AN: My best friend ToasterAlarmClock requested a fanfic about Rory and the Doctor and here it is! Happy Birthday Toasty! And look not a slash fic! Bite me! To all others, please enjoy the random Doctor Who brain spew that I have given you. R&R please.
His hands are thin and nimble. Long spidery fingers that are always touching something, anything they can. So eager to touch the universe just to make sure it's still there, or to assure that he's still alive, still running forever still outrunning his own personal monsters. His nails are short and at times he catches him chewing on them, though it isn't often, and the palest pink which seems to be tinted white. Sometimes it's intriguing just to watch his hands move against the console of the TADIS, his trusty sonic screwdriver, a strange alien device that's going to kill them all, so intriguing that he forgets the mad man is speaking.
At the moment the mad Doctor is flicking switches on the console. It's just the two of them-three actually the hum of the TARDIS seems to correct him- since Amy has gone off to bed. He still can hardly remember which buttons do what and what would blow a hole in the fabric of the universe so he keeps his hands away and watches the raggedy man's instead. They are much more interesting. That man, alien, sliding around the glass floors makes a name out of where he had hoped to make a profession. That man's hands, the hands of the Doctor, are not like his hands, the hands of a doctor (nurse his subconscious corrects). That man's hands have stopped the end of time, the end of the world on so many times, they have seen so many lost, hugged so many broken companions that have walked out those brilliant blue doors for the last time. his were nothing special compared to that. He was hardly a healer, and even when he had the familiar weight of a sword in his hands, also hardly a warrior. The Doctor's hands nearly that of a god with the universe at his fingertips. His, Rory Williams?, those of yet another bumbling human.
With those hands that have seen and held and touched the universe, he stopped down on Earth. He found a few brilliant, marvelous, shining spirits and extended that hand, like offering candy to a small child. Because that was all they really were in the grand scheme of things, compared to him, they were only children. But that wasn't true of him nor of Amy, not anymore. They had been with him, he'd come back for them, three times to them both, and they had waited. Ready all that time in between, two thousand years in his case, to jump back into that magical blue box, dive into the universe, and do a bloody outrageous amount of running. Because those hands were still extended towards them and they needed to clasp onto them while they could. He wondered if his wife could see it. The way those hands were inching away, frightened of where he would lead them next, frightened he would not be able to lead them back. But how could the Doctor be so afraid?
The answer comes to him easily as he watches the TARDIS accidently flip a lever down on the Doctor's long, quick, mortal hand. The childish man gives a short yelp of pain before scolding his old girl, berating her, telling her he was about to do that anyway. He was so human without even being human at all. Scared of the unknown, terrified of it, horrified of losing the people he loves, morning the people and planets he'd already lost. It wasn't the first time that Rory stopped thinking about the Timelord as the Doctor and just as a man. But each time the thought was so foreign and so painfully, heart wrenchingly true that his chest tightened to think on it. His eyes he's sure are desolate and despairing as he watches the no-longer-raggedy-man stop, glancing up at him, as if suddenly aware of his eyes.
When they look at each other he knows the Doctor is aware of his thoughts. He's never been good at hiding them before and knows that even if the Doctor can't read minds, which who's to say he can't, the Doctor can read him. Seconds tick by and the haunted look of an old man, one who's seen too much fighting, caused too much bloodshed, lived too long, appears in his eyes as they stare at each other, their eyes mirroring the others. A wall of forced cheerfulness is suddenly erected and the man on the other side of the console beams at him, Rory the Roman, the last centurion, who knows he knows the Doctor's mind better than Amy even if he doesn't quite understand most of it.
When the Doctor asks him what's on his mind he smiles back. He says nothing and asks what they're doing next and the Timelord springs around the colorful center enthusiastically already going off on some tangent or another. He keeps smiling, because his wife might be the Doctor's true companion, but he's something just as good, maybe even better; He's the Doctor's best mate, and he understands.