A/N: A plot bunny that just would not leave me alone. Written for my awesome beta/co-author phantomforever42 because Eight is just the most adorable thing ever and Rory is almost as adorable and the two of them together is just unimaginably cute. Only I've imagined it. Er, yes...
Rory supposed he should be used to this by now. Still, it was always annoying when the Doctor ran off somewhere and left him behind, hand-waving it as "oh I'll just run off to [wherever,] be back in [blank] minutes" and ending up returning after [blank] days/weeks/months/years. Only usually, Amy was stuck waiting for him too. This time was different. The Doctor had "just run off to the [some weird name Rory couldn't be bothered to remember] system, just to grab something I left behind, won't be a minute, come along Amy" and left Rory sitting on a park bench contemplating his navel. And then his shoe. And then the ground. And eventually his surroundings, but that got boring after a while, so he went back to staring at his shoe.
It was at one of his more fascinating moments of self-contemplation (he had got to something like "I wonder why the Doctor always leaves me behind" and was beginning to think he was going round in circles) that the unfamiliar voice broke into his thoughts. He didn't look up from his shoe, but he could tell the man was talking to him, since he said (absurdly cheerfully, to Rory's romantically melancholic state of mind) "Hello~! You look like you're waiting for someone."
"Yeah," said Rory, as he looked up slowly, taking in the stranger's shoes (modern, pretty normal), trousers (not quite so modern), frock coat (wait, hold on a second, what?), "I-"
And then his eyes reached the stranger's face. His first thought was something akin to "...prettiest bloke I've ever seen..."; his second, "Wait, what? NO!"
After a short time, which he spent musing on the facts that a) no one should be allowed to be that attractive and b) those shoes were starting to look strangely anachronistic and attempting to ignore his emotional responses to said facts, he realized he was staring.
"Er," he said articulately. "Um." He put one of his hands behind his head awkwardly and tried to pretend he hadn't just been staring at some random (male) stranger for an absurdly long time, even if he had legitimate reasons for doing so. Attempting to find humour in his situation, he laughed, equally awkwardly and rather humourlessly, and attempted to excuse himself with "Sorry, I'm a bit scatterbrained today." Lame, his brain told him helpfully. He told it where it could stick its insults and continued babbling—er, talking. "But yeah, actually, I'm waiting for someone called the Doctor." And why he was telling some strange man about this he did not know. Okay, so the guy had a trustworthy face (if by "trustworthy" you mean "angelic" oh no Rory not starting down that road again). Then again, he hadn't even seemed to notice Rory's intense awkward staring of a moment before, which meant he was probably at least a bit odd.
Then the stranger did something completely unexpected: he grinned and said, "Then you're waiting for me!" as if he expected Rory to understand exactly what he was talking about.
Rory didn't, and stared at him blankly until he understood... that... Rory didn't understand. Yes. Rory's synapses did not appear to be firing on all cylinders today, and for that matter, neither did the stranger's.
"I'm the Doctor!" the stranger said, helpfully pointing to himself.
Rory stared at him again. "Nonono, you're not. I mean, sorry. Maybe you're a doctor, but not MY Doctor. Well not mine, actually most of the time it feels rather more like I'm his, n-not like that! I'm MARRIED... why am I telling you all this? Er... my Doctor's about yea high, eccentric bloke, wears tweed and bow ties? You're not him." He gestured vaguely at the "Doctor," attempting to point out the Victorian clothing, height, and complete lack of a bow tie, but realized in doing so that he was pointing at, well, all of him.
(That reminded him of something... some movie about dragons... wow, he was really bad at being alone in his own head...)
"Hm. Don't remember that one, but then I don't remember a lot of things. Mind like a sieve, me," the stranger said, and suddenly it dawned on Rory and he began to feel a bit of an idiot.
"You're him! I mean, you're an earlier him. Or... a later him? Sorry! I'm... really sorry, I'm rather slow in the head today..."
"Oh, that's all right! So you're one of my companions, then? Do you like it~?" The Doctor (god, that was weird) beamed at him. This one, Rory decided, was even more hyper and easily distractible than his Doctor—a near impossible feat to accomplish. Rory wasn't sure whether to compliment him or run away very fast. In the end he decided on neither.
"Yeah, it's certainly interesting. I—oh, wait, I can't tell you too much about your future self, right? Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey and all that."
"Ooh, that's good, I like that!"
Rory sincerely hoped he hadn't just given the Doctor that phrase, because if he had he would probably hate himself for it for the foreseeable future (and past). He was counting on this Doctor's self-proclaimed bad memory to make sure he didn't use that awful phrase on unsuspecting people.
...oh god...
"Er, so! You're, um-"
Thankfully Rory was saved from having to think up something intelligent and suitably distracting to say by the unmistakable sound of the TARDIS materializing. He breathed a (hopefully inaudible) sigh of relief and attempted to run toward the sound, only to be grabbed and squashed—er, hugged—by an overenthusiastic Doctor, who shouted in his ear something that sounded like "See you in a couple regenerations~" and WHOA FACE WAY TOO CLOSE. Rory stumbled backwards and half-tripped, half-ran toward the TARDIS. He had to say, he'd never been so glad to see his Doctor in his life.
"Hello!" his Doctor exclaimed, opening the door so that Rory could gratefully fall into the control room, out of breath. "Did you have fun?"
"I met your past self and he has even less concept of personal space than you do," Rory said all in one breath, collapsing onto a bench and taking deep breaths to calm himself down. "All in all, it wasn't a horrible experience, although it was extremely awkward. I do feel bad for anyone who had to travel with him though. Did you get what you were looking for?"
"Er, yes! This, um, thingy here. See? Little gadget... thingy." The Doctor waved vaguely at the console. Rory stared at him.
"...you did this to me on purpose, didn't you? Is this another one of your little Aesops?"
"Nope, this one's a stable time loop. I remembered meeting you in the past and that I had been gone in the future, so I just..." (here he waved his hands in the air) "and here we are!" He beamed. Rory stared at him some more.
Maybe, he thought, he should have left with that earlier Doctor while he had the chance...
A/N: "You just gestured to all of me!"
I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.