Amy was trying to keep up with his pace but her long dress and heels were slowing her down. Her current state of fury wasn't helping the matter one bit, either, but the Doctor simply refused to wait for her. She'd put him through enough all evening as it was.

"How do I look?" she had asked when she'd joined him by the console, and he'd said 'Fine' without raising his eyes, because as oblivious as the Doctor tended to be, even he knew it could only be a trick question.

"Men," she had gestured emphatically to no one in particular.

"Hey! Time Lords," he'd countered, and she'd sulked for a long, long time.

It wasn't that he didn't notice. He did. As much as he wished he didn't, he noticed. She made it very difficult not to, especially when she went out of her way to make herself look so noticeable. But the line had to be drawn somewhere and for the time being, it stood inches away from allowing her out of her room in such attire.

Her long-skirted lavender dress was probably the least revealing outfit she'd worn during their time together. Her hair was tied in a knot that made her look older, more sophisticated, and only vaguely related to little Amelia Pond from Leadworth, Earth. She looked... nice. Possibly a bit more than that, not that he'd ever admit as much. There. Line drawn.

If only she was grateful of his continuous efforts to restore the status quo between them. But Amy didn't appear to be grateful at all. Instead of the thankfulness he so rightly deserved, he had to endure her persistent bad moods and constant provocations.

It really was a shame that she could forget all about her entire planet being zapped to the other side of the universe by genocidal aliens but wouldn't let go of an inopportune kiss that never should have happened in the first place. A kiss which the Doctor himself never even gave a second thought to. Or only very rarely.

He'd brought her to the royal party as a peace offering of sorts. Surely, after a reasonably pleasant evening in gentle company, in the most magnificent palace she'd ever seen -he was fairly sure- with no rescue mission, no danger and none of that running she kept complaining about, she would finally recover some of her good spirits.

But Amy's behavior had been anything but reasonable. She'd ignored him all evening while purposely disregarding every warning she'd been given, which might have been the most infuriating thing of all because those warnings served a purpose, and she should know by now that all good-looking humanoid aliens were not well-intentioned. He'd suffered through the dancing, the coquettish smiles, the outrageous flirting... He'd even chose to ignore those infuriating throaty laughs. He had managed not to strangle any of the male guests, however tempted he'd been. But his patience had its limits and he was done being understanding.

"I don't want to leave. It was a great party," she complained for the millionth time.

The Doctor gritted his teeth together and gave her arm one sharp pull to help her along.

"You're seriously expecting me to believe you're pulling me out of there -physically extracting me from my first extraterrestrial party- because I had a bite of cake?"

"You were specifically instructed not to eat anything. You could be dead. You could have grown a second head. You have no idea-"

"They had little smiling faces on them, how harmful could they be?"

"Right, what's a little toxicity when the icing is so bright and friendly?"

"I'm not intoxicated."

"So, you're acting like an obnoxious little brat completely of your own device? That's just fantastic. Well, no more parties for you until you've learned how to behave." He slowed his stride to let her feel the full impact of his murderous glare, but her response wasn't at all what he'd been hoping for.

"Oh, look at you," Amy said as her index finger landed square on the tip of his nose. She had the nerve to laugh straight to his face. "You're pretty when you're mad."

"I am. I'm very pretty. You need to rest."

"Good idea."

"Not here!" he shrieked, pulling her up none too gently. She looked mildly offended then but didn't argue, much to his relief.

"You know what I saw back there?" she asked from behind him, and he turned to see she had stopped walking again. He refrained from a long, pained sigh. Barely.

"If it involves either pink elephants or the colour of sounds, those cakes were more efficient than I thought."

"No," she said, her eyes shining dangerously. "I saw you ogling my dress and staring daggers to anyone who dared to talk to me all evening."

"I did no such thing!"

"Admit it, Doctor. You were jealous," she sing-sang.

"Of what?" he asked with forced perplexity, which finally made her keep quiet until they reached the TARDIS.

"Maybe you should just take me home," she said the moment the door slammed behind her.

"Oh! Oh, that's rich. You want to go home? I'll get you there right now."

"Fine!" she bellowed, and started tapping her foot. The sound echoed in the abnormally silent control room.

"Fine," he repeated with a smirk, and jumped to the console to pull hard on a lever that, as far as he knew, only served to activate the sitting room's kettle. "Leadworth it is, then. Since that's what you want. It is what you want, isn't it?"

"When did you start worrying about what I want?"

"What makes you think I don't?"

"Ever since that- that night, you've been dismissing me. What's the point of showing me about if I'm only meant to stand there looking pretty? Oh, wait. I'm not supposed to do that either!" she shouted, and the tapping started again, harder this time.

"Dismiss- what are you on about?"

"I'll make you a deal, Doctor. You take me home and I'll give you a nice little souvenir. A flower plant. A puppy, maybe? Something that looks good but not too good, that won't talk back, won't provoke you, won't try to- anything. Then I can finally find a way to get on with my life."

"I don't think I understand this conversation at all," he said, although he understood only too well.

"You keep leaving and coming back. You say one thing when you mean another. You kiss me back and then pretend it never happened. You stare at me sideways and then act like I'm not there. You keep making me wish for impossible things and I'm tired, Doctor. I'm exhausted by the constant back and forth."

"Well. I think it might be starting to get on my nerves, too."

"Make up your mind, then."

"My mind's all made up," he said cautiously.

"Is it, really? If I kissed you now, would you-"

"No."

"Why not? It wouldn't be completely unheard of. We're both single, consenting adults, coming home together from a party. Where, thanks to you, I had a miserable time, by the way."

"Well, if you'd only listened to what I-"

"The point, Doctor!"

"The point? The point is, you're twenty one years old. You're practically a newborn. The only adult here is me and I don't think I'm consenting to anything. And you," he said and pointed an accusatory finger to her face, "you're not even single! You're young and human and engaged to marry a nice chap who probably hates me quite enough as it is. You ate friendly cakes-"

"Just one bite, for God's sake!"

"Amy," he said, and let out a long-suffering sigh. "For so many reasons, good reasons, this is the last thing either of us-"

He never got to finish that sentence because the next moment, her hands were in his hair, pulling him in more forcefully than necessary. But her kiss was as sweet as her hold was tight and her lips felt soft and warm and pliant. She didn't have the element of surprise going for her this time, which should have allowed him to react faster. Instead, his mind was wiped blank instantly and he didn't do a thing.

For all the arguments he'd just made and many more, this could not be happening.

Except it was, and it felt brilliant.

When her tongue caressed his lips, he let her in, and his heartbeats picked up at once as his treacherous body reacted in the worst of ways. He felt her smile against his mouth and finally had the sense to pull away.

"I wish you hadn't done that," he muttered and readjusted his bow-tie in a vain effort to restore some sort of composure.

"Too bad," she whispered, and did it again. She didn't have to pull so hard this time.

Only a few seconds, he told himself as one of his hands wrapped around her shoulder while the other brushed the small of her back. Enjoy it for a few seconds and then... He wasn't entirely clear on what would happen then.

There was a distracting little clasp behind her neck that his hand couldn't help but play with. He wished himself to stop but his fingers kept moving of their own accord. After a few seconds of absent-mindedly pulling on the silky fabric, the most horrendous thing happened. The fastener came undone and the top of her dress sagged between them.

Amy gasped and took a step back in surprise. The bodice of her dress slipped down and over her skirt with a little woosh, leaving much freckled skin bare before his eyes.

Her hands flew up to cover her modesty, but only briefly. Her expression grew defiant as her hands came to rest against her hips and she waited, biding her time.

He'd seen a bare human chest before, more than once. Truth be told, he'd lived long enough to have seen all sorts of chests before. But Amy's round, soft human breasts were a mesmerizing sight. He stood frozen for a few moments, until she grabbed his left hand to place it on her body. She made a sound like a muffled gasp when their skin touched and he had to shut his eyes tightly in a desperate effort to regain control of the situation.

"This is not a good idea, Pond."

"Mmh-mmh."

"You really should stop, now," he managed to say between long, luscious kisses.

"But I'm not doing anything," she pointed out, and he realized in horror that her hands were now circling his neck and he was cupping her breast entirely of his own accord.

"I need to stop, then," he said, his voice sounding oddly strangled to his own ears.

"Do you, really?"

"Oh, yes," he assured her as his bow-tie fell to the ground.

"Then stop," she dared.

"I'm about to, I assure you," he said, but his fingers had started tracing a path along her collarbone, down the curve of her breasts, then back up to the fragile little bone beneath her soft, pale skin.

"Okay. Whenever you feel like it," she whispered agreeably as she started working on the buttons of his shirt.

Soon her hands were lying flat on each side of his chest, feeling his hearts, and her face lost all trace of bravado as she stared at his body with an expression of wonder. She looked up and smiled, her first genuine smile in days, and with a little jerk of her hips, the dress slipped further down, revealing the top of her hips as it held precariously to the curve of her lower back.

"Please don't do that."

"What, that?" she asked, and stood in her panties while lavender silk pooled around her ankles.

"Oh, dear."

Their lips met again and the kiss grew instantly frantic, wet and breathless.

Amy's hands and lips were roaming freely now and he wasn't doing a thing to stop her. In truth, he'd gotten past the point where stopping was an option alarmingly fast. He may be old and wise but his body was brand new and eager to oblige. Her skin tasted like nothing he could remember, so exotically new that thoughts of reason, wisdom or restraint were quickly evading his mind.

"Is there anything I'm supposed to do?" she asked. "Anything you like, or..." Her voice trailed as her mouth did the most marvellous thing to his nipple.

"Anything I... What?"

"Well, I don't know, I've never done this with a Time Lord before."

"I think the idea remains pretty much the- Oww!"

"Okay, no biting, then. I thought you might enjoy that."

"I don't. Although I think I used to, at some point. I wore a leather jacket, too."

"May I?"

"If you must," he groaned, and helped her get him out of his pants.

"Your room? Mine?"

"How about here? New body, you see. A bit quick on the uptake."

"Not too quick, I hope."

"Well, frankly, Pond, that would be entirely your fault."

"I accept that," she said, and lost her words for a long time as he lay her down on the floor by the console to do some roaming of his own. It had been a while, all right, but not so long that he didn't know how to elicit the most endearing little sounds in under a minute.

It wasn't until her legs were tightly wrapped around his waist and he was bracing himself against her that Amy suddenly seemed to remember the technicalities of such things.

"Wait!" she yelped. "Should I worry about birth-control?"

"Nope. Alien," he supplied with a strained grin, and at long last plunged fully inside her.

"Oh, good," she moaned. "It would be the most inappropriate time for me to get pregnant."

"True enough," he gasped.

"I don't have anything else to worry about, do I?"

"Well, I could regain my senses."

"I don't think so. I've dreamt of this for too long."

"Does Rory know about those dreams of yours?" he said in a groan, and nearly missed her air of pure outrage.

"We're not talking about him now, Doctor!"

"Oh. Right."

"Please shut up and concentrate."

"You're the one who keeps-"

"Hush, now."

"Alright, alright," he grunted, and nothing they said after that made much sense at all.

They'd been looking for his bedroom to get some rest when they'd stumbled into the gigantic master bathroom they didn't know existed and its most impressive tub. They made love again against a shower stall that seemed specifically designed for that purpose before slipping into the warm water together. New bodies came with definite perks.

Bathing together had felt oddly intimate, possibly more so than anything they'd done that night, but delightful all the same. The Doctor had taken his time shampooing Amy's hair and lathering her back while she took a childish delight in bursting the bubbles that kept magically flying up from the soapy water.

It had been so long since he had last enjoyed such simple, carnal pleasures, that he was reluctant to break the fragile peace of the moment.

It was occurring to him, though, that Amy was being unusually quiet. She was resting against him, her back to his chest when he heard her sigh as yet another bubble flared against her index finger.

"What's going on in that messy head of yours, Amelia Pond?"

"Nothing. It's just... I'm still getting married in the morning."

"You're still getting married in the morning," he agreed cautiously, and tipped her chin toward him until their eyes met.

"I don't think I'm ready for the morning to come just yet," she whispered.

"It's okay."

"I want it to, mind you. One day. But- It's not you. Not this. It's me. All that waiting... I don't know how to go back."

"The morning can come whenever you want it to."

"That's not true, though. Is it?"

"Well," he said softly, lacing their fingers together, "for the most part. You know this can't last forever."

"I never asked for forever," she muttered past the lump in her throat. There wasn't anything he could offer, no comforting words that were truthful enough. Instead of offering meaningless promises, he set about rubbing her neck until his fingers had completely shrivelled up.

"Morning will come later," he said with a kiss to her temple. "Now's good, too."

"Now's good," she agreed with a small smile.

They didn't leave the tub until all the bubbles had burst.