It was always bad news when he shut his door against her. Although, perhaps 'always' wasn't the right term- it had only happened twice before. Staring at the sign taped to the door, Amy huffed out her frustration. If she didn't huff and act all angry, she would have to admit she was hurt and that was clearly not an option. Letting on that her heart was breaking –just because Rory Williams shut his door on her – was impossible. She slid down the wall beside the door, tears she refused to acknowledge starting to trickle down her cheeks. Thank goodness Mrs Williams understood and had let her into the house at least. How embarrassing it would be to cry over Rory while sitting outside his place. At least if she did it inside, no-one but Amy, Rory and his mother would ever know.

Amy never knew what it was that made Rory stop being angry and start talking to her again; it just seemed to happen. A sick feeling in her stomach reminded her—as if she needed more reminding – this could happen again and one day it might not just fix itself. Amy didn't like things just happening; she preferred to take an active role in sorting out whatever problem faced her, which made this Rory thing frustrating. The first time he'd shut the door in her face had been when she was fourteen.

2003: They were sitting outside Rory's house enjoying some hot chips in the late afternoon sun. Rory lay his head back against the warm brick of his back porch and sighed. Amy laughed as she popped the final chip into her mouth and started wrapping the paper up. She poked Rory to try and draw him out of his mood.

'What's wrong? It's a beautiful day, you have a fantastic best friend and the world is great!' She aimed the paper into the Williams's rubbish bins, and crowed when it went in on the first try.

'I know.' Rory sighed again. 'Bad day at school; I'm just being stupid.' He turned to her. 'Tell me about your day to cheer me up.'

'Oh, I had the best day. There's a new kid in our class and he's so funny. Sorry I didn't see you at break; I was just talking to him and lost track of time.'

'He?' Rory's voice seemed suddenly flat, but when Amy looked at him he looked reasonably cheerful.

'Yeah, he,' she said. 'Try to keep up ... Anyway, he told the teacher off.' Rory's eyes went wide with shock at the idea of someone telling off a teacher. Amy grinned. 'Yeah, I know! He was so amazing! Ms Brown was so angry but it got us out of Algebra; and oh Rory, he's so cute.' Amy's hands demonstrated the unknown boy's features. After a minute she realised Rory had stopped paying attention and she frowned at him. 'What's the matter?' she asked, her brow creasing as she took in his tense body.

'Nothing. It's nothing ... Look, I have to go ... Mum's calling.'

'No she isn't!' Amy called after him. She threw up her hands and followed him inside only to be confronted with the shut door and a ringing silence from inside his bedroom.

Amy snorted in amusement at her younger self, though she was no closer today to understanding what had gone wrong. She'd thought it was a game; had laughed and told the idiot to open up and stop fooling with her. When he hadn't immediately pulled the door open to let her in, it became obvious that this wasn't a game. In a panic, she had beaten on it and yelled at him to stop being a total, complete, bloody imbecile. Amy Pond was a determined girl and she couldn't understand why her full-frontal assault wasn't working; that didn't stop Rory's door – with the silly alien head she had painted on it two summers ago still its main feature – from remaining stubbornly shut.

Eventually, after calling him every name she could think of, Amy had stormed off; angry at Rory for refusing to tell her what was wrong and furious at herself for caring. She'd called him the next day and he hadn't come to the phone even though she could hear his voice in the background. Amy had hung up in a temper and ripped up a Raggedy Doctor story she had been working on for him to play. As the pieces fluttered to the floor, she'd felt a moment of burning triumph before the horror had set in. She had dropped to her knees, scrabbling around to find them again; then placed each one in its proper order before taping them back together. Two days later she had tried again, taking Rory's favourite action movie over to his house along with a bottle of cola. She hardly ever watched it with him because the violence was too cheesy, but that day it had felt right. He had greeted her cheerfully and acted as if nothing had ever been wrong. Relieved, Amy had laughed, cuffed him on the arm and put the DVD into the player. She put the whole incident behind her, sure it had been a one-off and that the cause behind Rory's strange silent treatment was unimportant.

The second time she'd been faced with that door, Amy had been seventeen and sure she ruled the world, or at least Leadworth.

2006: They were lying side by side in her backyard under the stars. Rory was pointing out each constellation and what it stood for, while Amy listened in contentment. Thinking about the stars and taking adventures among them was still one of her favourite things to do, even though she knew she should be past the fairytale of her time traveller coming to whisk her away.

'That's the one,' she said with certainty, pointing at a bright star directly above them. 'That's the one where my raggedy doctor is waiting. He's still there, you know,' she added, turning towards Rory. 'One day he'll come back and take me away from this deadly dull life.'

'Deadly dull?' Rory asked, with a catch in his voice.

'Yeah. Nothing exciting ever happens in this place. Even if the Doctor doesn't come, I'm out of here as soon as possible.'

Rory grimaced and turned his head away. Amy rolled her eyes as she watched him.

'Oh, don't be such a fuddy dud, Rory. I know you love it here, but surely you don't want to be stuck in this place forever?'

His jaw worked a little before he said in an unnaturally stiff voice, 'no, you're right. There's nothing for you here.'

Satisfied, Amy kept talking about the stars and the adventures she was going to have. Rory listened but no longer took part in the conversation. After a few minutes he made some lame excuse and went home. The next day Amy went to visit him but his bedroom door was stubbornly shut.

Smiling through her tears, Amy recalled her actions that day. She'd tried yelling again, expecting him to yell back. Aunt Sharon was good at yelling back and Amy was vaguely surprised when greeted with a furious silence from the other side of the door. The first stirrings of alarm fluttered in her chest– while other people deserted her, Rory never did. Yet he had withdrawn from her twice now, with no reason and no explanation. It wasn't exactly a pattern, but Amy was always wary of the ways in which other people disappeared from her life. Until now Rory had never done that and she had kind of taken for granted that he would always be solidly there for her. It would help if Amy knew what it was that she'd done to make him do this; if she knew that, she wouldn't have to go through this again. Exasperated, Amy had kicked the door, then stalked off. She'd had a very therapeutic screaming match with Aunt Sharon later that evening, but it didn't help dispel the fear in her heart. Even once Rory had reappeared in her life, and things had gone back to normal, Amy had carried around the slight anxiety that one day he wouldn't come back to her.

This third time, at nineteen, proved to Amy that her fears weren't groundless. She still had no idea what caused these moods of Rory's and it didn't matter that there were years between each one. It was now a pattern.

2008: Amy's kissogram job sometimes meant that she had to work with people from Leadworth. Those days were always more challenging since the guys involved all felt like they owned a piece of her for days afterwards. The Leadworth jobs also always made Rory more twitchy than normal and he never agreed to go along to any of the parties she worked for. Today she was doing Jeff's 21st birthday and Rory should have been there; that he wasn't annoyed Amy for some reason. She was in a sour mood when Jeff's friends led him outside to see her, but she put on a blinding smile as they pushed Jeff into the middle of their circle. He was clearly nervous and stalling for time.

'What about Rory? What does he think of all this?' Jeff said, indicating Amy's outfit. Her face set in a frown. Rory had nothing to do with her job, so why did people keep asking her how he felt about what she did?

'Rory? No, he's nothing ...' She pulled Jeff towards her and heard the cheers from the nearby men as their lips met. Behind her, she vaguely heard footsteps pounding away into the distance and assumed one of the guys had been overcome by drink and needed to go deal with the issue. 'He has nothing to do with this,' she whispered fiercely to herself as she let Jeff go.

Half an hour later, she met Rory outside his house. He made sure she came past every time she worked just so he could be sure she got home safely. Amy let him fuss because she knew it made him feel better. In fact, if she told the truth, she actually liked unwinding after her jobs by talking to Rory. She'd never let him know that, though.

'Hiya,' she called in a cheerful voice. 'I always hate it when it's a local bloke, you know,' she said, slumping down on the low wall next to him. 'They always get so ... possessive.'

Rory's hands clenched by his side, but he just said, 'don't you feel like it's easier because you know them? I mean, you and Jeff ... well, you ... you used to have crush on him.'

'Oh, Jeff? No, he's nothing, and it was so awkward.' She sighed and turned to Rory. 'Well, come on then ... are you going to ask me in?' She quirked her head at him winningly, and he shook his head. When she pressed him again, flirting with him slightly in an attempt to lighten him up, he just clenched his jaw together then turned and walked into the house. Amy stared after him, perplexed. When the tears threatened, she knocked on the door and begged his mother to let her in before they could start falling.

'Oh Rory,' Amy sighed finally, still sitting by his door. 'I don't know what to do.' She heard a muffled thump from the bedroom as if someone had settled down against the other side. She leaned her head back against the wall. 'Rory,' she said in as firm a tone as she could muster. 'You need to tell me what I did, so I can undo it.'

'Why?' the voice through the door was so soft that Amy barely heard it. She grimaced.

'Because I need to fix it, you idiot.' Amy's voice came out louder and more strident than she had expected and she furiously swiped at the tears on her cheeks. She swallowed and the next words were almost a whisper. 'I don't like it when you're mad at me.'

'I'm not mad at you.'

'Yeah, right.' Amy tried to make her voice light and casual and resented the way it broke. 'Dammit, why am I crying over this?' she hissed furiously to herself. She heard the door unsnib but refused to look at Rory as he wriggled out to her. He pulled the door shut behind him and leaned back against it. After a few moments, Amy snuck a look at him. His face was set and his eyes closed, but at least he was here.

Amy wasn't used to feeling unsure around him, and she certainly wasn't used to being unable to get Rory to do what she wanted. She sat in uncharacteristic silence, trying to work out how to approach him and make things right between them again.

'I'm really not mad, you know.' Amy's head snapped around to look at Rory. His words were saying one thing, but the tightness in his voice said another.

'But ... you're all ...' Amy waved her hand at Rory, indicating his tense form and the distance between them. She hadn't really noticed before how they would casually touch when sitting together; arms looping into each other, or legs brushing as they relaxed. Now he was maintaining a rigid distance from her, and she missed the closeness.

Rory's mouth twisted and he didn't speak for a few seconds. 'You hurt me,' he finally said. It was little more than a whisper, and Amy could almost feel the embarrassment flowing off him. 'It's silly, forget it.' He turned away from her, still keeping his distance.

Amy felt an overwhelming rush of frustration. This should have been the end of it; she should have been gloating that he was talking to her much faster than either of the other times (she stored away 'don't yell; sit down and talk' into her memory banks for future reference), and yet it wasn't over. She huffed again, and a flicker of a smile appeared at the corner of Rory's mouth.

'Okay, how did I do that? How did I hurt you?' The petulant tone Amy often used when things weren't going her way, and she felt like she was out of control, was back; Rory actually laughed. She looked up at him in surprise.

'Oh, Amy; you just don't get it, do you?' She shook her head, her ginger hair cascading around her shoulders. He gave a sour smile. 'Sometimes I think I'll never be able to follow where you go,' he said as he turned to look at her. 'You're never going to wait for me.' This time, the smile was sad as he added, 'Sometimes I think you don't even want to.'

Pain clutched at Amy, though she didn't understand why. 'That's not true; I'll always wait for you. You're –' she glanced at him sideways again and reached out to nudge his leg with her foot. 'You're my best friend. Who else puts up with me?'

Rory smiled again; the effect was still somewhat twisted, causing something to lurch in Amy's heart. 'Best friend, yeah.' He gave her a searching look, then stood up and offered her a hand. 'Come on; let's go watch a movie and you can paint your nails again. It's been three whole days since you changed colours.'

Amy shrugged off the sense that something still wasn't quite right; she let him draw her to her feet, arguing all the while about which movie they would watch.

Hours later, while they were laughing together over the stupid way the movie had ended, Amy suddenly flipped onto her stomach on Rory's bed, bumping into his thigh. He tensed up, and wriggled away from her slightly. Amy frowned at him.

'Why do you keep doing that?'

'Doing what?' he asked, his voice absent as he took the movie out of the player and slid it back into its case before lining it up with the rest of his collection.

'Pulling away from me – you've been doing it all evening.' Amy was unable to keep a note of hurt out of her words, but Rory didn't seem to notice.

'What? No, I haven't. Look, see –' he started tickling her and Amy rolled away, squealing. When he'd let up and she'd caught her breath, Amy settled back on the bed and glared at Rory.

'You're trying to distract me. Why?'

Instead of answering, Rory crossed the room and began sorting through the books on one of his shelves. He had his back to her, but Amy could tell he wasn't really focused on the task; his actions looked more mechanical than purposeful.

Watching him as he carefully avoided her question, Amy realised something. She slid off the bed and padded over to where Rory was standing. She slipped her arms around his waist from behind and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. He stiffened and stood completely still, the books he was sorting through clutched in white fingers. Amy could hear his heart through the thin protection of his shirt, the beats as ragged as his breath had become.

'You were there, weren't you? At Jeff's party; that's why you're hurt.' Amy tugged on his arm, forcing him to face her. Her smile was light and flirtatious but he wouldn't meet her eye. Grinning, Amy firmly took his face in her hands and kissed him. 'You don't need to worry, you know,' she said when she was done, giggling a little at his stunned expression. 'I like you best of all. You're Rory.' He grinned at her, though his bemused expression clearly told her that he had no idea that being Rory meant everything.

'No, I wasn't ... I wouldn't ...' he stammered out. Amy pulled him into another kiss, cutting off his protests. From then on she made sure she kissed him at least as often as she kissed her clients, because it was so much more pleasant, and he started calling himself her boyfriend. She wasn't sure what they were to each other, but saying it made him happy. For some reason making Rory happy made Amy feel good, so she let it slide. Sometime after the Doctor had left her behind—again – she realised it was actually true; Rory was her boyfriend, and she had to punch him playfully on the arm to let him know how good that made her feel. Maybe it wasn't 'always bad' when he shut his door against her, after all.