who_contest | Drabble Challenge #8//Tweaks & Tremors

Title: Tweaks & Tremors
Rating: G
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, a smidgeon of angst
Word Count: 360
Pairings or Characters: Rory/Amy; thoughts of Eleven
Warnings: None. Takes place post-God Complex
Summary: He's there to make sure she fits right in.

Sometimes they set the table for three and pretend they’re only playing.

Usually, it’s Amy who’s scooping up the extra plate, spoon, and fork, and telling him it’s not going to work, not anymore. Then he finds himself turning away from his place near the window, from where he could’ve sworn he’d seen the tiniest flash of bright blue.

She tells him it’s just the sky, stupid, and it’s about to snow. Won’t it be Christmas sooner? Her parents want to pop in for a cup of tea and here they are, still drinking from plain white mugs as though anything more than plain wouldn’t suit them. It’s going to be Christmas, Rory! They haven’t even strung up any lights or put up a tree, what will the neighbors think?

He watches her like he watches a shrill-voiced actress on one of those shows they curl up to every evening because they’ve left everything undone again and what was supposed to be isn’t. She’s got the right look down, except up in the eye where the unshed gleam of creeping tears clashes tight against the heat of her words.

It’d be a good act, if she’d only got her notions right.

When she’s tired out from trying – everything really, from the perfect wife to The Girl Who Won’t Be Left Waiting Again – and drawing the bedroom curtains shut and tightening the hatches so the heat won’t escape, he’s busy wondering how easy it is to sink into those old habits. He leaves a plate of fish fingers out just in case and it goes cold by morning, untouched. She unloads them into the closest bin, without ceremony or silence. She’s never lost for words, though it might be meaning she’s angling for, he thinks.

The storm breaks when she sinks on the doorstep with her head in her hands and his arms round her trembling shoulders, telling her about bridges and choruses and they always lead into each other and the end’s always the best part and no, this isn’t theirs yet.

Sometime later, he unclenches her hands from his and cups them round a tumbling snowflake, just in time.