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It’d be a bit much to put on a suit, or even a pressed shirt, really, but Rory had put an unreasonable amount of thought and care into this. He had imbued this whole thing with a meaning that it didn’t really deserve and certainly didn’t need, but which made a strange kind of sense in his 16-year-old mind.
But he didn’t put on a pressed shirt. He just pulled on his favorite jumper, and then remembered, half an hour after he’d walked out of the house, that he’d torn a hole in the jumper two weeks ago, right over his heart, which he decided was kind of appropriate. Between that, and being a 16-year-old boy, he declined to go back and change. He just looked down at the little patch of pale skin peeking through his green jumper, a strange sort of feeling building inside him.
He held the gift he was carrying in his arms, at an awkward angle. He’d wrapped it, but the only paper he could find was the Christmas stuff, so he was walking down the streets of Leadsworth in April, holding a package covered in snowmen.
He planned to give Amy Pond a Tiny. He was going to give the girl—no, the woman—he loved the gift she had always wanted. He had known Amy his whole life, and loved her longer than he could remember. When they were children, they used to play Tiny’s. They’d been discontinued, but Amy spent a lot of time at her Aunt’s house being babysat, and all that woman had to occupy her was a VHS copy of the old cartoon, which Amy watched until the player ate the tape.
Amy had told Rory all about the Tiny’s, or rather, all about the same 10 episodes on a single VHS tape that Amy had memorized. Amy had made all sorts toys and art featuring the Tiny’s, and that was all they played on the playground for years.
And then they’d come back. Tiny’s were back in stores.
Rory had been meaning for a long time (read, 6 months in teenaged years) to do something about his problem, his problem being that he was desperately, hopelessly, in love with Amy Pond. He could barely talk to her anymore. They’d been so close when they were younger, but then one day a few months back Rory had looked over at her while they were both sharing some chips and realized, I want to marry this woman. He’d promptly choked on his chips, Amy had to do the Heimlich on him, and their relationship had been strained ever since, mainly because he couldn’t look her in the eyes without feeling as though he were melting from the inside out.
So, when he first spotted the Tiny on the shelf in the little shop in Leadsworth, he knew he had to get it for her. They’d been in stock elsewhere for ages, but everything was slower in Leadsworth, and seeing this Tiny, readily available, in the shop he came into every day after school, made the whole thing real, and a plan formed in his mind.
It was something that Amy had always wanted. You gave people you loved everything they ever wanted; Rory knew that much. He wasn’t stupid.
So, Rory decided to buy it for her. His father had told him it was a waste of money, but when Rory offered to get a job to pay for it, Mr. Williams had smiled proudly at him, told him he was a real man now if he wanted to plan savings and cultivate an interest (pun intended!) in financial stability.
Rory had gone down the local pub and asked for a job bussing tables. It had taken longer than it should have to save up all the money as Rory kept breaking some of the glasses he was supposed to be picking up, which Mr. Tompkins took out of his pay. And of course, everything in the Leadsworth shop that was interesting or urban was marked up terribly, because where else would the people of Leadsworth get it from? Leadsworth wasn’t the sort of town that had people who fancied a trip into the city, generally.
Finally, though, Rory had saved up the money.
And finally, Rory was aimlessly wandering the streets of Leadsworth trying to find Amy in order to give her the gift that would undoubtedly communicate his love, would say the words that he always choked on, sometimes quite literally, whenever he now looked at Amy.
Rory checked the usual hangouts. Amy wasn’t in her house, nor in its back garden. She wasn’t at her Aunt’s. She wasn’t down at the pub or loitering at the shop. She wasn’t in the park or at the duck pond, scaring the ducks.
Rory was about to resign himself to having to walk a ways out of town and out into the countryside. Amy liked to go for walkabouts, and if she’d left Leadsworth proper, there was no telling where she was or what she was up to. She wasn’t with Rory, himself, so she was likely with Mels, which usually meant Amy was doing something reckless. Probably tipping cows or setting fire to fence posts or whatever the kids did these days. Rory wasn’t very good at being a teenager.
Fortunately, Amy was in the last place Rory looked (and wasn’t that always the way these things worked out? a voice that sounded suspiciously like his father’s echoed in his head), still within Leadsworth proper, hiding behind the school with Mels, smoking fags that they had likely stolen from Amy’s aunt.
He had a bit of a long walk-up to both of them, which gave them a long time to just smoke and stare at him. Rory’s already limited confidence began sloughing away with every step he took. Mels looked at Rory like he was something her very dangerous, very nice looking Doc Marten’s had stepped in, and suddenly Rory was re-evaluating his whole life.
There stood Amy Pond, too red lipstick smeared on the cigarette she was smoking, too red hair glowing in the light of the afternoon sunlight, wearing a too short skirt that drove her parents and the school crazy, and drove all the boys and some of the girls crazy, albeit in entirely different ways. She looked like she was a fashion model. She looked like she was a superhero. She looked like a thousand other things Rory couldn’t put words to but that he was absolutely certain would kill him if the way his heart was beating was any indication.
And next to her was Mels, all punk rock sneer, swagger, and a leather jacket.
These two women. These were adults. And here up walked Rory Williams, all gangly limbs, snowmen paper, holey sweater, and a nose too big for his face. Rory wasn’t an adult. He wasn’t even sure he was a kid, at this point. Rather, he was a roughly human shaped lump powered by hormones and bad decisions.
He stopped a few paces away from Amy and Mels. They looked at him expectantly. He was expected to say something. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“Hey,” Amy said to him. She seemed to be coaxing him into speaking. It wasn’t quite working.
“What’s wrong with you, Williams?” Mels asked. “Why’ve you got a Christmas present? Why do you look like you’re going to heave up?”
Rory took in a shaky breath, turned slightly towards Amy, and quickly came up with a script. He could do this. He could do it. All he needed to do was stretch his arms out a bit towards her, say, ‘I got you a present,’ and then wait while she did the rest.
He stretched his arms out successfully. Step one accomplished.
He opened his mouth. Definitely on his way to acing step two.
His mouth hated him. It did not say, ‘I got you a present.’ It decided it was seceding from the rest of him, and said, “I love you.”
Amy looked at him. Mels looked at him. The sun looked at him, the trees looked at him, the great tremulous power of the universe looked at him. When his vision started to go dark around the edges, Rory realized he’d stopped breathing, and took in a gasp of breath.
Amy took the present from him, gently, not breaking eye contact.
There was a great silence. He was very appreciative that Mels had stifled her instinct to just bust out laughing at him.
“I thought you were gay,” Amy said slowly, looking at the package in her hand.
“I’m not,” Rory said, because he did not know how else to respond. At least he didn’t think he was, but he didn’t spend much time thinking about anything in that way that wasn’t Amy.
“Is this gift to tell me you love me?” Amy asked, picking at the paper with a fingernail.
“Yes,” Rory said. “I didn’t actually intend to say it with words, actually. It just sort of came out.”
“It was probably for the best,” Amy offered conciliatorily. “Communication is important in a good relationship. Read that in Cosmo. So what’s the gift, anyway?”
“Open,” Rory said, motioning awkwardly with his hands, forgoing complete sentences.
Amy gave him a smile that made Rory’s heart seize. Amy dropped her fag, snubbed it out, and opened the package slowly. Mels leaned against the wall of the school, inhaling smoke and inhaling the scene with an air of amusement.
Slowly, Amy removed all the wrapping paper to reveal the box. Tiny Eleven it read in bright green embossed letters. Around the edges were pictures of a tiny man dancing about. A large cartoonish face was on the front of the box, a truly ridiculous quiff of hair resting on a boyish face that had a chin roughly as prominent as Rory’s nose. “Includes four free hats!” the tiny man was saying via a speech bubble.
Amy let the paper drop.
Rory looked at her face expectantly, trying to read it.
He couldn’t read her face.
Why couldn’t he read her face?!
After what felt like an agonizingly long time, Amy turned her gaze from the box and towards Rory’s face, then her face split into a big grin.
“I love it!” she said, and strode towards him, pulling him into a big hug. She smelled lovely, like smoke, and the flowers that her mother planted in the back garden that Rory didn’t know the name of but that his father identified every time they were out there. Rory also imagined she smelled like the promise of something new.
Amy kissed his cheek, and broke off the hug. Rory continued to remind himself of the importance of breathing.
“We’ll plant it together, yeah?” Amy asked with a smile.
“Yeah,” Rory echoed, nodding his head.
“Heartwarming as this all is,” Mels said, reminding both of her presence. “Amy and I had pre-existing plans. So can’t you two do your love garden later?”
“Sure,” Amy said chirpily to Mels, before turning to Rory. “Tomorrow after class?”
Rory just nodded and watched Amy and Mels wander off, Amy hugging the package to herself like it was the most precious thing in the world.
Rory waited until they were both out of sight, then was sick in some bushes from the nerves.
All-in-all, it was a good day.