Amy follows after him and gives him another wave as he slips through the door, and she smiles as he pauses on the doorstep and looks back at her. Ever since she could remember, he always would pause and look at her. She usually caught him doing this in the corner of her eye, only as long as a held breath and he would glance away. Although it should've, it didn't take her long to notice the change in his eyes. That stupid-face Rory, the nurse, the fumbling boy who always tripped either accidentally or on purpose to make her smile, it wasn't him who looked at her. She blinks and takes a step closer to him to place a palm on his cheek.
"It's all right, love." She says quietly and he leans his face to feel the warmth of her hand. "I'm here."
He reluctantly nods and gives her a small smile; a soldier of time who sometimes forgets the battle is over. Perhaps she still slips away into that mindset, too. She knows she does, but it's too much to confide that into him. He would take it in and that would be another thing he would plague himself with worrying about. For now, she's as fine as an expecting mother can be. She's as fine as she knows he needs her to be.
Another soft kiss from her husband and she finally, playfully, shoos him off. He stutters and she smiles. Her Rory. She watches the back of his head shuffle away to a chained bike on the corner hedge and closes the door before he looks back for the fourth time. The door clicks shut and she spends a moment just standing with her forehead resting against the wood of the door. She's thinking too much. But that was always fine. Amelia Williams, the woman who is fine.
After a few minutes, she slips away from the front door and slides her feet against the tile of the hallway, making her way to the quaint kitchen that perhaps was decorated too heavily with embodiments of their other life. A sunflower dishrag. A circular scribble on a napkin, kept firmly to the refrigerator by an apple-shaped magnet. She pauses in the middle of her kitchen, as she always seemed to do after Rory left, just watching each unassuming object. Sometimes, she waited for them to talk to her. To tell her things. To tell her their world. She shakes her head. No, how ridiculous. Stop it.
She sits herself at the table, with her hands placed loosely in front of her and she finds herself staring again. Is it really always this quiet? A small frown comes to her face and her eyes feel heavy, when suddenly a gentle flinch from her stomach brings an instant smile to her face. How silly to forget for a moment. She places her palm over the slight bulge and delicately presses against it. Another kick and she smiles a bit wider.
"Oh, you didn't like that?" She asks quietly, rubbing slow, soft circles now and it's responded with another kick. "Just cos you're something special doesn't mean you can get away with treatin' your mum like this, kiddo." A softer, almost apologetic kick and she chuckles. "You can't already have that down. What am I gonna do if you already got that down?" She reaches over to flick on the small radio that sits on the windowsill by her table. The way the sunlight streamed and kissed her hands, with a pleasant violin slipping through the static of the speaker, she can feel her stomach gently settle. "Good boy." She exhales. "Get warmed up to the idea of learning to play it cos I don't think you have a choice."
Amy slowly leans back in her chair and she settles more comfortably as well. Her eyes blink closed and open suddenly and she glances to her shoulder. "I forgot how cozy this chair was, it's funny how those things work." A small movement almost feels like a nod in agreement and she shakes her head, smiling. "I don't think I've ever been so intently listened to. You're sure makin' it easy to accept the whole 'tearing my body apart to bring you into this world' bit." She leans back again and lets her eyes flutter close. "I'm followin' your lead. 'Person to have the best dream gets an ice cream." She pauses. "…In five years. 'Sorry. 'Bit hard for you about that." She lets herself slip off with that small smile on her face.
—
There's a gentle nudge against her shoulder and she mutters a "no, nappin", but its persistence has her finally blinking her blurry vision clearer to see his big nose and worried, green eyes.
"Are you all right, Amy? I phoned earlier for our noon call and there wasn't an answer. Are you hurting at all?"
She sleepily smiles, "I was asleep, stupid-face." She reaches her hand to him and he quickly takes it and she rolls her eyes at his deathbed-bedside manner. Or. Chair-side manner. She pulls her hand away and waves him off, leaning back to stretch a bit in place.
"You usually nap around three, though." He says with a quiet concern and he's glancing all over her and pausing at her stomach. "Any movement today?"
"Oh, Centurion, yes." She groans, mostly cos of the greatness of the stretch and the sweet yet borderline overprotective hovering. "We had a chat earlier."
Rory sighs, somewhat in relief. She rolls her eyes again at the other five thousand concerns she can see fill his head. "Well." He mutters, nodding. "That's good. That's really good, Amy. I'm glad."
She pats her hand against his cheek and shakes her head. "Gotta work on the expressions of 'glad' a bit, there, Mr. Pond." She leans forward, swatting him off and Scottish-ly refusing help just to get up and stand. "I can manage, boy. Want some tea?"
"I-I'll make it!" He rushes over to the sink and grabs the kettle, staring back at her as if making sure she won't burst into a backflip. "Have you had any cravings, then?"
There's a pausing moment as she feels a nudge inside of her stomach, and she can almost hear tell him to get ice cream, but she just smiles and shakes her head. He frowns.
"I've not, all right!"
"Amy, the doctor said not to raise your voice."
She blinks, "Right. Dr. Skinner, you mean."
He flinches a nod, "Right, right. Dr. Skinner."
Amy glances away for a moment, no more than half a second to each representing object and she sighs with a shrug. "Dr. Skinner should've changed his last name or somethin'. It's a bit too sinister, yeah?"
He all but leaps on the subject change and gives too much of a chuckle. She rolls her eyes, it really is nothing new. "How was your nap, I don't think I had the chance to ask."
"It was fine."
"Really?"
She sighs, loudly, "Like I have some ulterior motive for lyin' about being a passed-out mess, Rory."
She's surprised his neck didn't snap from how fast he whipped back his head at her, "Passed-out?"
"It's a figure of speech, ya' moron."
Rory nods, almost unconvinced, and he turns back. "Did you get a chance to enter REM sleep?"
"You gotta stop readin' those pamphlets, Rory." She mutters a groan and steps towards him, enveloping her arms around him from behind with a kiss through his shirt and a quick inhale of his smell. That Rory scent. "I did. I had a really nice dream, all right. I dreamed that you phoned and got so worried when I didn't answer that you ran right over. You idiot, you left your bike at work and what's worse, you thought you still had a bike. Didn't you remember that you lost it about seven months ago?" She shakes her head and presses another kiss against his warmth. "Who loses a bike?"
He shifts slightly in place and nods, "Tell me more about this dream."
She slowly tightens her hold around him, smiling, "You hovered over me the whole time. You leapt to make tea for me. You thought I'd burn myself and the burn might travel down to my stomach, of all things."
"In my defense, you've burned yourself making tea before."
"You let me hold you. And you turned around to look me in the eyes, but not with that far-off look."
Slowly, Rory turns and raises an arm, wrapping it around her waist and leaning his forehead against hers. She feels a gentle kick from her stomach onto his. "Are you starting to think there's something between us, Ms. Pond?" She smiles at his voice.
"There could be worse things keeping us apart." She whispers back and brushes her nose against his. She jolts awake before she can kiss his lips.
Amy glances to her streaming sunlight to find it bleeding a smooth auburn of evening. It isn't until she pulls herself to her feet that she hears the knock at the front door. She has to lean up to her tiptoes to look through the peephole. She makes a mental note to remind Rory of that. I don't care if he overestimated our height, you'd gotta do something about it, Mr. Pond. She blinks at the face and opens the door.
"Mrs. Williams?" She slightly tilts her head, curiously. What a strange voice to come from a moustached man. Amy catches him glance to her stomach and for a moment she thinks she sees the man's heart sink. He swallows. "We tried phoning…." He adjusts his hat and it's then she notices he's wearing one. "Your husband, ma'am."
She finally looks to his eyes, a cool brown sparkled with green. "Yes?" His moustache slightly sinks to cover his lips. Another mental note to try and convince Rory to grow one. She thinks she could.
"Your husband was riding his bike to the store, ma'am." He swallows again, or any excuse to pause. She blinks again. A sudden kick against her palm and she realises she's had her hand to her stomach ever since she opened the door.
