that never burn out and anything, anything you could hope to find on a Christmas tree, it’s here, somewhere in the colorful chaos.

There’re food and drinks, too—a punch bowl in the corner and hot chocolate and eggnog and other concoctions mulled and spiced, warmly alcoholic or simple and straightforward, childhood memories recreated by someone who never had what most species would call a childhood and who’s learned what one should be from books and friends and a deep, unfulfillable desire for family, for home, for what Christmas represents. Milk and cookies, here, and boxes of chocolates, and cakes and puddings and candy canes—but only the real kind, the red-and-white kind, thick and homemade-looking, no plastic wrappers and a melting crunch when you bite into them.

The door at the back of the console room is open, and beyond it, so are the doors to many of the rooms. It’s Christmas, and he’s willing to trust. He wants to trust. Come in and look, and help make it ready for the holiday. There are more trees, here and there, and more ornaments ready to be hung, and food and drink standing waiting on tables and trays, the TARDIS playing waitstaff in its background, watchful way. He’s decorated for friends gone, too—the rooms of his past companions, those are already finished, adorned carefully, thoughtfully, with the decorations they liked best, even for those who’d never celebrated the holiday before they met him. Christmas for the dead, for Adric, and for those he left and never returned for, Sarah Jane, for all of them.

Christmas music plays throughout the TARDIS, quiet, none of this blaring mall-public-address-system aural assault—classics, David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing “Peace on Earth,” Frank Sinatra and more of Bing and “O Holy Night” and “Silent Night,” “Little Town of Bethlehem,” and “Silver Bells,” maybe some Trans-siberian Orchestra and Mannheim Steamroller. The Muppet Christmas Carol soundtrack. Everything warm and enveloping or sad and sweet, full of the silence of a snowy night and the birth of hope and the feel of a fire and of someone you love watching you, with that soft smile that says that you are precious and part of them and always welcome.

He’s in here somewhere, the Doctor, but whether you cross paths with him or not, the host’s message should be clear.

It’s Christmas. You’re welcome here. Peace on Earth and beyond, out into the stars, and goodwill towards everything that ever was and ever will be.

Celebrate, and remember, and rejoice.

And, above all, come on in and enjoy yourself! It's a party.

((Have a soundtrack, if you're a Pandora user [I think they're U.S. only :\]))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tingle-of-life.livejournal.com

God in heaven, she thinks, and backs into the TARDIS's rail. Christmas. She's good at forgetting about Christmas. She can pretend, when she's with Marian, that it's just another winter night, less solitary than most, with the soft sounds of something classical playing and the soft warmth of something sweet and alcoholic. An evening curled on the couch, presents for no reason. Marian doesn't decorate the living room, because she knows, knows the way Christmas music and Christmas decorations and Christmas in general tears through Ting in a way that few other things can.

This is why Ting goes back to New York for the holidays. She can hide with someone who understands, will the yuletide to pass without her, get on with life after spending another year in forcefully ignorant bliss.

It's not panic. Not yet. But she's fumbling for the door nonetheless.

From:

watch-is-me.livejournal.com

Well, this Ten has a knack for picking up friends who don't believe in Christmas. Astrid and Ting. He has his work cut out for him!

But, right at the moment, he has no idea he's going to have convince anyone but Astrid. So when he comes swinging through into the console room, from the hallways, sonic screwdriver held in his mouth because his hands are full of loops and loops of garlands—swathes of false pine needles, but late-2000s false, so they have the cool feel and forest smell of the real thing—he's simply pleased to see her.

"Thing!" Yes, he said that around the screwdriver.

Um, let's see, there's a little bit of space left on the console, okay, if he scoots this bowl of ornaments *just* a bit. There we go. The garlands are set down, and he retrieves the screwdriver, tucking it away in a pocket.