Just a snippet this time, a couple of conversations between 11/Amy.

.

"Doctor," Amy asked one morning as they were finishing breakfast, "how come you never had so many rules before? I swear when I joined you there were only like five and now you're up in, what, the three hundreds?"

"Because I never needed as many before," he said simply, finishing his tea. Amy's right eyebrow rose in a way he found most threatening. "But there were way more than five, before you," he hurried to reassure her. "At least thirty."

Amy paused to take this in. "Are you saying I'm just that much trouble?"

The Doctor pushed back his chair and dumped his dishes in the sink, jostling her slightly as he passed by on his way out of the room. "Absolutely,' he called behind him, his voice affectionate.

Amy pouted for a moment, then tossed her hair over her shoulders and decided she could live with being difficult to control and classify. There are better things to be than well behaved.

And anyways, she was pretty sure he was joking.

.

She found him later researching something in the library, surrounded by stacks of dusty books, at least three of which he appeared to be reading at once. He looked up at her approach, a pencil behind his ear and a pair of glasses slipping down his nose.

"Can I do something for you, Pond?" he asked. He looked, she thought, very much a librarian.

"All right, yes. I've made a decision!" Amy announced. "I am making a rule."

He closed the book he was holding, the corner of his mouth turning up in amusement. "Oh, do tell, please."

"There will be no new rules from this point on," Amy said. "Because honestly, who can keep track? It's not like you're writing them down anywhere."

"Uh uh." The Doctor smirked and brandished a pencil at her. "Companions don't make rules."

"Oh, is that a rule in itself?" she asked sarcastically.

"It is now! Rule 242. Only the Doctor makes the rules."

"You know, you're letting all this power go to your head."

"Yes, I am," he said, then huffed a bit at the finger she chose to show him.

"Besides," he added reasonably, "who says I'm not writing them down?"

Amy blinked. "There's a rulebook?"

He nodded. "Little blue notebook, kind of like River's. You must see me writing in it once in a while."

Amy thought. She had seen him hunched over a notebook once in a while, doing something with a scrubby little pencil, but he quickly tucked it away any time she happened by.

"Well, can I see it?" she finally asked.

He shook his head. "Private."

"How can it be private when it consists of a list of rules I'm expected to follow?"

"Well it would hardly be any fun if you had a full list to just follow, now would it?" he asked, incredulous. "Where's the spontaneity in that? We wouldn't have anything to argue about, and everything would be all well behaved and boring."

She rolled her eyes. "You," she said slowly. "Are mental."

He picked up a pencil and mimed writing a new rule on an invisible pad on his hand.

Amy laughed. "All right, all right, stop. No more rules today, ok?"