Quick, messy thing. Because, as much as I'd like to believe otherwise, the Ponds are far from perfect.
Set in season 6's 'Closing Time'.
Enjoy~
...
It only takes a glimpse and a possible trick of the light to send Rory's normal life nose-diving in a cloud of smoke into the proverbial ocean. It's in a shop, of all places, a normal, human shop, the epicentre of normalcy and humanness, when things tumble down.
Rory has his usual armful of shopping piled upon him, and Amy has just sent a happy little autograph-hunter on her way when he glances over his shoulder by chance to see a hint of tweed and what he thinks is a bowtie across the room. He stops and looks again, because he knows of only one person (Time Lord?) who would wear that hideous combination.
Afterwards, he swears it off as a trick of the light, or his mind playing tricks on him or perhaps someone else with a similar (awfully outdated) sense of fashion. Because if the Doctor had been there, in that normal, human shop, why didn't he at least said hello after months and months since his last appearance? It doesn't make sense at all.
The worst thing he does is mention it to Amy.
She's been okay over the last few weeks, better than the forlorn days immediately proceeding the Doctor's departure. She's gotten a job as a fashion model and is making her way through the business, they do husband-and-wife things together, go to parties on weekends, have dinner with their parents every now and again and live normal, human lives. Well, as normal and human as they could.
At the mention of the word tweed, Amy drops everything, figuratively and literally, and runs. She runs back the way they came, and searches through the aisles and Rory needs to physically pull her out of the shop before she can start screaming out the Doctor's name, and make more of a scene than she already has for the other shoppers. He personally doesn't care about making a scene, only the look of panic on his wife's face.
The car ride home is forcefully silent, but as soon as they walk through the front door and deposit everything on the kitchen table, it is everything but. Amy screams first, and then Rory screams back. He yells about how it had only been a glimpse and wishful thinking, and about how she had jumped on it without a second thought. He yells that she needs to move on, because the Doctor had left to keep her, them, safe, and about how important it is that they do that. He yells about other things, too- about how uncomfortable it made him, with her exposing herself to those bloody cameras, how he hates when she leaves the bathroom sink a mess, how she sometimes wore her clothes in ridiculous ways and every little thing that had ever annoyed him or made him mad about her came spilling out of his mouth in one big go.
And she yells back that she misses the adventure, that she needs it, that normal is boring without the running and the adrenalin and the aliens. She yells that she's tried to do it, for him, but she can't. She yells about the way he hangs out the washing, and how much she actually hates his second-favourite shirt and the long hours he works at the hospital. She yells a lot of things that she probably means as much as Rory means the things he says, but it still leaves him angry and bitter.
They don't speak for three days after, but when they eventually do, he apologises profusely, throws out his second-favourite shirt, and she tells him she loves him over and over for the entire night. It takes longer than three days for things to really cool between them, but it does happen in the end.
They go back to normal, but the hint of tweed remains at the back of Rory's mind.