A Good Cup of Tea Solves Everything - Doctor Who - Amy/Eleven/Rory
Title: A Good Cup of Tea Solves Everything
Pairing: Amy/Eleven/Rory
Word Count: 4265
Rating: NC-17
A/N: Written for the 'service' square of my kink bingo card.
Summary: Being brought back by Amy's mind has left a mark on the Doctor. Rory is the first to notice that something is different.
It starts with a cup of tea appearing by his elbow.
As beginnings go, it's really not a bad one.
*
"Anyone for tea?" the Doctor asks with a teapot in each hand.
The one in his left hand has a cat pattern printed all over it. The one in the right has three different spouts.
Sitting with her feet up on the beach, Amy looks at him over the top of her sunglasses. "Doctor," she says, in the sternest voice that she is capable of summoning. Rory thinks that it still isn't as scary when it's directed at the Doctor as when it is directed at him.
The Doctor blinks owlishly several times, looking between his two teapots and his two companions. "Yes?" he asks.
"It's a billion degrees out here," she answers. Rory thinks that she might be exaggerating just a tad. "No one wants tea."
"You're British." The Doctor seems mildly put-out, and he looks around the beach as if he expects a convenient coffee table to appear for him to place his pots on. "You are rubbish at being British, Pond."
"And you are rubbish at being normal," Amy answers. She replaces her glasses over her eyes and lies back down on the sand, as if lying here all day might do the slightest thing to change the pasty white of her skin: quietly, Rory hopes that it doesn't. He loves her skin when it is pale like frightened milk.
"I'll take a cuppa," Rory says, mostly out of pity. He's also not entirely sure what will actually come out of said teapot. Two thousand years of memories of standing by a box have left him restless to try anything new.
The Doctor beams and pulls a teacup out of his jacket pocket, dusting it off on his trouser leg before filling it up. It is a tiny thing, barely larger than a thimble, but Rory smiles graciously as it is handed over to him. He holds it between two fingers and sips, drinking the entire thing in one gulp - just as well, actually. It tastes awful and he has to try hard not to splutter.
"You have to try hard at being this weird, don't you?" Amy asks, without sitting up or opening her eyes.
The Doctor steps back and forth, unable to keep still for more than a single moment at a time. "It's a natural talent. I'm weird, always. Makes me interesting, don't you think?"
"You could do with being a little less 'interesting' while I'm trying to sunbathe," Amy complains.
"She doesn't mean it," Rory says, still wheezing a little from whatever it is that had been in that teacup. He doesn't think that, whatever it is, it is a substance that can exist on Earth.
Still, the Doctor looks happy enough. Amy does too.
And when the Doctor is happy and Amy is happy, Rory is beginning to work out that that makes him happy too.
*
Amy's head is heavy on Rory's shoulder when the Doctor drops a blanket over them from behind. They are curled in one of the TARDIS's plush, comfortable rooms. It's usually much warmer in here, but it's hard to control life on a spaceship.
"How are you feeling?" the Doctor asks. He moves to sit down in the armchair to the right of their couch, lounging like a king on his throne. Rory isn't sure if he knows anyone else at all that could make an armchair look regal. "Any headaches?"
Rory frowns, and tries incredibly hard not to think of the tea that the Doctor had given him earlier today. He tries not to think of it, and he fails rather spectacularly. "Did you poison me?"
The Doctor's face twitches and, after a moment, he smiles. "Was the tea that bad?" he asks.
Rory doesn't want to say 'yes'. He also doesn't want to lie. "I've never tasted anything like it."
"I found it in the back of the TARDIS. She seemed to think it would be quite beneficial." The Doctor doesn't seem at all perplexed by his habit of finding random bits and bobs scattered around the ship. Her cupboards and shelves are magnets for the strange but occasionally useful scraps of the universe. "That wasn't what I meant, actually. I was wondering about the memories."
"The memories?"
"Yes." The Doctor steeples his fingers and rests his chin against his fingertips for a moment. He only stays in the position for a few scant seconds before he is in motion again, incapable of keeping still. Rory watches him, always quietly fascinated. On his shoulder, Amy shifts her sleeping head. "You had two-thousand years' worth of memories waking up in your little human brain. I wanted to check in on you."
The most important lesson that Rory has to learn about travelling with the Doctor is to try not to panic.
Unfortunately, he hasn't learnt said lesson yet.
"Is my brain going to explode?" he asks. The Doctor doesn't stop smiling. He thinks that is a good thing - possibly. "Doctor?"
"No, no, it wouldn't explode." The Doctor shifts and moves around in his chair. "I think you'll be alright. I thought I'd just better check, that's all. You're a very nervous fellow, you know."
"I'm travelling with you. It pays to be nervous." He has faced more near-death experiences while travelling with the Doctor than anyone ever ought to. Forget 'near' death, in fact. Actual, physical death itself seems to be the order of the day when it comes to him. "I'm alright," he answers after a moment. The Doctor is watching him, serene and thoughtful: Rory rarely gets to see him like this, peaceful. No one does. "It's strange. Remembering. Sometimes I think I must have dreamed it all up, but then you're there."
"Like a nightmare." The Doctor over-pronounces the three words, and smiles as if he is making a joke.
Rory keeps his face straight. He shakes his head firmly. "No," he answers, and he feels as if he has come such a long, long way since their first meeting. "It's not like that at all."
The Doctor questions him no further with words, just tilts his head to the side and raises his eyebrows.
"Some of it was, anyway. I mean, the Blitz wasn't too fun. And the Hundred Years' War was awful." Rory stops, because he could list every single major war in British history if he feels like it: he's lived through them all, patiently guarding a box, except that he hasn't. None of it is real. None of it happened.
Or maybe all of it did.
It's all a bit fuzzy, reality and unreality. It all changes and morphs around their confused minds.
"You're very old now, Rory," the Doctor says. "Older than me, actually. Twice as old."
That doesn't feel right at all. He's lived for centuries but he still feels so young. He doesn't know anything, not really. Not like the Doctor does.
"Not really," he says. "Not in this time line, anyway."
"Mm," the Doctor agrees, in a way that doesn't sound like he's agreeing at all. He looks around, eyes scanning the room, and Rory watches him look: he sees the alert way that the Doctor's eyes takes in every single detail, as if he is constantly on the look-out for something interesting, something exciting and dangerous. He's like Amy, in that way: a trouble-maker through and through. "I'd best leave the pair of you to get some rest."
Rory should let him go - he means to, but when the Doctor gets to his feet Rory's mouth opens before he gives it permission to do so. "Stay," he urges. The Doctor's too-insightful eyes are on him right away. He can feel heat rushing to his cheeks and he looks down, his fingers playing with the ends of Amy's hair. "Amy sleeps better when you're around." He has no clue if that's true or not, but she's barely stirring now. For someone who seems constructed from sugar and electricity, to have Amy in stasis is an accomplishment indeed.
Carefully, as if he is waiting for Rory to change his mind and throw him out of his own spaceship, the Doctor sits down beside them. For a moment or two, he is perfectly still, as motionless as a wax doll. Rory watches him and waits for whatever is coming next: the Doctor could never remain calm for so long. Rory knows him better than that.
It takes under a minute before that tension evaporates, and Rory finds a very floppy, wriggly and warm Doctor resting against his shoulder, perfectly parallel to Amy. "Do you sleep?" he asks, curiously.
He supposes he must. He'd slept while they were fighting that alternate world and Dream Monster Alien Actually The Doctor Thing (Rory still isn't too sure what happened there: all he knows is that that had been the first time he died and he hadn't enjoyed it too much then either).
"Sleeping is boring," the Doctor answers.
"You sound sleepy," Rory tells him. The Doctor actually sounds as if he is sleep-talking.
Rory does too.
He allows his head to drop onto the top of Amy's head, the smell of her shampoo infiltrating his nose as the three of them rest in a pile, comfortable, warm and safe.
*
When they wake up, the Doctor is gone and Rory has to wonder if he had ever been there at all, if it had all been a wild and slightly fuzzy dream - it is a shudder of the TARDIS that wakes them, followed by the Doctor bounding in to happily shepherd them outside to show them another new planet, another beautiful sight. Amy oohs and aahs and Rory explores, keeping close to the Doctor: he's learnt his lesson about what happens when you wander off.
"Are you alright?" Amy asks, bouncing up behind him and slipping her arm through his: they are linked. He won't lose her in the babbling crowd. "You seem a bit out of it."
"The Doctor fell asleep on me last night," Rory answers.
Amy doesn't seem to understand why this would put him out of sorts: she laughs and pings at his ear and he smiles like he thinks this is all a joke.
Up ahead of them, the Doctor is striding through a crowd that parts easily before him like melted butter. They can only scurry in his wake: Rory scurries, anyway; Amy seems to float. "Do you think he's been weird, lately? Weirder than usual, I mean?" Rory asks.
Amy scrunches her nose at him and glances between the pair of them. "Weird like how?" she asks.
Rory shrugs. He narrowly avoids getting run down by a blue-skinned alien in a hurry, which at least gives him an extra moment or two to think about what he wants to say. It doesn't help. "I dunno. He's around more than usual. Hovering."
"He's the Doctor. He hovers. It's his thing." Amy waggles her fingers in front of them as if she is trying to explain everything to him using shadow puppetry. It doesn't help.
The Doctor is the same man who abandoned Amy, the girl who waited, for so many years. He doesn't hover: he flits in and out as he pleases, allowing them to look after themselves, but that's not the case at the moment. Ever since he reappeared, ever since the old universe died and this one was reborn, he has been there: always.
"He made tea," Rory remarks.
Maybe it's not important.
Amy scoffs and laughs. "He made rubbish tea," she says, slipping her arm out from him. He doesn't fight to keep her: he's learned better than that, now. Sometimes it is best to allow her to slip away, knowing that she will always come back to him, that she will always be his at heart.
She joins the Doctor and, for a few minutes, Rory allows the pair of them to walk in front of him, chattering among themselves and chasing their own daydreams through conversation. They are wild, his companions. They are mad.
And they are so, so beautiful.
*
Two nights later, Amy corners him in their bedroom. Rory is fresh out of the shower with a towel around his waist, dripping water over the carpet, but she doesn't scold him. He doubts if she even notices: he's usually the one that is the fuss-pot about messiness. She sits on the edge of their bed and watches as he gets changed, her sparkling eyes taking him in with greed. He's surprised that he manages to get his trousers on without getting mauled, but Amy has been getting much better at self-control recently.
Sort of.
"I think you're right about the Doctor," she says. Those are words he would never have imagined would be true: he's not sure if he wants to be right about the Doctor. That means that he understands him, and understanding the Doctor probably means that he is at least a little bit mad. "He's weird. Weird for him, I mean. He offered to rub my feet while you were in the shower."
Rory nods: the Doctor had offered him the same thing.
"Do you think he came back wrong?" he asks Amy: she knows more about time-travel than him. Not much more, but enough to be able to piece everything together easier than she will. "Maybe he's a zombie."
"A foot-rubbing zombie?" Amy says. A single eyebrow raises, so perfectly arched that it looks drawn on.
Rory raises and lowers one shoulder, looking around for his t-shirt. He always loses his clothes whenever he goes into the shower. He thinks that the TARDIS must eat them whenever he turns his back. "Maybe? I don't know. He came from your imagination, didn't he?"
Amy makes a sound like she doesn't know how it happens, and doesn't think it's important: the Doctor is here, is alive, in this refreshed reality because of the strength of Amy's mind, because of the power of her memory. That has to leave an effect on a man.
A foot-rubbing, tea-preparing effect, apparently.
Rory jumps and shudders when he feels Amy's arms wrapping around his shirtless waist from behind, as she plasters herself against his back. "I'm going to get you wet," he warns, because his hair is still soaking and his skin is damp.
Amy's response is a perfectly filthy giggle, and Rory feels his skin heat with sudden embarrassment. "I didn't mean-" he says, stammering to protect the dignity of his intentions. It only makes Amy giggle more, his wonderfully dirty-minded wife.
"I love you," she says, and his hand finds her where it is resting on his stomach. Their fingers tangle and she kisses his back, his shoulders, burying her face wherever she can reach.
Rory thinks that maybe he's never been happier than this moment, right now - and the Doctor is forgotten about as they take the short fall onto their nearby bed, pulling off his slightly damp jeans and fighting their way through her leggings so that they can connect in just the way they need to.
*
We should just ask him about it, Amy had said, which is why Rory finds himself sitting in front of the Doctor and wishing that he could disappear into thin air.
"You think I'm a zombie?" the Doctor repeats, because their question really hadn't come out right, not at all. "I've met zombies, you know. Or sort-of zombies, anyway. Unpleasant creatures. I'm fairly sure that I'm not one. No cravings for brains yet, anyway."
"That's not what we meant," Amy says, frowning at the Doctor as if he ought to understand. "You're different. Rory thinks you came back different."
Rory's eyes go wide as he finds himself suddenly shoved into the centre of the Doctor's attention, with the Doctor's attentive gaze upon him. "Well, I just - You seem there a lot. Making us tea and... stuff." His suspicions sound awfully small when he has to lay them at the Doctor's feet. He feels as if he ought to apologise for them.
"You're very sweet," the Doctor says after a pause. Rory and Amy glance at each other, trying to work out if this is a veiled criticism of some kind. "I find myself wanting to take care of you, both of you. You deserve to be happy."
Amy kicks the Doctor in the shin, little more than a light nudge, and she grins. "We are happy, idiot," she says, but Rory places a hand on her arm.
He doesn't think that what the Doctor is saying is as simple as that.
"What to you mean?" he says. "Take care of us? What's that about?"
The Doctor looks down at his hands, so small and quiet that Rory barely recognises him. What he sees makes him want to look after him too, makes him want to hold him against his chest in the way that he usually holds Amy - even if the Doctor wouldn't fit as well, even if he's all angles and squirmy madness. Rory thinks that he could try to soothe him.
"I don't quite understand it myself," the Doctor confesses, and Rory knows that it has to take a lot of courage for a man such as the Doctor to be able to admit to that at all. "Ever since I came back, I've felt differently towards you - the pair of you."
He doesn't specify what 'differently' means, but Rory thinks that his recent behaviour and the look on his face probably says it all for them: it takes Amy a fraction of a moment before she catches on. "Wait a second," she says, holding up a single finger. "Does this mean we get to snog you now?"
Amy's mind, as always, goes straight for the kissing. Rory tries not to smile in comfortable recognition, while the Doctor's head dips up and then down, poorly hiding a smile of his own. "If you'd like," he offers, magnanimous as ever.
Before Amy can lunge for him, Rory catches her around the waist, holding her back before she can maul him without another thought. "Are you sure about this?" he asks. "Shouldn't we be trying to fix you or something?" He's not sure if it's something to 'fix', but something doesn't sit quite right with him about the whole thing: the Doctor has always struck him as dangerously uninterested in sex. It had been yet another thing that had baffled and angered him about the Doctor when he had first re-popped into their lives, before the marriage. If it had been a sexual thing that stole Amy's attention, he might have been able to understand it in a bitter kind of way.
It's more than that. Better than that. Harder than that.
The Doctor tilts his head to the side as if he is listening to messages from beyond the universe. He blinks, once, and wets his lips with his tongue. "I don't think I want to be fixed," he says.
After that, there is no stopping Amy. Rory decides that he doesn't even want to try.
*
As a lover, the Doctor is more attentive than Rory would ever have thought him capable of. Careful, wise hands smooth over pale skin - Amy can't get the Doctor's clothes off fast enough. Rory would feel offended if he wasn't in the exact same rush himself, ripping away the Doctor's bow tie and throwing it somewhere that it will hopefully never be found again.
Amy is demanding and the Doctor offers himself, offers everything that they want, everything that Rory is too scared to take. He tastes the Doctor's skin and then his mouth only when Amy orders them to, the pair of them entangling at first for her amusement but then on their own terms: Rory pins the Doctor down against their too-soft bed, hands on his shoulders to stop him from squirming as he invades his mouth, flicking his tongue and tasting the Doctor's lips. Amy's hands slide over his back and then up, over into the Doctor's mad hair.
It isn't long before she is pouting for attention, and the Doctor is happy to give it to her: still trapped underneath Rory's spread legs, he turns over onto his front to kiss and nip at her pale thighs. She spreads her legs for him and scoots down low enough that his tongue and mouth can find her sex, can nuzzle in close and make her moan. From there it is easy, so easy, to push inside once they've got the Doctor ready, once he is slick and stretched and perfect.
The Doctor cries out into Amy's trimmed pussy, and she scolds him, her fingers tight in his hair. Rory can hardly pay attention: for all that he is alien, the Doctor feels human. He feels hot and tight and amazing, all that he could have imagined.
Amy squirms and wriggles until she slides underneath the Doctor altogether, Rory's hands reaching to help support him to give her room. He can't see it, but he hears the way that the Doctor groans when he enters her, the three of them fitting together as if it was meant to be like this, as if this is what they were designed for.
The Doctor is there for them, coaxing out every sensation and chasing their pleasure instead of his own. Rory has never known anything like it - but, after, when they collapse in a pile, he gets the feeling that they will never be able to let him out of their bed again.
*
When Rory wakes up, the Doctor is gone and there are two cups of tea sitting beside the bed, still warm. This time, they have the advantage of actually looking like tea, but Rory isn't brave enough to try drinking one.
Amy is sprawled on her front, still wiped out and unconscious. Rory's fingers linger on her shoulder for a few moments, and he brushes her hair to the side. He ought to wake her, but he wants the Doctor to be there when she does. She needs him there - she needs to know that there's more than sex to this, because there is. There has to be. The Doctor can't play with her like that: he can't play around with either of them, actually. Rory doesn't think that the delicate dynamic aboard this spaceship could handle that.
He slips out of bed as carefully as he can, making sure not to disturb Amy in the process. Luckily, she is still deeply captured in sleep: he can hear the whistle of her breath, nearly snoring. Not quite.
It takes some scrambling and hopping around in the dark before he is able to get his hands on his clothes. He pulls on his jeans and leaves the bedroom, sleepy but on a mission. He'll be back before Amy gets up: she shouldn't have to wake up alone.
The Doctor is fully dressed when he finds him, and has somehow managed to locate yet another of his bow ties. He is frowning, deep in concentration as he stares at the console, occasionally spinning a dial or two. Rory doesn't think that half of the controls even do anything. "You're up," Rory says. He wants to sound stern - he wants to tell the Doctor off for leaving at all - but he's no good at it. "We were still sleeping."
"Yes," the Doctor says, purposefully absent-minded. Rory isn't buying the act - not for a moment. "I thought you two might want a little more room without me crowding the bed."
Rory watches him, waiting for the Doctor to look up, but isn't really that surprised when he doesn't. For all that the Doctor is willing to face down alien invasions and save the universe again and again (and again), he's a coward when it comes to anything real. "We want you there," Rory states. "You're trying to make us happy, right? Make Amy happy? Then do it, and get back here."
The Doctor barely hesitates. There is a spare moment where his hands continue to linger on the controls, caressing them, but then he bows his head - he nods. "You're right," he says.
It's not something that Rory is used to hearing.
"It's been a long time since I've had this," the Doctor says, with a flutter of fingers as if that ought to illustrate what he's talking about. "Since I've wanted this, whatever it is. It would be easier to retreat."
"Always is." Rory smiles, crooked and sad. "You never do."
The Doctor twitches a smile at him, there and then gone again within a second. He looks down at the console, running his fingertips along its bumps and ridges. "Do you need more tea?" he asks. Rory isn't sure whether he is talking to him or to the TARDIS - and it is only aboard this strange, impossible ship that such a question could even make sense.
"We need you in bed," Rory answers. "That's all." He almost sounds commanding for a moment, but he follows it up by tugging on his earlobe and frowning, something that takes away somewhat from the effect that he'd been going for. "Come on."
He holds out his hand, palm facing upwards, and it rests in the air between the pair of them. Waiting. He swallows and refuses to let himself speak again until the Doctor reaches for him, their hands slipping together. Rory grins, as widely as if he has just tamed a wild rabbit, and gently pulls the Doctor after him in the direction of their bedroom. Inside, Amy is still sprawled on the mattress, blissfully asleep and unaware as they strip off once more and slip in beside her. The Doctor's skin is cold against Rory's hands, but with shared body heat and the warmth of the blanket around him, he will soon heat up once more.
Pairing: Amy/Eleven/Rory
Word Count: 4265
Rating: NC-17
A/N: Written for the 'service' square of my kink bingo card.
Summary: Being brought back by Amy's mind has left a mark on the Doctor. Rory is the first to notice that something is different.
It starts with a cup of tea appearing by his elbow.
As beginnings go, it's really not a bad one.
*
"Anyone for tea?" the Doctor asks with a teapot in each hand.
The one in his left hand has a cat pattern printed all over it. The one in the right has three different spouts.
Sitting with her feet up on the beach, Amy looks at him over the top of her sunglasses. "Doctor," she says, in the sternest voice that she is capable of summoning. Rory thinks that it still isn't as scary when it's directed at the Doctor as when it is directed at him.
The Doctor blinks owlishly several times, looking between his two teapots and his two companions. "Yes?" he asks.
"It's a billion degrees out here," she answers. Rory thinks that she might be exaggerating just a tad. "No one wants tea."
"You're British." The Doctor seems mildly put-out, and he looks around the beach as if he expects a convenient coffee table to appear for him to place his pots on. "You are rubbish at being British, Pond."
"And you are rubbish at being normal," Amy answers. She replaces her glasses over her eyes and lies back down on the sand, as if lying here all day might do the slightest thing to change the pasty white of her skin: quietly, Rory hopes that it doesn't. He loves her skin when it is pale like frightened milk.
"I'll take a cuppa," Rory says, mostly out of pity. He's also not entirely sure what will actually come out of said teapot. Two thousand years of memories of standing by a box have left him restless to try anything new.
The Doctor beams and pulls a teacup out of his jacket pocket, dusting it off on his trouser leg before filling it up. It is a tiny thing, barely larger than a thimble, but Rory smiles graciously as it is handed over to him. He holds it between two fingers and sips, drinking the entire thing in one gulp - just as well, actually. It tastes awful and he has to try hard not to splutter.
"You have to try hard at being this weird, don't you?" Amy asks, without sitting up or opening her eyes.
The Doctor steps back and forth, unable to keep still for more than a single moment at a time. "It's a natural talent. I'm weird, always. Makes me interesting, don't you think?"
"You could do with being a little less 'interesting' while I'm trying to sunbathe," Amy complains.
"She doesn't mean it," Rory says, still wheezing a little from whatever it is that had been in that teacup. He doesn't think that, whatever it is, it is a substance that can exist on Earth.
Still, the Doctor looks happy enough. Amy does too.
And when the Doctor is happy and Amy is happy, Rory is beginning to work out that that makes him happy too.
*
Amy's head is heavy on Rory's shoulder when the Doctor drops a blanket over them from behind. They are curled in one of the TARDIS's plush, comfortable rooms. It's usually much warmer in here, but it's hard to control life on a spaceship.
"How are you feeling?" the Doctor asks. He moves to sit down in the armchair to the right of their couch, lounging like a king on his throne. Rory isn't sure if he knows anyone else at all that could make an armchair look regal. "Any headaches?"
Rory frowns, and tries incredibly hard not to think of the tea that the Doctor had given him earlier today. He tries not to think of it, and he fails rather spectacularly. "Did you poison me?"
The Doctor's face twitches and, after a moment, he smiles. "Was the tea that bad?" he asks.
Rory doesn't want to say 'yes'. He also doesn't want to lie. "I've never tasted anything like it."
"I found it in the back of the TARDIS. She seemed to think it would be quite beneficial." The Doctor doesn't seem at all perplexed by his habit of finding random bits and bobs scattered around the ship. Her cupboards and shelves are magnets for the strange but occasionally useful scraps of the universe. "That wasn't what I meant, actually. I was wondering about the memories."
"The memories?"
"Yes." The Doctor steeples his fingers and rests his chin against his fingertips for a moment. He only stays in the position for a few scant seconds before he is in motion again, incapable of keeping still. Rory watches him, always quietly fascinated. On his shoulder, Amy shifts her sleeping head. "You had two-thousand years' worth of memories waking up in your little human brain. I wanted to check in on you."
The most important lesson that Rory has to learn about travelling with the Doctor is to try not to panic.
Unfortunately, he hasn't learnt said lesson yet.
"Is my brain going to explode?" he asks. The Doctor doesn't stop smiling. He thinks that is a good thing - possibly. "Doctor?"
"No, no, it wouldn't explode." The Doctor shifts and moves around in his chair. "I think you'll be alright. I thought I'd just better check, that's all. You're a very nervous fellow, you know."
"I'm travelling with you. It pays to be nervous." He has faced more near-death experiences while travelling with the Doctor than anyone ever ought to. Forget 'near' death, in fact. Actual, physical death itself seems to be the order of the day when it comes to him. "I'm alright," he answers after a moment. The Doctor is watching him, serene and thoughtful: Rory rarely gets to see him like this, peaceful. No one does. "It's strange. Remembering. Sometimes I think I must have dreamed it all up, but then you're there."
"Like a nightmare." The Doctor over-pronounces the three words, and smiles as if he is making a joke.
Rory keeps his face straight. He shakes his head firmly. "No," he answers, and he feels as if he has come such a long, long way since their first meeting. "It's not like that at all."
The Doctor questions him no further with words, just tilts his head to the side and raises his eyebrows.
"Some of it was, anyway. I mean, the Blitz wasn't too fun. And the Hundred Years' War was awful." Rory stops, because he could list every single major war in British history if he feels like it: he's lived through them all, patiently guarding a box, except that he hasn't. None of it is real. None of it happened.
Or maybe all of it did.
It's all a bit fuzzy, reality and unreality. It all changes and morphs around their confused minds.
"You're very old now, Rory," the Doctor says. "Older than me, actually. Twice as old."
That doesn't feel right at all. He's lived for centuries but he still feels so young. He doesn't know anything, not really. Not like the Doctor does.
"Not really," he says. "Not in this time line, anyway."
"Mm," the Doctor agrees, in a way that doesn't sound like he's agreeing at all. He looks around, eyes scanning the room, and Rory watches him look: he sees the alert way that the Doctor's eyes takes in every single detail, as if he is constantly on the look-out for something interesting, something exciting and dangerous. He's like Amy, in that way: a trouble-maker through and through. "I'd best leave the pair of you to get some rest."
Rory should let him go - he means to, but when the Doctor gets to his feet Rory's mouth opens before he gives it permission to do so. "Stay," he urges. The Doctor's too-insightful eyes are on him right away. He can feel heat rushing to his cheeks and he looks down, his fingers playing with the ends of Amy's hair. "Amy sleeps better when you're around." He has no clue if that's true or not, but she's barely stirring now. For someone who seems constructed from sugar and electricity, to have Amy in stasis is an accomplishment indeed.
Carefully, as if he is waiting for Rory to change his mind and throw him out of his own spaceship, the Doctor sits down beside them. For a moment or two, he is perfectly still, as motionless as a wax doll. Rory watches him and waits for whatever is coming next: the Doctor could never remain calm for so long. Rory knows him better than that.
It takes under a minute before that tension evaporates, and Rory finds a very floppy, wriggly and warm Doctor resting against his shoulder, perfectly parallel to Amy. "Do you sleep?" he asks, curiously.
He supposes he must. He'd slept while they were fighting that alternate world and Dream Monster Alien Actually The Doctor Thing (Rory still isn't too sure what happened there: all he knows is that that had been the first time he died and he hadn't enjoyed it too much then either).
"Sleeping is boring," the Doctor answers.
"You sound sleepy," Rory tells him. The Doctor actually sounds as if he is sleep-talking.
Rory does too.
He allows his head to drop onto the top of Amy's head, the smell of her shampoo infiltrating his nose as the three of them rest in a pile, comfortable, warm and safe.
*
When they wake up, the Doctor is gone and Rory has to wonder if he had ever been there at all, if it had all been a wild and slightly fuzzy dream - it is a shudder of the TARDIS that wakes them, followed by the Doctor bounding in to happily shepherd them outside to show them another new planet, another beautiful sight. Amy oohs and aahs and Rory explores, keeping close to the Doctor: he's learnt his lesson about what happens when you wander off.
"Are you alright?" Amy asks, bouncing up behind him and slipping her arm through his: they are linked. He won't lose her in the babbling crowd. "You seem a bit out of it."
"The Doctor fell asleep on me last night," Rory answers.
Amy doesn't seem to understand why this would put him out of sorts: she laughs and pings at his ear and he smiles like he thinks this is all a joke.
Up ahead of them, the Doctor is striding through a crowd that parts easily before him like melted butter. They can only scurry in his wake: Rory scurries, anyway; Amy seems to float. "Do you think he's been weird, lately? Weirder than usual, I mean?" Rory asks.
Amy scrunches her nose at him and glances between the pair of them. "Weird like how?" she asks.
Rory shrugs. He narrowly avoids getting run down by a blue-skinned alien in a hurry, which at least gives him an extra moment or two to think about what he wants to say. It doesn't help. "I dunno. He's around more than usual. Hovering."
"He's the Doctor. He hovers. It's his thing." Amy waggles her fingers in front of them as if she is trying to explain everything to him using shadow puppetry. It doesn't help.
The Doctor is the same man who abandoned Amy, the girl who waited, for so many years. He doesn't hover: he flits in and out as he pleases, allowing them to look after themselves, but that's not the case at the moment. Ever since he reappeared, ever since the old universe died and this one was reborn, he has been there: always.
"He made tea," Rory remarks.
Maybe it's not important.
Amy scoffs and laughs. "He made rubbish tea," she says, slipping her arm out from him. He doesn't fight to keep her: he's learned better than that, now. Sometimes it is best to allow her to slip away, knowing that she will always come back to him, that she will always be his at heart.
She joins the Doctor and, for a few minutes, Rory allows the pair of them to walk in front of him, chattering among themselves and chasing their own daydreams through conversation. They are wild, his companions. They are mad.
And they are so, so beautiful.
*
Two nights later, Amy corners him in their bedroom. Rory is fresh out of the shower with a towel around his waist, dripping water over the carpet, but she doesn't scold him. He doubts if she even notices: he's usually the one that is the fuss-pot about messiness. She sits on the edge of their bed and watches as he gets changed, her sparkling eyes taking him in with greed. He's surprised that he manages to get his trousers on without getting mauled, but Amy has been getting much better at self-control recently.
Sort of.
"I think you're right about the Doctor," she says. Those are words he would never have imagined would be true: he's not sure if he wants to be right about the Doctor. That means that he understands him, and understanding the Doctor probably means that he is at least a little bit mad. "He's weird. Weird for him, I mean. He offered to rub my feet while you were in the shower."
Rory nods: the Doctor had offered him the same thing.
"Do you think he came back wrong?" he asks Amy: she knows more about time-travel than him. Not much more, but enough to be able to piece everything together easier than she will. "Maybe he's a zombie."
"A foot-rubbing zombie?" Amy says. A single eyebrow raises, so perfectly arched that it looks drawn on.
Rory raises and lowers one shoulder, looking around for his t-shirt. He always loses his clothes whenever he goes into the shower. He thinks that the TARDIS must eat them whenever he turns his back. "Maybe? I don't know. He came from your imagination, didn't he?"
Amy makes a sound like she doesn't know how it happens, and doesn't think it's important: the Doctor is here, is alive, in this refreshed reality because of the strength of Amy's mind, because of the power of her memory. That has to leave an effect on a man.
A foot-rubbing, tea-preparing effect, apparently.
Rory jumps and shudders when he feels Amy's arms wrapping around his shirtless waist from behind, as she plasters herself against his back. "I'm going to get you wet," he warns, because his hair is still soaking and his skin is damp.
Amy's response is a perfectly filthy giggle, and Rory feels his skin heat with sudden embarrassment. "I didn't mean-" he says, stammering to protect the dignity of his intentions. It only makes Amy giggle more, his wonderfully dirty-minded wife.
"I love you," she says, and his hand finds her where it is resting on his stomach. Their fingers tangle and she kisses his back, his shoulders, burying her face wherever she can reach.
Rory thinks that maybe he's never been happier than this moment, right now - and the Doctor is forgotten about as they take the short fall onto their nearby bed, pulling off his slightly damp jeans and fighting their way through her leggings so that they can connect in just the way they need to.
*
We should just ask him about it, Amy had said, which is why Rory finds himself sitting in front of the Doctor and wishing that he could disappear into thin air.
"You think I'm a zombie?" the Doctor repeats, because their question really hadn't come out right, not at all. "I've met zombies, you know. Or sort-of zombies, anyway. Unpleasant creatures. I'm fairly sure that I'm not one. No cravings for brains yet, anyway."
"That's not what we meant," Amy says, frowning at the Doctor as if he ought to understand. "You're different. Rory thinks you came back different."
Rory's eyes go wide as he finds himself suddenly shoved into the centre of the Doctor's attention, with the Doctor's attentive gaze upon him. "Well, I just - You seem there a lot. Making us tea and... stuff." His suspicions sound awfully small when he has to lay them at the Doctor's feet. He feels as if he ought to apologise for them.
"You're very sweet," the Doctor says after a pause. Rory and Amy glance at each other, trying to work out if this is a veiled criticism of some kind. "I find myself wanting to take care of you, both of you. You deserve to be happy."
Amy kicks the Doctor in the shin, little more than a light nudge, and she grins. "We are happy, idiot," she says, but Rory places a hand on her arm.
He doesn't think that what the Doctor is saying is as simple as that.
"What to you mean?" he says. "Take care of us? What's that about?"
The Doctor looks down at his hands, so small and quiet that Rory barely recognises him. What he sees makes him want to look after him too, makes him want to hold him against his chest in the way that he usually holds Amy - even if the Doctor wouldn't fit as well, even if he's all angles and squirmy madness. Rory thinks that he could try to soothe him.
"I don't quite understand it myself," the Doctor confesses, and Rory knows that it has to take a lot of courage for a man such as the Doctor to be able to admit to that at all. "Ever since I came back, I've felt differently towards you - the pair of you."
He doesn't specify what 'differently' means, but Rory thinks that his recent behaviour and the look on his face probably says it all for them: it takes Amy a fraction of a moment before she catches on. "Wait a second," she says, holding up a single finger. "Does this mean we get to snog you now?"
Amy's mind, as always, goes straight for the kissing. Rory tries not to smile in comfortable recognition, while the Doctor's head dips up and then down, poorly hiding a smile of his own. "If you'd like," he offers, magnanimous as ever.
Before Amy can lunge for him, Rory catches her around the waist, holding her back before she can maul him without another thought. "Are you sure about this?" he asks. "Shouldn't we be trying to fix you or something?" He's not sure if it's something to 'fix', but something doesn't sit quite right with him about the whole thing: the Doctor has always struck him as dangerously uninterested in sex. It had been yet another thing that had baffled and angered him about the Doctor when he had first re-popped into their lives, before the marriage. If it had been a sexual thing that stole Amy's attention, he might have been able to understand it in a bitter kind of way.
It's more than that. Better than that. Harder than that.
The Doctor tilts his head to the side as if he is listening to messages from beyond the universe. He blinks, once, and wets his lips with his tongue. "I don't think I want to be fixed," he says.
After that, there is no stopping Amy. Rory decides that he doesn't even want to try.
*
As a lover, the Doctor is more attentive than Rory would ever have thought him capable of. Careful, wise hands smooth over pale skin - Amy can't get the Doctor's clothes off fast enough. Rory would feel offended if he wasn't in the exact same rush himself, ripping away the Doctor's bow tie and throwing it somewhere that it will hopefully never be found again.
Amy is demanding and the Doctor offers himself, offers everything that they want, everything that Rory is too scared to take. He tastes the Doctor's skin and then his mouth only when Amy orders them to, the pair of them entangling at first for her amusement but then on their own terms: Rory pins the Doctor down against their too-soft bed, hands on his shoulders to stop him from squirming as he invades his mouth, flicking his tongue and tasting the Doctor's lips. Amy's hands slide over his back and then up, over into the Doctor's mad hair.
It isn't long before she is pouting for attention, and the Doctor is happy to give it to her: still trapped underneath Rory's spread legs, he turns over onto his front to kiss and nip at her pale thighs. She spreads her legs for him and scoots down low enough that his tongue and mouth can find her sex, can nuzzle in close and make her moan. From there it is easy, so easy, to push inside once they've got the Doctor ready, once he is slick and stretched and perfect.
The Doctor cries out into Amy's trimmed pussy, and she scolds him, her fingers tight in his hair. Rory can hardly pay attention: for all that he is alien, the Doctor feels human. He feels hot and tight and amazing, all that he could have imagined.
Amy squirms and wriggles until she slides underneath the Doctor altogether, Rory's hands reaching to help support him to give her room. He can't see it, but he hears the way that the Doctor groans when he enters her, the three of them fitting together as if it was meant to be like this, as if this is what they were designed for.
The Doctor is there for them, coaxing out every sensation and chasing their pleasure instead of his own. Rory has never known anything like it - but, after, when they collapse in a pile, he gets the feeling that they will never be able to let him out of their bed again.
*
When Rory wakes up, the Doctor is gone and there are two cups of tea sitting beside the bed, still warm. This time, they have the advantage of actually looking like tea, but Rory isn't brave enough to try drinking one.
Amy is sprawled on her front, still wiped out and unconscious. Rory's fingers linger on her shoulder for a few moments, and he brushes her hair to the side. He ought to wake her, but he wants the Doctor to be there when she does. She needs him there - she needs to know that there's more than sex to this, because there is. There has to be. The Doctor can't play with her like that: he can't play around with either of them, actually. Rory doesn't think that the delicate dynamic aboard this spaceship could handle that.
He slips out of bed as carefully as he can, making sure not to disturb Amy in the process. Luckily, she is still deeply captured in sleep: he can hear the whistle of her breath, nearly snoring. Not quite.
It takes some scrambling and hopping around in the dark before he is able to get his hands on his clothes. He pulls on his jeans and leaves the bedroom, sleepy but on a mission. He'll be back before Amy gets up: she shouldn't have to wake up alone.
The Doctor is fully dressed when he finds him, and has somehow managed to locate yet another of his bow ties. He is frowning, deep in concentration as he stares at the console, occasionally spinning a dial or two. Rory doesn't think that half of the controls even do anything. "You're up," Rory says. He wants to sound stern - he wants to tell the Doctor off for leaving at all - but he's no good at it. "We were still sleeping."
"Yes," the Doctor says, purposefully absent-minded. Rory isn't buying the act - not for a moment. "I thought you two might want a little more room without me crowding the bed."
Rory watches him, waiting for the Doctor to look up, but isn't really that surprised when he doesn't. For all that the Doctor is willing to face down alien invasions and save the universe again and again (and again), he's a coward when it comes to anything real. "We want you there," Rory states. "You're trying to make us happy, right? Make Amy happy? Then do it, and get back here."
The Doctor barely hesitates. There is a spare moment where his hands continue to linger on the controls, caressing them, but then he bows his head - he nods. "You're right," he says.
It's not something that Rory is used to hearing.
"It's been a long time since I've had this," the Doctor says, with a flutter of fingers as if that ought to illustrate what he's talking about. "Since I've wanted this, whatever it is. It would be easier to retreat."
"Always is." Rory smiles, crooked and sad. "You never do."
The Doctor twitches a smile at him, there and then gone again within a second. He looks down at the console, running his fingertips along its bumps and ridges. "Do you need more tea?" he asks. Rory isn't sure whether he is talking to him or to the TARDIS - and it is only aboard this strange, impossible ship that such a question could even make sense.
"We need you in bed," Rory answers. "That's all." He almost sounds commanding for a moment, but he follows it up by tugging on his earlobe and frowning, something that takes away somewhat from the effect that he'd been going for. "Come on."
He holds out his hand, palm facing upwards, and it rests in the air between the pair of them. Waiting. He swallows and refuses to let himself speak again until the Doctor reaches for him, their hands slipping together. Rory grins, as widely as if he has just tamed a wild rabbit, and gently pulls the Doctor after him in the direction of their bedroom. Inside, Amy is still sprawled on the mattress, blissfully asleep and unaware as they strip off once more and slip in beside her. The Doctor's skin is cold against Rory's hands, but with shared body heat and the warmth of the blanket around him, he will soon heat up once more.