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The Doctor stares at him. "What?" Rory asks, feeling disconcerted.
"That door just opened for you," the Doctor says. This is a fact; Rory had walked up to it and it had slid open in front of him.
"It's an automatic door, it's supposed to do that," Rory explains, frowning back. He waves his hand in front of the door, and it opens with the sort of futuristic sighing noise that Rory associates with doors on all kinds of spaceships on television.
"No, it really isn't." The Doctor has transferred his slightly disapproving glare to what appears to be a random patch of the corridor wall. He waves his own hand in front of the door. If Rory hadn't known any better, he'd swear the door seemed to waver, thinking, before staying shut. It only opens when the Doctor presses his hand on a control panel Rory hadn't noticed on the wall.
After that, the multitude of doors Rory had thought were automatic throughout the TARDIS don't respond anymore. Still, stranger things have happened in here; Amy has stories about whole sections of the TARDIS, big like wings of buildings, that she'd found once and never been able to find again. He puts it out of his mind.
*
They stumble back into the TARDIS coughing and covered in sand and dust. "That was a close one!" the Doctor says, sounding like he'd actually enjoyed being chased by an entire settlement of what had appeared to be intelligent, angry kangaroos.
"Is this a thing that you run into often?" Amy asks, tilting her head sideways and tapping at her ear, trying to get some of the dust out. "Entire civilizations that just can't stand your face?"
"What's wrong with my face?!" the Doctor says, leaning forward across the console and mock-scowling at her. Rory leaves them to their playful bickering and heads for the room that he and Amy share, eager to at least shed his clothes, which are rubbing sand in unpleasant places.
As he turns the corner onto what should have been the corridor where their room is, he is confronted by an unfamiliar door. It slides open in front of him (the first to do so in weeks) and reveals the most amazing bathtub that Rory has ever seen. It has claw feet and brass fixtures and tall, sloped sides and could probably comfortably fit three people.
"Wow," he breathes. He thinks momentarily about going to fetch Amy, but if the trip to Space Florida had taught them anything, it's that the last thing that two people with sand rubbing against separate parts of them ought to do is rub these parts together. He'll enjoy the bath himself and let Amy know when he's done, because a bathtub like this really ought to be shared, one way or another.
Rory turns on the tap, and the liquid that flows out seems to be the perfect mix of water and bubble bath. When the Doctor rushes in twenty minutes later, Rory is submerged in bubbles up to his nose. The Doctor looks at Rory, who is scrambling to pull heaps of bubbles towards himself to preserve his dignity; he looks at the tub, with its feet and its faucets and its high slanted sides; and he looks at the floor and the ceiling with an air of distrust.
"Well, this is new," the Doctor says--which, honestly, seems a little anticlimactic after all that--and just that quickly he rushes back out again. Rory shrugs to himself and sinks back down into the water.
*
Rory stops up short outside the console room. He can hear the Doctor and Amy talking inside. "Doctor," Amy is saying, "Have you been holding out on me?" Her voice is flirty, and Rory's stomach does its customary little flip before he gets a hold of himself.
"Sometimes, maybe, why?" Rory can almost hear the vaguely concerned look that goes with this flippant response. Amy does like to bring up legitimate concerns in less-than-serous ways. They've had a number of arguments that started with Amy using her flirty voice to totally blindside Rory.
"Rory found a garden yesterday, in the TARDIS. He brought me fresh flowers. Last week he found another library. The week before that, he found a closet full of new clothes, all in my size. I was here for ages before I found my first weird new room!"
"The roller rink is fun, though," the Doctor protests mildly, and Rory hears Amy chuckle in agreement. Then he continues, "I'm not sure what you want me to do. I'm not in charge of the rooms in here, that's all the TARDIS. It provides the rooms it thinks we need."
"So Rory 'needed' a garden with a koi pond, and a library, and--" and Rory figures that this is as good a place to join the conversation as any, takes a deep breath, and enters the console room just in time to hear Amy say: "--wait, does your time machine not like the way I dress?!"
The Doctor turns as Rory enters, the look on his face about 15% relief and 85% baleful glare. "Humans! You lot take offense at the strangest things."
Amy sighs. "Well, I suppose that if the TARDIS's dress sense is anything like yours, Doctor, I ought to be flattered it doesn't like mine."
And Rory bites back a smile--Amy's been wearing clothes from that new closet for at least a week now.
*
"How are we lost again?" Amy says aloud.
Rory knows that this is a rhetorical question, meaning how is the layout of the TARDIS so confusing, I just wanted to get to the swimming pool and not actually inviting a critique of Amy's navigational abilities. Still, he can't help but observe: "I never seem to have this problem." Amy hits him in the arm and he quickly explains. "No, listen, there's a trick to it. Watch this." He turns and speaks to the empty hallway. "I'm looking for the swimming pool."
There is a pause where nothing happens. Amy, already annoyed at having traipsed across the TARDIS in a bikini for longer than expected, makes a disapproving noise and says, "What's that supposed to--"
Then one end of the corridor glows slightly pink.
Rory points at the lights. "This way." They follow the path denoted by the pink glow, only once restating their destination at a confusing intersection of multiple hallways, and quickly end up at the pool.
The Doctor is already there. "Where've you been? I've been waiting for ages--well, not literal ages. I've done that too. It's not fun." He makes a face, then amends, "I've been waiting for a very long time! It's okay though," he continues, "In the meantime I have been playing with this rubber duck." There is indeed a rubber duck in front of him, a vivid yellow splotch against the blue of the pool. The Doctor reaches out and taps it gently, sending it bobbing across the pool's surface.
Rory makes a disbelieving face at the duck and slides into the pool as Amy responds, "We were lost for a bit, until Rory showed me his little 'corridor sat-nav' trick."
The Doctor frowns, an expression Rory is becoming all too familiar with, and pokes the rubber duck so that it floats in Rory's direction. Rory sends it floating back, saying, "The lights change color to show you which way to go. What, is it not supposed to do that?"
*
"Hello, pretty!" the woman says directly into his head.
At the time, Rory says, "Ow!" When he thinks about it later, he says, "Oh."
*
It's a week before the Doctor says anything about it. He and Rory are in the console room alone. "She likes you," the Doctor says suddenly, and Rory's mind races as he tries to figure out what they're talking about. The confusion must be showing on his face, because the Doctor clarifies: "The TARDIS, I mean. She fancies you a bit."
"I...I'm sorry?" Rory really isn't sure what the appropriate response is when someone informs you that his spaceship thinks you're cute.
"I was jealous, for a while," the Doctor continues in a tone that sounds carefully chosen to convey how much he doesn't care now, concentrating very hard on the levers he is pulling on the console.
Rory is taken aback. "What, really? But it's your spaceship! It's not like it's going to run away with me and leave you behind."
It's meant as a reassurance, but the words hang awkwardly in the air. The Doctor actually grimaces. After a moment, he says, "Eventually you realize that just because she likes someone else--in a completely different way than she likes you--that doesn't make what the two of you have any less valid or special or true."
Rory nods, and then he looks at the Doctor, understanding the unspoken apology there. He thinks: well, it's always been obvious that he's smarter than he looks.
Around this time, Amy sashays into the console room. "Look at you two, chatting away! What are you talking about?" she says, smiling at both of them.
"Relationships," the Doctor replies.
"Spaceships," Rory replies at the same time.
"Many different...kinds of ships," the Doctor amends lamely.
Amy looks suspiciously between them. "Fine, don't tell me." She tosses her head insouciantly and comes over to stand by them, slipping her body into the space between Rory's arm and his torso. The Doctor leans on the TARDIS console and smiles.