Eight months later, toward the end of January, Rory visits Amy and her aunt before flying to Rome to begin his semester abroad.
At the end of their week together she drives him to the airport, joking all the way. She jokes into the parking garage, while he's getting checked in, up to the entrance to the security line, where it's time to say goodbye. He fiddles with the strap of his bag incessantly and she takes his hands in hers, because she doesn't really do the whole verbal comforting dance.
"Of course you're leaving the semester when I finally take my lab science," she says. "Can't even make you do my homework."
"That's what the internet is for," Rory reminds her. Sounding a little desperate, he adds, "and you can use it all the time, to ask me anything. For email or Skype or whatever."
"Because I'm really going to want to hear all your fantastic study abroad stories while I'm stuck in the boonies." Still joking.
"Because I'll miss you," he says seriously, intently, leaning in to her.
Amy has to duck her head. "Idiot." When she kisses him (and she does, because what else is she to do?), she can feel him smile against her mouth. A quick goodbye and he slips into line.
She stays a while, grinning when Rory looks over, until he disappears from view and she has to head back to her car, to head back to her house, so she can pack up and head back to her school for a very long semester.
Amy's lab science, unfortunately, is physics. It's all she could get. The course is only a 100-level, but she's never been strong in science and the professor has an accent. Her history major hasn't prepared her for this.
And worse, the class requires her to use the stupid physics lab in the gross, creepy basement of the science complex where she never goes. She actually has Laura draw her a map so she won't get lost.
Of course, she loses said map and spends fifteen minutes wandering down what appears to be the same grubby white corridor over and over. She's about ready to scream bloody murder when somebody swings around the corner and nearly knocks her to the ground.
"Slow down," she quite shouts, a little beside herself in light of various accumulated frustrations.
"Sorry, sorry," pants the—the guy—and she knows that voice, and she takes a real look at him.
No. No. It's impossible.
Eight months—she'd been positive he was a townie, or maybe even a ghost, but not—he can't just be here. And in that same stupid jacket.
Patches recognizes her too. In fact, he must be delighted to see her, because the hug he gives her lifts her off the ground. "Amy Pond! My old friend," he cries, his face buried in her shoulder.
Are they friends? Is that the way she'd put it? More than acquaintances, briefer than old flames, lighter than exes. Sweeter than past hook-ups. She couldn't name it if she tried, but maybe that makes it acceptably innocent or something.
"Hello," she manages, a little breathless from the embrace. He sets her down and the grin on his face is ridiculous beyond description.
"How are you, Amy?"
"I'm all right—a little surprised, right now. You?"
His face falls, reminded of some calamity. "I'm trying to work out a very difficult problem. Which is why, the running—I like to run around the physics basement. Helps me think."
"Does it?"
"Yes, I very much recommend it."
"Excellent." He's stopped staring at her and is glancing anxiously down the hall, like he's already bored with her company. This is both infuriating and embarrassing to her. Amy purses her lips. "Are you a physics major, or something?"
"Yes," he chirps, nodding too much, his hair flopping with the movement.
"Interesting. You know, I actually know very little about you, old friend." There's an edge to her voice that gets his attention. He doesn't like confrontation, she senses, which makes this all the sweeter for her. "I wonder why that could be. Why don't you propose a hypothesis on that one?"
Patches sets about picking a bit of imaginary lint off his tweed. "Well."
She grabs his arm, and his head snaps up. He stares at her with just the right amount of fear. She must be glowing, this is so satisfying. Eight months. "Why did you say five minutes?"
When he opens his mouth, the noise that comes out reminds her of a cat at odds with a hairball. He manages, after a little more guttural flailing: "I remembered—I remembered I had an engagement, and I thought it would only take a minute to explain that I was busy, and then it didn't." He sounds sorry, at least. That's harder to feign than people think. The sight of him running up the stairs, away from her, comes back to Amy. Everything in that room had been bathed in blue and semi-precious for it, even the back of his jacket disappearing through the door.
"So where have you been?" she demands. "I looked for you. I decided you weren't a student, and I guess I was wrong, but it was hard to tell because I didn't even know your name." It's difficult to sound angry without sounding upset, isn't it? Amy swallows a sigh and lets go of his arm, which he brings protectively to his chest.
Patches shakes his head. "I'm sure I told you my name."
"Didn't."
"Did, I think."
"Nope. Never knew it. Still don't, actually."
He struggles with this for a beat, and then says, "James. Jamie, if you want. McCrimmon. It doesn't really matter. I respond to a lot of things."
"Yeah, Patches," she remembers outloud.
"Patches?" He glances at his elbow, and she thinks she catches a little thoughtless smile on his face.
"I called you Patches that night. You didn't even notice." Since then she'd recalled their adventure enough times (often in painstaking detail) that she could remember every word they'd said, or at least give a good guess.
"Ha. I guess I didn't." He tilts his head side-to-side a couple of times, weighing her observation. "I think it suits me. You should call me that."
Instead of James. Or Jamie. These names make her think of oversized navy sweaters, the kind ideal for bad weather; she doesn't know where the connection comes from. Patches makes her think of nobody but him. "I should," she agrees. "Maybe," she adds, remembering her anger.
"Good, Pond." And there's that. So, Patches and Pond. Amy bites her lip so as not to laugh and give him the impression that she's anything less than thoroughly pissed off.
She quickly shifts back to her questions: "So where've you been?"
"Well, I was studying in England last semester." Oh, good, another boy who's gotten to live out her fantasy of world travel. Just what she needs. As whenever the topic of study abroad arises, Amy curses Aunt Sharon and their bank accounts.
"And what about during the last two weeks of sophomore year? Of my sophomore year, I mean—what year are you even in?"
"I'm in yours," he replies brightly. "We're juniors now. Isn't that strange?"
"Yeah, crazy. What about all of sophomore year, and freshman year?" Amy finds herself stepping toward him, so incensed is she by the mystery of this boy. Sweeping into and out of her life like some pasty miracle. "How come I've never seen you? You're not exactly forgettable."
Patches eyes her, probably to trying to calculate whether or not she's just complimented him. "I transferred here. At the beginning of last spring."
"From where?"
"A big school."
"Which big school?"
"State."
"Why'd you transfer?"
"Wanted to."
"Why'd you want to?"
"Reasons."
"Reasons?"
"Yeah, reasons."
"Hmph," says Amy. To her dismay, she's smiling a little, and he's smiling back.
He seems to pluck himself up now, like he's looking for something about which to be his incessantly cheerful self. "I spent most of my time in the lab my first semester here, actually, so I didn't get out much. That party we met at, that was my first party. Don't love those kinds of parties, the dancing is all so—" He makes an odd gesture, sort of rubbing a hand along his torso, and she supposes he means to indicate "sexual" or some such adjective. She laughs, regardless. "What?" he asks, when he sees her giggling. "I like talking to people, you can't do that there, and if I'm going to dance I want to dance, not—simulate, you know, that stuff."
She comes back to herself after a few deep breaths. "You're just full of wisdom, aren't you?"
"I'd like to think so." As with everything he says, he talks too loudly, and overzealously, and she loves it. She's never met anyone so unafraid to be earnest.
"I guess I'll be seeing you a lot, then. I've got Physics this semester."
"Really! Which?"
"120, with Fuller."
"Ah, Herr Fuller," says Patches, in a perfect impression of the professor's accent. Amy audibly snorts, which makes them both laugh even harder.
They go on with the usual chitchat about courses, until she mentions the class she's in on medieval France.
Patches jumps a little, and she realizes he's a bit of a close talker. "I was looking at that course. I've got a history requirement left to fill. Do you like it?"
"Yeah, I do. It's interesting. The teacher's good. Lectures don't put me to sleep." She's done mostly ancient history courses in the major, but her advisor had pushed her to try her critical skills elsewhere, and castles and knights were certainly qualified.
Patches gives her, for the first time, a look she can't quite read. "Then maybe I'll look at it again." At least he's smiling, sort of. Her and him in a classroom, seeing each other on a regular basis: is this idea disastrous or wonderful? She decides to omit the question for now.
"Cool." A thought strikes her. "Hey, want to show me where the physics lab is?"
He does. The lab is empty aside from the two of them. She sits on the opposite side of the room because they've both got to use the equipment and besides, she tells him, you'll distract me.
Not that the distance keeps him from distracting her. She finds herself glancing over every couple of minutes, risking the embarrassment of eye contact for the delight of seeing his nose twitch as he combats a difficult set of numbers. She gets far too little work done. He can't be doing much better: often when she turns to look at him, he's scrambling to disguise his own staring. His own ogling. At least the fascination is mutual.
After he knocks all his notes and textbook off the table in one of these awkward, overly speedy cover-ups, she folds and declares she's heading out.
"Where to?" Patches asks, somehow excited by this.
"Maybe to get some food, or something. It's about dinner time."
"Ah." Still smiling, he looks down at the recovered papers in hands. Amy waits a couple of seconds for him to speak, but nothing happens. It occurs to her that he's waiting. She asks, tentative, "Do you want to come?"
"Oh, I couldn't possibly," he replies loudly, and with an air of obvious artificiality, like he's rehearsed this. It makes her chuckle, even though it really shouldn't, because it's stupid. And he's stupid. And it's—endearing. Somehow.
"No, please." She mimics his dramatics, pouting so hard her lips hurt. "I can't do it without you."
He sticks his tongue out at her, but doesn't seem displeased in the slightest. "I've got a little more work to finish up here," he says.
"All right. Come by my dorm in forty-five minutes, and we'll go together." She scribbles her building and room number on the top of his notes. "And don't be late."
Patches salutes her and she leaves the lab feeling something peculiar.
He's late. Twelve minutes late, to be precise.
"Why are you pacing?" asks Mels, glaring at Amy from her bed, where's she's working on her laptop.
Amy pauses in the floor of their room. She considers how to put it. "I met this weird kid."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And I asked him to come to dinner, and he said he'd be here almost fifteen minutes ago."
"You asked a weird kid to dinner?" inquires Mels, incredulous.
Amy's hands fly to her hips, defensive. "He seemed lonely!" At least it's not a lie. Imagine, having to go begging for dinner invites.
"Amy Pond, the altruist." Mels smirks and Amy flips her off.
There's a knock at the door, finally, and Amy shouts, "It's open!"
Patches pokes his head in. "Pond. I'm hungry." He enters the room like he's been here a hundred times, bounding up to her with his mouth open, and she senses the beginning of a ramble, until he spots Mels on the bed and stops dead in his tracks.
"Hi, Mels," he says, his expression suddenly blank.
"Hey there, Jamie," Mels responds, in a really, truly unfathomable tone, one that's smug and angry and amused and so very Mels for all its complexity. Amy doesn't appreciate that very much, not right now.
She looks back and forth between her two friends, who stare at one another for a painful moment until Patches spooks and starts back toward the door.
"Dinner time," he chimes. The cheer is forced; it doesn't take Amy's emotional bull's-eye to tell.
"Why don't you go wait in the hall for me?" says Amy, and Patches is eager enough to make an escape that he obeys wordlessly. Before the door even shuts all the way, Amy throws herself onto Mels's bed.
"What the hell was that?"
Her roommate is smirking like she always does, but there's something especially knowing about this smile that scares Amy a little. "Do you remember when I got stood up at the end of sophomore year?" asks Mels.
Amy nods, and then has the shattering realization that this is a leading question.
"Jamie?"
"Jamie." Mels rolls the name across on her tongue like she's tasting it, and she's not even looking at Amy, which makes it harder than usual to divine her thoughts. Is it strange that the sound of Mels saying his name should make Amy sort of nauseous? Because it does, in a wave of bad feeling, and she nods slowly to demonstrate her comprehension but can't do much more.
Mels must sense the depth of Amy's disquiet, because she asks—with unusual gentleness, for Mels: "Does it matter?"
"Nope." Amy realizes she's said this too fast, but she can't take it back, so she might as well get on to dinner with Patches. Who likes Mels. Or, did. "What happened to you two?"
Mels shrugs. "He stood me up, and I told him afterwards that since he was going abroad it wasn't even worth it."
"But it was worth it before." Mels squints at this statement, and Amy thinks maybe she's been too obvious or something, so she turns away. "What about now? Do you think—"
"I don't know," her roommate interrupts coolly. She keeps her eyes trained on the screen of her laptop.
"Well, stranger things have happened, I guess." Amy tries, strains, to play nonchalant, but it seems like that plan has already backfired. She and Mels don't fight over boys, and Amy's determined to keep it that way. Besides, at least one of them is in some serious relationship, or something. She stifles a groan and launches herself from the bed. "I'm going to go on to dinner."
"See you."
Amy exits to the hall. Patches has knocked down one of the decorations, a giant paper cutout of a purple crayon, and is frantically attempting to stick it back up. "Leave it," Amy commands, and he seems stunned enough by the authoritative urgency in her voice to drop what he's doing. "Let's go get some food."
It's dark and chilly on the walk across campus, and she wraps her jacket around herself in an effort to preserve a little warmth, but the cold doesn't affect Patches. He keeps a couple of steps ahead, talking over his shoulder about an exam or some such, a monologue she doesn't really absorb. She senses there's nothing wrong with that: their blossoming—friendship—has a natural rhythm, and part of it inevitably involves her tuning out the occasional lecture. She may not know him very well, but she knows he talks a lot.
"Hey," she calls, striding to catch up. "Are you going to ask Mels out again?"
Patches halts and she does too. Two boys walking by sort of snigger at them, and Amy figures he's has finally started developing the reputation she'd expect someone like him to have. He doesn't seem to notice the condescension, probably because he's so busy gaping at her.
"What's that," he manages, trying to sound dismissive and really, properly failing.
"She told me." She peers at him, though the shoddy lampposts don't do much for her eyesight. "You don't have to be weird about it. I'm just curious." At this point, she's recovered enough to pass her interest off as healthy.
He raises his finger in her direction. "Firstly, Pond, I did not—" A pause for composure; he lowers the finger. "I did not ask her out because I don't do that."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Amy's sarcastic and finds herself laughing—why does she always laugh like this with him? And more importantly, is the laughter really with him or at him? She doesn't feel like a bully, but she might be one anyway.
"Did she tell you I did that? Asked her on, you know. A date thing." He can't even talk about it like a normal person; Mels must have been having an off day when she'd thought dating this boy would be a good idea.
"She said it was a date," Amy affirms. She's almost forgotten how chilly it is—she must be warming up for some reason.
"It was a sort of date," he explains. "Not my doing, as I remember it."
"And you stood her up."
Patches softens at this, and leans back to look at her curiously. "You ought to know, Pond."
Amy glares at him through the fuzzy lamplight. "What? Why should I know that?"
"Because I was with you." Oh, thinks Amy. Oh, oh. "That was where I was going when I ran off. I forgot about Mels."
She tries to think of an appropriately annoyed response but nothing comes to her, maybe because she's completely fucking astonished by the way everything's fitting together so accusatorily. She manages a shrug, still glaring.
"I just wanted to be her friend," Patches laments. He's looking out at the night, pouting, like some existential maniac.
Amy takes a deep breath. "Now what do you want?"
This question visibly washes over him; his brow lifts just so as he turns to look at her, and the corners of his mouth tug upwards when he starts to speak: "Now I want to be your friend."
This is a strange little thing that's happening, her and him.
After a moment of trying to comprehend, somehow, the look on his face (she fails, it's all too much), she asks, "Do you only ever have one friend?"
"It seems that way, sometimes." He grins. "But there's nothing wrong with it. All you really need is one excellent friend, I think."
"You're so weird," she marvels. She's laughing again, at him and the situation and at herself, and why does she laugh so much when he's around, it's like a freaking disease!
"Thank you. Now, please—" And he starts down the sidewalk again. "Come along, Pond. I'm starving, I could eat a galaxy."
The next morning, she walks into her French history class, and Patches is sitting in the front row.
"Hi," he says, and she stands there looking at him stupidly for a long few seconds.
Finally: "What are you doing here?"
His face scrunches when he's confused, she's noticed. "What do you mean? I told you last night that I'd decided to take the class."
"Oh." This is one on a long list of things she hadn't heard him say over their meal last night, because he (apparently) took off his jacket to consume food, and then he'd rolled up his sleeves, and she'd started remembering the pool. She did feel bad about ignoring him, but it had been a least a little bit his fault for having such an engaging presence to watch, and in all honesty the constant stream of words—whether or not she'd comprehended all of them—had only added to his… je-ne-sais-quoi. The thing that makes her stare at him the way art students must stare at paintings: with loving obsession.
"Just think, Pond, you and me—classmates! The adventure begins."
A/N: Coming up on America's Next Top College AU: Smirnoff Ice and wizard staffs. (What will I think of next?) (Stay tuned to find out.)