The Doctor regularly has crushes; has somewhat out-of-line feelings for the brave, the loyal, the absolutely brilliant that look at him with awe and half-hidden admiration in their eyes and they smile at him and his hearts feel funny and his eyes go all fluttery (some people would liken this to schoolgirl-esque infatuation. The Doctor would like to disagree, and say it was much more dignified. Much more.)
He just never tells them, for fear of rejection or the heart-pounding what-ifs.
He lets himself daydream about futures for them though, living in an apartment in Leadworth and coming home to him after doing a boring "normal" job and just holding him and kissing him and saying how much he means to me and please marry me, oh please.
How stupid of him to want what he could never have.
But the Doctor soldiers on, waiting for the briefest of smiles aimed in his vicinity to get him through the day.
And he goes on because he would want him to. He knows deep somewhere in his brilliant mind, that he would want him to be the best of the human beings for him, so he tries to forget his feelings.
But, every once in a blue moon, he yell his name and wait with baited breath for two bare feet to slap the hallway floor, to come to his door.
He would go into his room and quietly ask what the matter is, arms crossed over a deliciously snug white t-shirt.
"Headache."
"Nightmare."
"Hungry."
He was always somewhat skeptical, but he never judged.
He would put his head in his lap and he would massage the Doctor's temples slowly, humming an old Beatles song and the Doctor imagined that this might be what domestic life would be like and it would be so boring but he could do it, a least for a month or two, for him.
Sometimes, he quietly asked the TARDIS to put Hey Jude on in the library, where he knew he would be.
That's what friends do, right? The Doctor wasn't always sure.
He would sometimes open the doors and gaze into the infinity of space, only to find Rory sitting next to him, reaching his hand out in some sort of comfort.
He grabbed it and squeezed it, feeling the callouses on his fingertips, wishing it to mean more than it did. Rory took a long look at him and pulled him into a tight hug. The Doctor sighed, feeling Rory's warm breath on his neck, wishing he could just hug back or smile into his neck or rub his back, feeling the soft curve of his spine under his hands.
The twisted fantasies of a mad alien in love with a human, he thought.
A doomed human with a future with someone else.
Never him, he thought as Rory slowly tightened the hug, tempting him to do the unthinkable and break the heart of Amy. Amelia Pond, the girl with the fairytale name.
Rory deserves more than the broken man in the corner, the trickster from another planet, the insane man who shows them the wonders of the universe.
The crazy man who lost his baby and made him dress up in past lives and made his life hell and loves him like a wildfire, crazy and unpredictable and all-consuming and smoldering even when you think it's out.
He was too old for this, wasn't he? A 900 year old man with a boyish face.
Too young to know better, and too old to care.
