(Doctor Who/White Collar) As deep as my lungs would let me for xover_exchange
Title: As deep as my lungs would let me
Author: auctorial
Fandoms: Doctor Who/White Collar
Characters: Amy, Rory, Mels, Eleven, The Face of Boe (sort of); Peter, Jones, Mozzie, Sally, Diana
Pairings: Amy/Rory, Amy/Rory/Neal, Mozzie/Sally
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 6170
Spoilers: No spoilers for White Collar, and through episode 7x07 of Doctor Who
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and White Collar belong to their respective creators
A/N: Thank you to aurilly for the beta! <3 Title comes from the song Marry The Sea, by Imaginary Cities.
Summary: Rory and Amy cross the Atlantic and embark on an adventure in an American university. Along the way, they encounter Amy's crazy roommate, Mels; Neal, an art student who's too handsome for his own good; a mysterious professor who's only ever called the Doctor, and more!
Rory was fifteen, and he was staring at Amy's ankles. It was pathetic and also sort of perverted from a Victorian standpoint, at least, but he couldn't help himself. She wasn't wearing socks, and the hem of her jeans had pulled up when she had sighed and flopped down on the bed, moments earlier.
Amy sighed again, dramatically, which was Rory's cue to pay attention. He straightened up from his position on the floor---as much as Amy said it was okay, there was no way he was risking being banned from the Pond house forever just because Amy's aunt happened to catch them sitting on the same bed together---and looked over at her, dutifully. He wished she would at least stop saying, "It's all right, she knows we're just friends," like it was a curse that would ensure Rory would only ever dream about kissing her. She smiled, a little quirk of her lips, and Rory's heart thumped hard in his chest. He started wondering if this was going to be the day he got up the courage to ask her out, when she said, "I've got to get out of here."
"What?" Rory said, despite himself, startled.
"I mean, it's all so boring here, isn't it? There's absolutely nothing to do. I'm going to leave as soon as I possibly can."
But what about me? Rory resisted the urge to ask. "But where will you go?" he said instead, trying not to sound desolate. "Back to Scotland?"
Amy thought about that for a moment. Her eyes were very serious, and Rory began to feel a little afraid. It was probably just a passing fancy, he thought. But Amy wasn't like the other girls he knew, who decided on one thing one moment and then changed their mind in the next. Once she got it in her head to do something, nothing could stop her. "No, not Scotland. I don't remember it really. I don't think it'd feel like home. Anyway, it's not far enough. It's not interesting enough. I think it'd have to be someplace like... America."
"America?" Rory said, dismayed. "But that's so far away."
"Exactly," Amy said, with great satisfaction. That decided, she swung her legs over the bed, her jeans falling back down around her ankles, covering them up again. "Come on," she said, moving like a whirlwind.
And Rory found himself stumbling up and hurrying after her without even knowing where they were going.
*
Three years later, Amy was flying over the Atlantic in an aeroplane. And because Rory was Rory, her best friend if not yet her boyfriend, who had followed her around all his life and would keep following her as long as she let him, he was sitting on that plane right next to her.
*
"You could have picked a less confusing university," Rory complained when Amy finally showed up at his dorm room two hours late, cheeks flushed, hair dripping, and trainers soaking wet.
"Sorry, Mels roped me into this revenge scheme---this boy was being a total arse to her, so we pushed him into the lake, and then he kind of dragged us in after him. Rory, it's still summer, why was it so cold? But I guess he has a sense of humour after all, and anyway, he apologised and all that, and Mels is maybe going out with him? So anyway, I went back to take a shower, and I just realised the time, and sorry, what were you saying?"
Mels was Amy's roommate and also from England, which had disappointed Amy initially, because she had been looking forward to the bona fide American experience, but they'd hit it off almost immediately. Her name was probably Melanie or something like it, but everyone just called her Mels. She was nice but also really loud and kind of flighty---at least that was Rory's impression of her. But at least she actually existed---Rory's own roommate had come and gone at least once, leaving behind neat stacks of boxes on the other side of the room, but Rory had yet to catch even a glimpse of the guy himself.
He didn't let it bother him. His roommate would have to come out of the woodwork eventually. He waved his course catalog at Amy, the pages fluttering as he did so. "Classes! Have you picked yours? How do you even pick?" He'd already complained about how the pavement always seemed too crowded, and the traffic too noisy, and how every time he crossed the street he felt like he was risking his life. Well, yeah, because this is a place where things actually happen! Amy had replied, which wasn't exactly the reassurance he was looking for.
But he didn't think university---or college, as everyone seemed to call it here---would be so hard before it even properly began.
"Oh, classes!" Amy said, like she hadn't given them much thought at all, like this wasn't their whole reason for being here. "Well, I dunno. Is there much of a choice? I guess we could get a blindfold and a pin..."
Rory groaned and resisted the urge to beat himself with the catalog over the head.
*
All incoming students had to take an introductory writing course, so that was one course down, three to go. Rory wrote down all of the courses that sounded interesting and/or useful, ended up with a list two pages long, agonised over his choices and wrote up several mock schedules, before finally settling on biology, maths, and Latin. Amy chose art history, astronomy, and anthropology.
"Are you sure you didn't pick those courses just because they were at the beginning of the course catalog?" Rory said, eyeing her list doubtfully.
Amy looked confused. "No? Why would you think - oh! Maybe I just happen to like the letter A."
So do I, Rory thought, but of course that was an infinitesimally stupid thing to say, so of course he didn't.
"Anyway, you're the one taking all the boring courses. Latin, maths."
"Latin's not boring!" Rory protested. "Why would Latin be boring?"
"It's a dead language," Amy said, with great finality.
*
Despite Amy's dire predictions, Rory loved Latin. It was all very systematic and easy to remember, steady and reliable. He'd taken to reciting declensions to himself for practice as he walked across campus, like some bizarre chant.
Maths, not so much. Americans apparently learned and taught maths differently, and also called all the things Rory was familiar with by different names, so he felt constantly stupid one way or another. He ended up getting into an argument with a guy two weeks in about the plurality of maths. "I don't see why you don't call them maths," he sputtered, finally. "There's all different sorts of maths, like algebra and geometry and so on. Anyway, it doesn't make sense that you call them sports when sport is all one thing, really."
The guy looked him up and down. His name was CJ, and he had a build that suggested he might have played American football in high school. "You don't play sports much, do you?"
Rory sighed and admitted defeat.
He'd at least seen his roommate by now, several times, but he was no closer to knowing anything else about him, including his name. They were all supposed to have name tags next to their doors - cheerful plastic signs with pictures next to them, that seemed more suited to a primary school classroom than a dorm full of 18-year-olds - but his roommate had possibly absconded with his when he'd dropped his boxes off, before Rory had even arrived. His roommate was a short kid with either really bad hair or a really bad wig. The last time Rory had seen him, he had looked twitchily over his shoulder the entire time, cast a long, suspicious look at Rory, then left after shouting, "Don't touch any of my stuff!"
Americans were weird.
*
Unlike Rory, Amy seemed to have no trouble making new friends. "Neal's in art history with me," she said one day when they met for lunch. "He's great! You'll like him. I'll bring him by tonight."
Rory hated him on first sight. Neal was everything that Rory wasn't - gorgeous and tall, with bright blue eyes and swoopy hair and a charming smile. Next to him, Rory looked like a weedy, overgrown rat. If Rory had ever had the slightest chance with Amy, he'd just lost it, he thought, staring at the way Amy was basically hanging all over Neal. He was so doomed.
"Nice to meet you," Neal said, smiling like he was enjoying himself.
"Same," Rory said coldly, and tried in vain to think of ways he could drive Neal off, before he stole Amy away for good. Problem was, Amy was the one you went to for all the really good ideas. Rory was the one you went to when you wanted someone to follow you around devotedly and hopelessly.
So Neal stuck around. Amy hardly ever came by alone any more; Neal was always with her. Even when he wasn't, he would show up a few minutes after her, or before her, like he had a sort of sixth sense for where Amy would be at all times. Except he didn't, because once he came by when Rory knew Amy had class.
"Er," Rory said, when he answered the door.
"Hi," Neal said, and sauntered in as easily and unstoppably as an unwanted stray cat. "So how are things?"
"Good?" Rory said. "I mean, I'm swamped in problem sets and lab write ups and exams to prepare for, but---"
"Yeah, tell me about it," Neal said, and laughed somewhat raggedly. He ran his fingers through his hair, which didn't ruin it at all, even though it had to be slicked up with a boatload of hair gel to stay like that. "Can't believe midterms are coming up already. Pretty soon it'll be finals. Blink and half the year is gone."
Rory shuddered. "Don't say that," he said in despair. If things were this bad right now, he didn't even want to think about how he was going to survive finals. "Amy's not here, by the way."
"I noticed," Neal said. He sat down on the roommate's bed. Rory wondered if he should tell Neal not to do that, but it wasn't even like his roommate used the bed, most of the time. "I can't come by just to see you?" He said this with a laughably pleading look on his face.
Rory suddenly realised that for whatever reason, Neal was trying really, really hard to get Rory to like him.
"Well, why not?" Rory said, and found himself grinning at Neal, not completely unwillingly, for the first time.
*
"So, about Neal," Rory said.
"Yeah?" Amy looked over at Rory impatiently when he didn't say anything more. "What about Neal?"
"Are you dating him?" Rory honestly didn't mean to sound so accusing, but that's how it came out anyway.
"What? You thought---" Amy laughed, like the very thought was absurd. "No, we're just friends," she said, in exactly the same tone she always used when she told people that she and Rory were just friends. "Anyway, he's not interested in me."
That was something Rory would have never expected in a million years.
"What?" he said, looking at her in aghast. What the hell was wrong with Neal?
*
Rory managed to survive his first wave of midterms, even though the going was somewhat rough. He and CJ came out of the maths (Rory was stubborn) classroom at nearly the same time, then looked at each other in utter despair. "I changed my mind," CJ said. "I'm not going to major in math after all. Pre-law is sounding better and better by the day."
"I thought this was going to be my easy class," Rory confessed. They both shook their heads in commiseration, then went their separate ways.
Cornu, cornu, cornus, cornu, cornu, he thought, as he trod back to his dorm room to just collapse for an hour or two and try to recover something from the ashes of burnt out braincells that used to be his brain. Mindless Latin was strangely comforting in times like these.
*
Registration came up again, and Rory was ready to tear his hair out over it. "Hey, don't stress," Neal said, and patted Rory on the back. He was a naturally tactile person, Rory had learned. He was also a naturally flirtatious person - he'd exchanged numbers with five separate people during lunchtimes, and that was just what Rory had seen. Who knew what he got up to when Rory wasn't around. "Picking classes is easy. We'll do it together."
So they all got together and spent an afternoon passing Rory's course catalog around---the others had lost theirs, or at least Amy had. Neal just said that something unfortunate had happened to his, and didn't elaborate.
All Rory knew was he was definitely taking Latin, and he should probably take biology and also chemistry as well.
"Are you pre-med?" Neal asked, and Amy looked over curiously.
"Well, I don't know," Rory said, uncomfortable beneath their piercing stares. He was pretty he wanted to have something to do with the healthcare industry, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to be a doctor or not. He especially wasn't sure if he wanted to be a doctor in America, because from what he'd heard from the upperclassmen, trying to become a doctor in the States was ten times more insane than it would be in the UK. And he thought Americans were supposed to be more laid-back, or something. "I'm just keeping my options open, I guess."
"Cool," Neal said, with a quick smile. "You guys should take criminology with me," he said. "I've heard of the professor, Burke? He's really good. He does a great lecture, even though he does make his students work really hard." Neal wrinkled his nose, like the concept was foreign to him. Maybe it was; Rory had never seen Neal crack a book.
Amy read out the course description. "That sounds like fun. Come on, Rory, are you in?"
"Well," Rory hedged.
"Come onnn," Neal warbled right into his ear. A second later he was plastered all over Rory, throwing an arm around him. "Take a class with us!"
"Fine, I'll take it," he relented, mostly to stop Neal from breathing down his neck. Both Neal and Amy beamed as he wrote it down in his notebook.
"Okay, seriously, An Introductory Class on Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff?" Amy snatched the course catalog away from Neal for a better look. "Who's even teaching this, anyway?"
Rory peeked over her shoulder. Under the course title, it just said: The Doctor. "Huh," he said. "They forgot to print the professor's name."
Neal shrugged, flipping a coin between his fingers. Rory was pretty sure Neal didn't have that earlier. He was also pretty sure that that coin came from his pocket, because it looked exactly like the two pence coin Rory had carried around in his pocket for luck ever since he found it the first week in his wallet among all of his new shiny American coins. "I heard it was pretty interesting. Also, the professor's hot."
"Ooh, okay, I'm in!" Amy decided, and jotted it down in her notebook.
"Wait, wait a second," Rory protested. "You can't decide your classes on which professors are the hottest!" He glared at Neal, who sometimes was just as bad as Mels, in terms of being flighty and a bad influence.
Neal looked totally unrepentant. "Well, that's done then. See, totally painless? See you tomorrow!" He tucked the coin back into Rory's pocket with a grin, then left to go to his own dorm, or more probably, someone else's dorm for a quick shag with someone gorgeous. It was so unfair. Neal had everyone at the school drooling over him, and Rory couldn't even get one girl to take an actual look at him.
One girl in particular, who was tossing her fiery hair and following Neal out.
Rory took another look at the catalog. "Wait," he said, spotting something else. "You're signing up for a class in The Universe! The department - it's called The Universe! You can't major in the universe!"
But it was too late, they were already gone.
*
All too soon, the term drew to an end, and finals passed in a stress-filled blur of sleep deprivation and too much coffee and too much cramming, until Rory could recite any future verb conjugation in Latin at the drop of a hat, but wasn't even sure of his own name. But it was finally all over, even the dreaded maths.
Rory and Amy flew back to England for the holidays. Rory hadn't missed home the whole time he'd been away, but strangely enough, once they landed and deplaned in Heathrow, and thrust back among the crowd of familiar accents, Rory suddenly couldn't wait to get home.
It was great for awhile, being back in his old familiar town and eating his mum's pies and not having to deal with people turning around to stare at him every time he opened his mouth to say anything. Then he started to notice the things that Amy had seen all along: everything was far too quiet, too familiar, too boring. By the time the long winter holiday was over, he was more than ready to go back to America and throw himself back into the excitement of university.
*
Intro to criminology turned out to be the best class Rory's ever had so far. Even more so than Latin, as much as it pained Rory to admit it. While Professor Boe still knew all his stuff, he was as old as the hills and was constantly nodding off, even in class, which didn't make for the most engaging lecture. But Professor Burke always had interesting stories to share from his time in the FBI, and everyone sat up in rapt attention even when he went over the material in the book, tackling it with a great deal of enthusiasm. By the time the first session was over, half the class had already declared they were changing their majors to Criminology. By the time add/drop period had past, the class had grown in size, despite the fairly heavy workload, and a Dr. Peter Burke fanclub had popped up in the list of student organisations.
Rory didn't find out till later that Neal was actually the one who had started it.
"He's hot," Neal said, like that was reason enough.
"Er," said Rory.
"I went to his office hours yesterday to ask stuff about the reading, and we got off on a tangent, and he ended up talking about white collar crime for an hour." Neal's eyes were starting to get a disturbingly glazed-over look. "An entire hour, all about stolen artwork, and master forgeries, and all the while I just wanted to---"
"All right, he's a good professor!" Rory cut in, his voice desperately high, because he really didn't want Neal to finish that sentence. "It doesn't mean I want to shag him!"
Neal sighed at him. "You," he said, jabbing a finger at Rory's chest, "are tragically blind."
*
The only reason Amy wasn't part of the Peter Burke fanclub, Rory suspected, was because she was obsessed with the Doctor (apparently not a misprint). She and Mels both, and they insisted that Rory walk them to class one day so he could check him out himself. "But why doesn't he have a name?" Rory wanted to know.
Amy shrugged. "He just doesn't," she said, like it wasn't important.
"He's a super genius," Mels said airily. "Geniuses don't need to have names."
"Right," Rory said. Just then, the Doctor walked by, into the classroom. He looked extremely young, almost like a student himself, except no student wore a suit with a bowtie. Apart from that, Rory didn't see what was so impressive about him, but he didn't even get to say so to Amy and Mels, who had flocked into the classroom after him, without even saying goodbye.
Rory wished he had more friends, so he could complain about how all of his other friends were madly in love with their professors.
Fortunately, Neal started having problems with The Universe, which stopped him from being disturbingly stalkerish about Professor Burke. Rory found him in the library one day, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand.
"I don't think that actually helps," Rory said, and Neal looked up at him in despair.
"Nothing helps!" Neal wailed. "I don't understand, I'm good at everything! Why is this so hard?"
Rory looked down at Neal's notes. It said things like 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey' and 'like a soap bubble with a smaller soap bubble attached, except NOT' and generally made no sense. "Are your notes supposed to say those things?"
"I don't know!" Neal groaned. "It makes perfect sense in class, but when I look at it now, it's all gibberish!"
"Clearly you and The Universe aren't cut out for each other," Rory said, patting Neal's shoulder consolingly.
*
Amy was doing brilliantly in Intro to Stuff. Neal was actually failing, for once in his life, despite all of Amy's tutoring. Rory was drowning in lab work: if it wasn't chem, it was bio, or if the universe (but not The Universe) really hated him, both. The usual rumours started running amok: that one of the thesis students set a Physics lab on fire; that next year all of the food in the cafeteria would be replaced by ice cream; that all of the ice cream in the cafeteria would be replaced by a salad bar; that Mels was sleeping with the Doctor.
It was around midterms, when Rory was convinced he was going to fail everything, because trying to memorise all of the chemistry formulas was leaving him so exhausted that he couldn't even remember half his Latin declensions any more, never mind conjugations, that he got this email:
From: ncaffrey
To: rwilliam
Amy says you're also kind of oblivious and I should be more direct. So here goes.
Rory gaped at his screen. "What?" he said. Running on four hours of sleep, five cups of coffee, and half-convinced he was hallucinating the whole thing, he closed his laptop and folded his arms over it, head drooping, intending only to get a few minutes sleep at most. By the time the next day rolled around and he awoke in a panic, with a terrible crick in his neck, he'd forgotten all about the email.
*
Rory was minding his own business and contemplating a shelf full of chemistry encyclopaedias when someone cleared their throat right behind him. He tried not to shriek like a girl and die of a heart attack, because that sort of thing was probably frowned upon in the library stacks. Even if it was just the science library.
He turned around, heart pounding. It was Neal, looking as tired as Rory felt, only worse, because Neal never looked this tired, ever. He had lost the manic gleam in his eyes, and his hair looked despondent and flat, and there was a day's worth of stubble creeping down his jaw.
"So," Neal said softly, then stepped forwards and kissed him.
Rory blamed sleep deprivation on the fact that he just stood there and kissed Neal back. Neal was tilting Rory's head up and pressing him against the stacks, and it felt like the weirdest thing Rory had ever done. On the other hand, Neal was warm and solid, and he kissed like he was in charge, which was different from any of the girls Rory had ever been with, and he smelled kind of like---
"Oh," Rory said when Neal stepped back just as suddenly, while he was still trying to pinpoint what it was Neal smelled like.
"Oh," Neal said, sounding sharply disappointed.
Rory blinked and met Neal's eyes. "I---" he said. "What was---?"
"You're in love with Amy," said Neal, and as much as that was true, Rory's never heard anyone say it out loud like that before, nor would he have imagined it being said with such finality.
"Well," Rory said, still desperately trying to make sense of all this and coming up with nothing. "Yes. But it's not like she'd ever look at---"
Neal snorted.
"What?" Rory said.
"It's not that she doesn't want you," Neal said. "But she thinks you're gay."
"What?" Rory said.
*
"Right," Rory told his reflection. He wasn't as scrawny as he had been when he was fifteen, thank god, but he still looked kind of like a rat, and his hair was a mess. He had no idea what Neal saw in him that made Neal want to kiss him, but then again, he had no idea what Neal saw in Professor Burke either, so maybe that was okay.
He tried to imagine himself sending Amy a ridiculous e-card, then just marching over to wherever she was and snogging the living daylights out of her. He couldn't imagine it, mostly because he suspected he didn't have the guts.
He ended up standing in front of her door, with no idea what he was going to say.
"Hey," Amy said, looking as beautiful as ever, even with dark bags under her eyes and wearing baggy sweatpants instead of the almost scandalously short skirts she usually wore. Fortunately, Mels wasn't in, and Rory followed Amy into the room.
"So," Amy said, looking back at him quizzically, and that was his cue, Rory thought. To just step in and kiss her. Dead easy.
"Do you want to go to Drag Ball with me?" Rory blurted out.
"Yeah, sure," Amy said, grinning. "And we can ask Neal and Mels if---"
"No!" Rory said. Amy looked shocked and somewhat worried at the sudden outburst. "I mean, yes, we can. But I mean, I was asking you as… I'm not gay!"
This just made Amy look even more confused. "Yes, you are!"
"No, I'm not!"
"You are! Tell me, since when have you ever looked at a girl for more than---" Amy suddenly stopped, eyes wide, staring at Rory like she'd never seen him before. "Oh. Oh my god."
"I want you to go with me as my date," Rory said quickly. "And I want you to be my girlfri---mmph!" And then Amy was tackling Rory and kissing him, which was just as well, because Rory was pretty sure the next words out of his mouth were going to be forever, and also, marry me, and even though he's known her for practically his entire life, there was still such a thing as being too creepy.
*
A week later, Rory came back from bio lab to this tacked to his door:
He couldn't stop grinning for the rest of the day. That night, he was propped up on his bed, finishing up some reading on organised crimes, and thinking about ringing Amy, even though he just saw her two hours ago, when he heard his roommate's girlfriend outside the door.
"Wow, you're kind of a player," Sally said, and how sad was it that he knew his roommate's girlfriend's name but still didn't know his roommate's?
"That's not mine!" his roommate protested violently. "You know it's not!"
"Well," Sally said. "Okay." Then - was that the sound of kissing? The door was opening, and okay, that was definitely kissing, way too much kissing, and---
"Oh," his roommate said. "I didn't think you'd be here."
"Why wouldn't - never mind. Right. I'm going to get out of here," Rory said, and fled, still clutching his criminology textbook like a shield.
"I can't believe my roommate just sexiled ," he was complaining five minutes later. "He's never even here, and I don't even know his name!"
"Right," Amy said, laughing at him. "Well, I have it on good authority that Mels won't be back all night, so..."
"Oh," Rory said. Then, "Oh!" He was across the room so fast that he tripped on three separate things in the process, and it wasn't like their room was even all that messy, and now Amy was definitely laughing at him, a lot, but Rory didn't even care, because suddenly everything was brilliant and amazing.
*
Things with Neal were strangely not weird. Rory had tried to apologise, fumblingly, but Neal just shrugged it off like it was no big deal. "S'all right," he said, slapping Rory on the shoulder like the thing in the science library had never happened. "You're pretty, but I'm not heartbroken about it."
"Okay," Rory said cautiously. Neal thought he was pretty? "Good."
They all ended up going to Drag Ball together. Amy dressed Rory up in one of her skirts and made him shave his legs and put eyeliner on him, which didn't turn out as ridiculous as Rory had feared it would. Neal was wearing a long, slinky dress and a corset that gave him an actual bust. Rory hardly even recognised him, and couldn't stop staring. This would be an actual problem, except both Amy and Mels were wearing tuxedos, James Bond style, and once Rory caught sight of Amy, he couldn't tear his eyes away from her.
The music was loud and campy, and Amy and Rory danced together until Mels stepped between them and made both of them dance with her before flitting off somewhere else. Thoroughly exhausted, they paused and watched Neal try to chat up one of the girls in their criminology class, Diana. She was wearing a sharp suit and a hat, and Rory was pretty sure she was a lesbian.
Amy nudged him in the ribs. "Should we go rescue him?"
Rory thought about it. "I think we'd better."
So they went over and roped Neal into dancing with them, and by the end of the night they were all laughing and exhilarated, and Rory almost wondered why Neal wasn't coming with them when they were racing each other back to the dorms, to bed but not to sleep.
*
That time of the semester was coming up yet again, but before Rory could think about what classes he wanted to take, he had another dilemma at hand.
Fortunately, his roommate made an actual appearance this week, coming in and pocketing a flash drive (objects he had taken in the past: a table lamp, two bookends, an ostrich paperweight) and then making ready to dash out again, when Rory said, "Hey, wait!"
The other boy froze in surprise, maybe because Rory had never addressed him directly before.
"Do you want to be roommates next year?"
"Okay," his roommate said noncommittally.
"Okay, great! Er, what's your name?"
"You can call me Mozzie," he said, and then was gone again, but still. That was the most conversation that they'd had all year. Rory almost felt like doing a victory dance.
He looked Mozzie up in the school directory, because he needed an actual name to put on the housing form, and in the end, came up with one result:
Dante Mozart Havisham
"Jesus," Rory muttered. With a name like 'Dante Mozart', Rory didn't blame the guy at all for stealing his name tag at the beginning of the year and going by Mozzie.
*
Things with Amy were better than all of the fantasies Rory's ever had, which was saying a lot, considering all of the fantasies he'd come up with over the years. The thing was, she was his best friend and knew absolutely everything important about him; none of that had changed. Only now he could kiss her anytime he wanted, and more often than not, she would kiss him and climb on top of him, and distract him from revising for a good hour or two or three. They went out on dates for no reason at all, walking by the lake in the moonlight, going out to the fanciest restaurants they could afford (which wasn't saying much), working together in the library, just the two of them, side by side.
It was everything Rory had ever hoped for, and more. So he didn't understand why he felt the niggling sensation that something was missing.
"---homework," Professor Burke was saying, and Rory jerked to attention and wrote the homework down. "Mr. Caffrey, a word after class, if you please."
Rory thought he maybe imagined the flash of panic he saw on Neal's face, because he looked perfectly collected in the next moment. "What's going on?" Amy said lowly, her voice masked by a hundred students getting up and leaving, but Neal just shrugged and gathered up his things.
"It's probably nothing. Better not keep him waiting, right?"
Rory and Amy exchanged looks. They were the last to leave the classroom, dragging their feet and looking down the hall, where Burke's office was. "Something's going on," Amy said.
"Maybe he found out Neal was the founder of his creepy fanclub?" Rory suggested, uneasily.
Amy just shook her head. "We should wait for him."
They stood in the hallway by the entrance, and Rory was suddenly reminded of the way he and Amy would wait around for each other at school in Leadsworth. "You don't think it's a sex thing?" Rory said suddenly.
"Burke's married," Amy pointed out. "Anyway, if it were, he wouldn't call Neal out like that. It's way too obvious."
"True."
They waited for nearly an hour when Neal finally appeared. His hair was a mess, and he looked startled to see them both, wide-eyed and spooked, like he was about to start running. But when they caught his arms in theirs and marched him outside, he relaxed a little and went along with them.
They were almost to Rory's dorm when Amy asked again. "What's going on?"
Neal shook his head in bewilderment. "Peter's giving me a job, over the summer," he said. "And he's making me apply for college."
"But you're already---" Rory started, and stopped when Amy gave him a look.
"He found out that I'm not actually registered here," Neal said.
Amy snorted and elbowed him in the ribs, jostling him up against Rory. "Smooth, Caffrey. You cosy up to a criminology professor and expect him not to find out all your deep, dark secrets?"
Rory laughed, and soon after, Neal joined in, all of his tension dissipating on the spry spring wind. "Well, when you put it that way," Neal said, and he was carefree and happy again, just the way they liked him.
*
"Rory," Amy said. She was biting her lip and looking more uncertain than Rory's ever seen her before. "You know I love you, right?"
"Yes," Rory said, because she'd been saying it to him long before they ever started this. "I love you too."
Amy's lips curved into a smile, so pleased, like she could have had any doubts as to otherwise. Then she was serious again, very serious, and Rory found himself holding his breath in anticipation, for the next big thing that would turn their lives upside down again. "So I hate to say this, but it feels like we're missing---"
"Missing something," Rory finished, and Amy nodded.
"I mean, we don't need it; I don't need anyone but you," Amy said in a rush. "It's just that, sometimes---and I feel guilty for wanting more, because you're it for me, seriously, Rory, but sometimes I think we could have it, and it wouldn't be hurting anyone, and we'd feel more complete. But it's not that---"
"No, I get it," Rory said slowly. "We're talking about Neal, right?"
Amy nodded, fatefully and hopefully, and Rory made up his mind.
"We may not need him, but I think he might need us."
"Yes," Amy said.
"We'll talk about it," Rory said. "We'll talk about it some more, and then we'll ask him," only not tonight, because it was growing late, and Amy's smile was dawning, and Rory wanted to kiss every inch of it before he fell asleep and had to face chemistry lab yet again.
"Yes," Amy murmured much later, when they were both sated and curled up sleepily together.
Rory nuzzled the dip of her collarbone then dragged his mouth across it, leaving one last kiss there. "Soon," he promised Amy, promised Neal, and fell asleep and dreamt about Neal's brilliant blue eyes, and Neal's artist's hands dragging down his body and entangling in Amy's red hair.
Soon.
*
Coda
From: rwilliam
To: ncaffrey
CC: apond
Returning the favour...
From: ncaffrey
To: rwilliam
CC: apond
Is this an experimental sort of thing? Or something more?
From: apond
To: ncaffrey
CC: rwilliam
It's a be our boyfriend sort of thing.
From: ncaffrey
To: apond
CC: rwilliam
Seriously???
From: rwilliam
To: ncaffrey
CC: apond
YES.
From: ncaffrey
To: rwilliam
From: rwilliam
To: ncaffrey
Oh, stop being so smug about it.
-END-
Author: auctorial
Fandoms: Doctor Who/White Collar
Characters: Amy, Rory, Mels, Eleven, The Face of Boe (sort of); Peter, Jones, Mozzie, Sally, Diana
Pairings: Amy/Rory, Amy/Rory/Neal, Mozzie/Sally
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 6170
Spoilers: No spoilers for White Collar, and through episode 7x07 of Doctor Who
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and White Collar belong to their respective creators
A/N: Thank you to aurilly for the beta! <3 Title comes from the song Marry The Sea, by Imaginary Cities.
Summary: Rory and Amy cross the Atlantic and embark on an adventure in an American university. Along the way, they encounter Amy's crazy roommate, Mels; Neal, an art student who's too handsome for his own good; a mysterious professor who's only ever called the Doctor, and more!
Rory was fifteen, and he was staring at Amy's ankles. It was pathetic and also sort of perverted from a Victorian standpoint, at least, but he couldn't help himself. She wasn't wearing socks, and the hem of her jeans had pulled up when she had sighed and flopped down on the bed, moments earlier.
Amy sighed again, dramatically, which was Rory's cue to pay attention. He straightened up from his position on the floor---as much as Amy said it was okay, there was no way he was risking being banned from the Pond house forever just because Amy's aunt happened to catch them sitting on the same bed together---and looked over at her, dutifully. He wished she would at least stop saying, "It's all right, she knows we're just friends," like it was a curse that would ensure Rory would only ever dream about kissing her. She smiled, a little quirk of her lips, and Rory's heart thumped hard in his chest. He started wondering if this was going to be the day he got up the courage to ask her out, when she said, "I've got to get out of here."
"What?" Rory said, despite himself, startled.
"I mean, it's all so boring here, isn't it? There's absolutely nothing to do. I'm going to leave as soon as I possibly can."
But what about me? Rory resisted the urge to ask. "But where will you go?" he said instead, trying not to sound desolate. "Back to Scotland?"
Amy thought about that for a moment. Her eyes were very serious, and Rory began to feel a little afraid. It was probably just a passing fancy, he thought. But Amy wasn't like the other girls he knew, who decided on one thing one moment and then changed their mind in the next. Once she got it in her head to do something, nothing could stop her. "No, not Scotland. I don't remember it really. I don't think it'd feel like home. Anyway, it's not far enough. It's not interesting enough. I think it'd have to be someplace like... America."
"America?" Rory said, dismayed. "But that's so far away."
"Exactly," Amy said, with great satisfaction. That decided, she swung her legs over the bed, her jeans falling back down around her ankles, covering them up again. "Come on," she said, moving like a whirlwind.
And Rory found himself stumbling up and hurrying after her without even knowing where they were going.
*
Three years later, Amy was flying over the Atlantic in an aeroplane. And because Rory was Rory, her best friend if not yet her boyfriend, who had followed her around all his life and would keep following her as long as she let him, he was sitting on that plane right next to her.
*
"You could have picked a less confusing university," Rory complained when Amy finally showed up at his dorm room two hours late, cheeks flushed, hair dripping, and trainers soaking wet.
"Sorry, Mels roped me into this revenge scheme---this boy was being a total arse to her, so we pushed him into the lake, and then he kind of dragged us in after him. Rory, it's still summer, why was it so cold? But I guess he has a sense of humour after all, and anyway, he apologised and all that, and Mels is maybe going out with him? So anyway, I went back to take a shower, and I just realised the time, and sorry, what were you saying?"
Mels was Amy's roommate and also from England, which had disappointed Amy initially, because she had been looking forward to the bona fide American experience, but they'd hit it off almost immediately. Her name was probably Melanie or something like it, but everyone just called her Mels. She was nice but also really loud and kind of flighty---at least that was Rory's impression of her. But at least she actually existed---Rory's own roommate had come and gone at least once, leaving behind neat stacks of boxes on the other side of the room, but Rory had yet to catch even a glimpse of the guy himself.
He didn't let it bother him. His roommate would have to come out of the woodwork eventually. He waved his course catalog at Amy, the pages fluttering as he did so. "Classes! Have you picked yours? How do you even pick?" He'd already complained about how the pavement always seemed too crowded, and the traffic too noisy, and how every time he crossed the street he felt like he was risking his life. Well, yeah, because this is a place where things actually happen! Amy had replied, which wasn't exactly the reassurance he was looking for.
But he didn't think university---or college, as everyone seemed to call it here---would be so hard before it even properly began.
"Oh, classes!" Amy said, like she hadn't given them much thought at all, like this wasn't their whole reason for being here. "Well, I dunno. Is there much of a choice? I guess we could get a blindfold and a pin..."
Rory groaned and resisted the urge to beat himself with the catalog over the head.
*
All incoming students had to take an introductory writing course, so that was one course down, three to go. Rory wrote down all of the courses that sounded interesting and/or useful, ended up with a list two pages long, agonised over his choices and wrote up several mock schedules, before finally settling on biology, maths, and Latin. Amy chose art history, astronomy, and anthropology.
"Are you sure you didn't pick those courses just because they were at the beginning of the course catalog?" Rory said, eyeing her list doubtfully.
Amy looked confused. "No? Why would you think - oh! Maybe I just happen to like the letter A."
So do I, Rory thought, but of course that was an infinitesimally stupid thing to say, so of course he didn't.
"Anyway, you're the one taking all the boring courses. Latin, maths."
"Latin's not boring!" Rory protested. "Why would Latin be boring?"
"It's a dead language," Amy said, with great finality.
*
Despite Amy's dire predictions, Rory loved Latin. It was all very systematic and easy to remember, steady and reliable. He'd taken to reciting declensions to himself for practice as he walked across campus, like some bizarre chant.
Maths, not so much. Americans apparently learned and taught maths differently, and also called all the things Rory was familiar with by different names, so he felt constantly stupid one way or another. He ended up getting into an argument with a guy two weeks in about the plurality of maths. "I don't see why you don't call them maths," he sputtered, finally. "There's all different sorts of maths, like algebra and geometry and so on. Anyway, it doesn't make sense that you call them sports when sport is all one thing, really."
The guy looked him up and down. His name was CJ, and he had a build that suggested he might have played American football in high school. "You don't play sports much, do you?"
Rory sighed and admitted defeat.
He'd at least seen his roommate by now, several times, but he was no closer to knowing anything else about him, including his name. They were all supposed to have name tags next to their doors - cheerful plastic signs with pictures next to them, that seemed more suited to a primary school classroom than a dorm full of 18-year-olds - but his roommate had possibly absconded with his when he'd dropped his boxes off, before Rory had even arrived. His roommate was a short kid with either really bad hair or a really bad wig. The last time Rory had seen him, he had looked twitchily over his shoulder the entire time, cast a long, suspicious look at Rory, then left after shouting, "Don't touch any of my stuff!"
Americans were weird.
*
Unlike Rory, Amy seemed to have no trouble making new friends. "Neal's in art history with me," she said one day when they met for lunch. "He's great! You'll like him. I'll bring him by tonight."
Rory hated him on first sight. Neal was everything that Rory wasn't - gorgeous and tall, with bright blue eyes and swoopy hair and a charming smile. Next to him, Rory looked like a weedy, overgrown rat. If Rory had ever had the slightest chance with Amy, he'd just lost it, he thought, staring at the way Amy was basically hanging all over Neal. He was so doomed.
"Nice to meet you," Neal said, smiling like he was enjoying himself.
"Same," Rory said coldly, and tried in vain to think of ways he could drive Neal off, before he stole Amy away for good. Problem was, Amy was the one you went to for all the really good ideas. Rory was the one you went to when you wanted someone to follow you around devotedly and hopelessly.
So Neal stuck around. Amy hardly ever came by alone any more; Neal was always with her. Even when he wasn't, he would show up a few minutes after her, or before her, like he had a sort of sixth sense for where Amy would be at all times. Except he didn't, because once he came by when Rory knew Amy had class.
"Er," Rory said, when he answered the door.
"Hi," Neal said, and sauntered in as easily and unstoppably as an unwanted stray cat. "So how are things?"
"Good?" Rory said. "I mean, I'm swamped in problem sets and lab write ups and exams to prepare for, but---"
"Yeah, tell me about it," Neal said, and laughed somewhat raggedly. He ran his fingers through his hair, which didn't ruin it at all, even though it had to be slicked up with a boatload of hair gel to stay like that. "Can't believe midterms are coming up already. Pretty soon it'll be finals. Blink and half the year is gone."
Rory shuddered. "Don't say that," he said in despair. If things were this bad right now, he didn't even want to think about how he was going to survive finals. "Amy's not here, by the way."
"I noticed," Neal said. He sat down on the roommate's bed. Rory wondered if he should tell Neal not to do that, but it wasn't even like his roommate used the bed, most of the time. "I can't come by just to see you?" He said this with a laughably pleading look on his face.
Rory suddenly realised that for whatever reason, Neal was trying really, really hard to get Rory to like him.
"Well, why not?" Rory said, and found himself grinning at Neal, not completely unwillingly, for the first time.
*
"So, about Neal," Rory said.
"Yeah?" Amy looked over at Rory impatiently when he didn't say anything more. "What about Neal?"
"Are you dating him?" Rory honestly didn't mean to sound so accusing, but that's how it came out anyway.
"What? You thought---" Amy laughed, like the very thought was absurd. "No, we're just friends," she said, in exactly the same tone she always used when she told people that she and Rory were just friends. "Anyway, he's not interested in me."
That was something Rory would have never expected in a million years.
"What?" he said, looking at her in aghast. What the hell was wrong with Neal?
*
Rory managed to survive his first wave of midterms, even though the going was somewhat rough. He and CJ came out of the maths (Rory was stubborn) classroom at nearly the same time, then looked at each other in utter despair. "I changed my mind," CJ said. "I'm not going to major in math after all. Pre-law is sounding better and better by the day."
"I thought this was going to be my easy class," Rory confessed. They both shook their heads in commiseration, then went their separate ways.
Cornu, cornu, cornus, cornu, cornu, he thought, as he trod back to his dorm room to just collapse for an hour or two and try to recover something from the ashes of burnt out braincells that used to be his brain. Mindless Latin was strangely comforting in times like these.
*
Registration came up again, and Rory was ready to tear his hair out over it. "Hey, don't stress," Neal said, and patted Rory on the back. He was a naturally tactile person, Rory had learned. He was also a naturally flirtatious person - he'd exchanged numbers with five separate people during lunchtimes, and that was just what Rory had seen. Who knew what he got up to when Rory wasn't around. "Picking classes is easy. We'll do it together."
So they all got together and spent an afternoon passing Rory's course catalog around---the others had lost theirs, or at least Amy had. Neal just said that something unfortunate had happened to his, and didn't elaborate.
All Rory knew was he was definitely taking Latin, and he should probably take biology and also chemistry as well.
"Are you pre-med?" Neal asked, and Amy looked over curiously.
"Well, I don't know," Rory said, uncomfortable beneath their piercing stares. He was pretty he wanted to have something to do with the healthcare industry, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to be a doctor or not. He especially wasn't sure if he wanted to be a doctor in America, because from what he'd heard from the upperclassmen, trying to become a doctor in the States was ten times more insane than it would be in the UK. And he thought Americans were supposed to be more laid-back, or something. "I'm just keeping my options open, I guess."
"Cool," Neal said, with a quick smile. "You guys should take criminology with me," he said. "I've heard of the professor, Burke? He's really good. He does a great lecture, even though he does make his students work really hard." Neal wrinkled his nose, like the concept was foreign to him. Maybe it was; Rory had never seen Neal crack a book.
Amy read out the course description. "That sounds like fun. Come on, Rory, are you in?"
"Well," Rory hedged.
"Come onnn," Neal warbled right into his ear. A second later he was plastered all over Rory, throwing an arm around him. "Take a class with us!"
"Fine, I'll take it," he relented, mostly to stop Neal from breathing down his neck. Both Neal and Amy beamed as he wrote it down in his notebook.
"Okay, seriously, An Introductory Class on Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff?" Amy snatched the course catalog away from Neal for a better look. "Who's even teaching this, anyway?"
Rory peeked over her shoulder. Under the course title, it just said: The Doctor. "Huh," he said. "They forgot to print the professor's name."
Neal shrugged, flipping a coin between his fingers. Rory was pretty sure Neal didn't have that earlier. He was also pretty sure that that coin came from his pocket, because it looked exactly like the two pence coin Rory had carried around in his pocket for luck ever since he found it the first week in his wallet among all of his new shiny American coins. "I heard it was pretty interesting. Also, the professor's hot."
"Ooh, okay, I'm in!" Amy decided, and jotted it down in her notebook.
"Wait, wait a second," Rory protested. "You can't decide your classes on which professors are the hottest!" He glared at Neal, who sometimes was just as bad as Mels, in terms of being flighty and a bad influence.
Neal looked totally unrepentant. "Well, that's done then. See, totally painless? See you tomorrow!" He tucked the coin back into Rory's pocket with a grin, then left to go to his own dorm, or more probably, someone else's dorm for a quick shag with someone gorgeous. It was so unfair. Neal had everyone at the school drooling over him, and Rory couldn't even get one girl to take an actual look at him.
One girl in particular, who was tossing her fiery hair and following Neal out.
Rory took another look at the catalog. "Wait," he said, spotting something else. "You're signing up for a class in The Universe! The department - it's called The Universe! You can't major in the universe!"
But it was too late, they were already gone.
*
All too soon, the term drew to an end, and finals passed in a stress-filled blur of sleep deprivation and too much coffee and too much cramming, until Rory could recite any future verb conjugation in Latin at the drop of a hat, but wasn't even sure of his own name. But it was finally all over, even the dreaded maths.
Rory and Amy flew back to England for the holidays. Rory hadn't missed home the whole time he'd been away, but strangely enough, once they landed and deplaned in Heathrow, and thrust back among the crowd of familiar accents, Rory suddenly couldn't wait to get home.
It was great for awhile, being back in his old familiar town and eating his mum's pies and not having to deal with people turning around to stare at him every time he opened his mouth to say anything. Then he started to notice the things that Amy had seen all along: everything was far too quiet, too familiar, too boring. By the time the long winter holiday was over, he was more than ready to go back to America and throw himself back into the excitement of university.
*
Intro to criminology turned out to be the best class Rory's ever had so far. Even more so than Latin, as much as it pained Rory to admit it. While Professor Boe still knew all his stuff, he was as old as the hills and was constantly nodding off, even in class, which didn't make for the most engaging lecture. But Professor Burke always had interesting stories to share from his time in the FBI, and everyone sat up in rapt attention even when he went over the material in the book, tackling it with a great deal of enthusiasm. By the time the first session was over, half the class had already declared they were changing their majors to Criminology. By the time add/drop period had past, the class had grown in size, despite the fairly heavy workload, and a Dr. Peter Burke fanclub had popped up in the list of student organisations.
Rory didn't find out till later that Neal was actually the one who had started it.
"He's hot," Neal said, like that was reason enough.
"Er," said Rory.
"I went to his office hours yesterday to ask stuff about the reading, and we got off on a tangent, and he ended up talking about white collar crime for an hour." Neal's eyes were starting to get a disturbingly glazed-over look. "An entire hour, all about stolen artwork, and master forgeries, and all the while I just wanted to---"
"All right, he's a good professor!" Rory cut in, his voice desperately high, because he really didn't want Neal to finish that sentence. "It doesn't mean I want to shag him!"
Neal sighed at him. "You," he said, jabbing a finger at Rory's chest, "are tragically blind."
*
The only reason Amy wasn't part of the Peter Burke fanclub, Rory suspected, was because she was obsessed with the Doctor (apparently not a misprint). She and Mels both, and they insisted that Rory walk them to class one day so he could check him out himself. "But why doesn't he have a name?" Rory wanted to know.
Amy shrugged. "He just doesn't," she said, like it wasn't important.
"He's a super genius," Mels said airily. "Geniuses don't need to have names."
"Right," Rory said. Just then, the Doctor walked by, into the classroom. He looked extremely young, almost like a student himself, except no student wore a suit with a bowtie. Apart from that, Rory didn't see what was so impressive about him, but he didn't even get to say so to Amy and Mels, who had flocked into the classroom after him, without even saying goodbye.
Rory wished he had more friends, so he could complain about how all of his other friends were madly in love with their professors.
Fortunately, Neal started having problems with The Universe, which stopped him from being disturbingly stalkerish about Professor Burke. Rory found him in the library one day, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand.
"I don't think that actually helps," Rory said, and Neal looked up at him in despair.
"Nothing helps!" Neal wailed. "I don't understand, I'm good at everything! Why is this so hard?"
Rory looked down at Neal's notes. It said things like 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey' and 'like a soap bubble with a smaller soap bubble attached, except NOT' and generally made no sense. "Are your notes supposed to say those things?"
"I don't know!" Neal groaned. "It makes perfect sense in class, but when I look at it now, it's all gibberish!"
"Clearly you and The Universe aren't cut out for each other," Rory said, patting Neal's shoulder consolingly.
*
Amy was doing brilliantly in Intro to Stuff. Neal was actually failing, for once in his life, despite all of Amy's tutoring. Rory was drowning in lab work: if it wasn't chem, it was bio, or if the universe (but not The Universe) really hated him, both. The usual rumours started running amok: that one of the thesis students set a Physics lab on fire; that next year all of the food in the cafeteria would be replaced by ice cream; that all of the ice cream in the cafeteria would be replaced by a salad bar; that Mels was sleeping with the Doctor.
It was around midterms, when Rory was convinced he was going to fail everything, because trying to memorise all of the chemistry formulas was leaving him so exhausted that he couldn't even remember half his Latin declensions any more, never mind conjugations, that he got this email:
From: ncaffrey
To: rwilliam
Amy says you're also kind of oblivious and I should be more direct. So here goes.
Rory gaped at his screen. "What?" he said. Running on four hours of sleep, five cups of coffee, and half-convinced he was hallucinating the whole thing, he closed his laptop and folded his arms over it, head drooping, intending only to get a few minutes sleep at most. By the time the next day rolled around and he awoke in a panic, with a terrible crick in his neck, he'd forgotten all about the email.
*
Rory was minding his own business and contemplating a shelf full of chemistry encyclopaedias when someone cleared their throat right behind him. He tried not to shriek like a girl and die of a heart attack, because that sort of thing was probably frowned upon in the library stacks. Even if it was just the science library.
He turned around, heart pounding. It was Neal, looking as tired as Rory felt, only worse, because Neal never looked this tired, ever. He had lost the manic gleam in his eyes, and his hair looked despondent and flat, and there was a day's worth of stubble creeping down his jaw.
"So," Neal said softly, then stepped forwards and kissed him.
Rory blamed sleep deprivation on the fact that he just stood there and kissed Neal back. Neal was tilting Rory's head up and pressing him against the stacks, and it felt like the weirdest thing Rory had ever done. On the other hand, Neal was warm and solid, and he kissed like he was in charge, which was different from any of the girls Rory had ever been with, and he smelled kind of like---
"Oh," Rory said when Neal stepped back just as suddenly, while he was still trying to pinpoint what it was Neal smelled like.
"Oh," Neal said, sounding sharply disappointed.
Rory blinked and met Neal's eyes. "I---" he said. "What was---?"
"You're in love with Amy," said Neal, and as much as that was true, Rory's never heard anyone say it out loud like that before, nor would he have imagined it being said with such finality.
"Well," Rory said, still desperately trying to make sense of all this and coming up with nothing. "Yes. But it's not like she'd ever look at---"
Neal snorted.
"What?" Rory said.
"It's not that she doesn't want you," Neal said. "But she thinks you're gay."
"What?" Rory said.
*
"Right," Rory told his reflection. He wasn't as scrawny as he had been when he was fifteen, thank god, but he still looked kind of like a rat, and his hair was a mess. He had no idea what Neal saw in him that made Neal want to kiss him, but then again, he had no idea what Neal saw in Professor Burke either, so maybe that was okay.
He tried to imagine himself sending Amy a ridiculous e-card, then just marching over to wherever she was and snogging the living daylights out of her. He couldn't imagine it, mostly because he suspected he didn't have the guts.
He ended up standing in front of her door, with no idea what he was going to say.
"Hey," Amy said, looking as beautiful as ever, even with dark bags under her eyes and wearing baggy sweatpants instead of the almost scandalously short skirts she usually wore. Fortunately, Mels wasn't in, and Rory followed Amy into the room.
"So," Amy said, looking back at him quizzically, and that was his cue, Rory thought. To just step in and kiss her. Dead easy.
"Do you want to go to Drag Ball with me?" Rory blurted out.
"Yeah, sure," Amy said, grinning. "And we can ask Neal and Mels if---"
"No!" Rory said. Amy looked shocked and somewhat worried at the sudden outburst. "I mean, yes, we can. But I mean, I was asking you as… I'm not gay!"
This just made Amy look even more confused. "Yes, you are!"
"No, I'm not!"
"You are! Tell me, since when have you ever looked at a girl for more than---" Amy suddenly stopped, eyes wide, staring at Rory like she'd never seen him before. "Oh. Oh my god."
"I want you to go with me as my date," Rory said quickly. "And I want you to be my girlfri---mmph!" And then Amy was tackling Rory and kissing him, which was just as well, because Rory was pretty sure the next words out of his mouth were going to be forever, and also, marry me, and even though he's known her for practically his entire life, there was still such a thing as being too creepy.
*
A week later, Rory came back from bio lab to this tacked to his door:
He couldn't stop grinning for the rest of the day. That night, he was propped up on his bed, finishing up some reading on organised crimes, and thinking about ringing Amy, even though he just saw her two hours ago, when he heard his roommate's girlfriend outside the door.
"Wow, you're kind of a player," Sally said, and how sad was it that he knew his roommate's girlfriend's name but still didn't know his roommate's?
"That's not mine!" his roommate protested violently. "You know it's not!"
"Well," Sally said. "Okay." Then - was that the sound of kissing? The door was opening, and okay, that was definitely kissing, way too much kissing, and---
"Oh," his roommate said. "I didn't think you'd be here."
"Why wouldn't - never mind. Right. I'm going to get out of here," Rory said, and fled, still clutching his criminology textbook like a shield.
"I can't believe my roommate just sexiled ," he was complaining five minutes later. "He's never even here, and I don't even know his name!"
"Right," Amy said, laughing at him. "Well, I have it on good authority that Mels won't be back all night, so..."
"Oh," Rory said. Then, "Oh!" He was across the room so fast that he tripped on three separate things in the process, and it wasn't like their room was even all that messy, and now Amy was definitely laughing at him, a lot, but Rory didn't even care, because suddenly everything was brilliant and amazing.
*
Things with Neal were strangely not weird. Rory had tried to apologise, fumblingly, but Neal just shrugged it off like it was no big deal. "S'all right," he said, slapping Rory on the shoulder like the thing in the science library had never happened. "You're pretty, but I'm not heartbroken about it."
"Okay," Rory said cautiously. Neal thought he was pretty? "Good."
They all ended up going to Drag Ball together. Amy dressed Rory up in one of her skirts and made him shave his legs and put eyeliner on him, which didn't turn out as ridiculous as Rory had feared it would. Neal was wearing a long, slinky dress and a corset that gave him an actual bust. Rory hardly even recognised him, and couldn't stop staring. This would be an actual problem, except both Amy and Mels were wearing tuxedos, James Bond style, and once Rory caught sight of Amy, he couldn't tear his eyes away from her.
The music was loud and campy, and Amy and Rory danced together until Mels stepped between them and made both of them dance with her before flitting off somewhere else. Thoroughly exhausted, they paused and watched Neal try to chat up one of the girls in their criminology class, Diana. She was wearing a sharp suit and a hat, and Rory was pretty sure she was a lesbian.
Amy nudged him in the ribs. "Should we go rescue him?"
Rory thought about it. "I think we'd better."
So they went over and roped Neal into dancing with them, and by the end of the night they were all laughing and exhilarated, and Rory almost wondered why Neal wasn't coming with them when they were racing each other back to the dorms, to bed but not to sleep.
*
That time of the semester was coming up yet again, but before Rory could think about what classes he wanted to take, he had another dilemma at hand.
Fortunately, his roommate made an actual appearance this week, coming in and pocketing a flash drive (objects he had taken in the past: a table lamp, two bookends, an ostrich paperweight) and then making ready to dash out again, when Rory said, "Hey, wait!"
The other boy froze in surprise, maybe because Rory had never addressed him directly before.
"Do you want to be roommates next year?"
"Okay," his roommate said noncommittally.
"Okay, great! Er, what's your name?"
"You can call me Mozzie," he said, and then was gone again, but still. That was the most conversation that they'd had all year. Rory almost felt like doing a victory dance.
He looked Mozzie up in the school directory, because he needed an actual name to put on the housing form, and in the end, came up with one result:
Dante Mozart Havisham
"Jesus," Rory muttered. With a name like 'Dante Mozart', Rory didn't blame the guy at all for stealing his name tag at the beginning of the year and going by Mozzie.
*
Things with Amy were better than all of the fantasies Rory's ever had, which was saying a lot, considering all of the fantasies he'd come up with over the years. The thing was, she was his best friend and knew absolutely everything important about him; none of that had changed. Only now he could kiss her anytime he wanted, and more often than not, she would kiss him and climb on top of him, and distract him from revising for a good hour or two or three. They went out on dates for no reason at all, walking by the lake in the moonlight, going out to the fanciest restaurants they could afford (which wasn't saying much), working together in the library, just the two of them, side by side.
It was everything Rory had ever hoped for, and more. So he didn't understand why he felt the niggling sensation that something was missing.
"---homework," Professor Burke was saying, and Rory jerked to attention and wrote the homework down. "Mr. Caffrey, a word after class, if you please."
Rory thought he maybe imagined the flash of panic he saw on Neal's face, because he looked perfectly collected in the next moment. "What's going on?" Amy said lowly, her voice masked by a hundred students getting up and leaving, but Neal just shrugged and gathered up his things.
"It's probably nothing. Better not keep him waiting, right?"
Rory and Amy exchanged looks. They were the last to leave the classroom, dragging their feet and looking down the hall, where Burke's office was. "Something's going on," Amy said.
"Maybe he found out Neal was the founder of his creepy fanclub?" Rory suggested, uneasily.
Amy just shook her head. "We should wait for him."
They stood in the hallway by the entrance, and Rory was suddenly reminded of the way he and Amy would wait around for each other at school in Leadsworth. "You don't think it's a sex thing?" Rory said suddenly.
"Burke's married," Amy pointed out. "Anyway, if it were, he wouldn't call Neal out like that. It's way too obvious."
"True."
They waited for nearly an hour when Neal finally appeared. His hair was a mess, and he looked startled to see them both, wide-eyed and spooked, like he was about to start running. But when they caught his arms in theirs and marched him outside, he relaxed a little and went along with them.
They were almost to Rory's dorm when Amy asked again. "What's going on?"
Neal shook his head in bewilderment. "Peter's giving me a job, over the summer," he said. "And he's making me apply for college."
"But you're already---" Rory started, and stopped when Amy gave him a look.
"He found out that I'm not actually registered here," Neal said.
Amy snorted and elbowed him in the ribs, jostling him up against Rory. "Smooth, Caffrey. You cosy up to a criminology professor and expect him not to find out all your deep, dark secrets?"
Rory laughed, and soon after, Neal joined in, all of his tension dissipating on the spry spring wind. "Well, when you put it that way," Neal said, and he was carefree and happy again, just the way they liked him.
*
"Rory," Amy said. She was biting her lip and looking more uncertain than Rory's ever seen her before. "You know I love you, right?"
"Yes," Rory said, because she'd been saying it to him long before they ever started this. "I love you too."
Amy's lips curved into a smile, so pleased, like she could have had any doubts as to otherwise. Then she was serious again, very serious, and Rory found himself holding his breath in anticipation, for the next big thing that would turn their lives upside down again. "So I hate to say this, but it feels like we're missing---"
"Missing something," Rory finished, and Amy nodded.
"I mean, we don't need it; I don't need anyone but you," Amy said in a rush. "It's just that, sometimes---and I feel guilty for wanting more, because you're it for me, seriously, Rory, but sometimes I think we could have it, and it wouldn't be hurting anyone, and we'd feel more complete. But it's not that---"
"No, I get it," Rory said slowly. "We're talking about Neal, right?"
Amy nodded, fatefully and hopefully, and Rory made up his mind.
"We may not need him, but I think he might need us."
"Yes," Amy said.
"We'll talk about it," Rory said. "We'll talk about it some more, and then we'll ask him," only not tonight, because it was growing late, and Amy's smile was dawning, and Rory wanted to kiss every inch of it before he fell asleep and had to face chemistry lab yet again.
"Yes," Amy murmured much later, when they were both sated and curled up sleepily together.
Rory nuzzled the dip of her collarbone then dragged his mouth across it, leaving one last kiss there. "Soon," he promised Amy, promised Neal, and fell asleep and dreamt about Neal's brilliant blue eyes, and Neal's artist's hands dragging down his body and entangling in Amy's red hair.
Soon.
*
Coda
From: rwilliam
To: ncaffrey
CC: apond
Returning the favour...
From: ncaffrey
To: rwilliam
CC: apond
Is this an experimental sort of thing? Or something more?
From: apond
To: ncaffrey
CC: rwilliam
It's a be our boyfriend sort of thing.
From: ncaffrey
To: apond
CC: rwilliam
Seriously???
From: rwilliam
To: ncaffrey
CC: apond
YES.
From: ncaffrey
To: rwilliam
From: rwilliam
To: ncaffrey
Oh, stop being so smug about it.
-END-