Fic: In Human Hands (11b/24)

[rallalon]

Part One

.-.-.-.-.-.

Finding her in crowds is something of a knack of his. Finding her in a mass of gyrating bodies in a dark room with the occasional blinding flash of coloured strobe light, well. That’s a talent.

That he recognizes her from behind only proves he deserves some sort of medal.

His jacket sticks to him as this high-density example of humanity crowds against him. The leather is heavy with heat, but he knows what it feels like when he passes out, now. He’s not about to collapse again, promises himself that. Not here. Not with her to see. Never with her to see.

Not that she’s looking, mind. Her back still turned, she hasn’t realized he’s there, not yet. It gives him a bit more time to try to feel stable, to try to put away this feeling he can’t properly explain.

But he knows the fastest way to go about doing that, too. And that way’s Rose.

He goes to her.

Close enough to see the way her hair clings to her bare shoulders, to see the muscles of her arms as she raises them, to know the shapes beneath her skin; that’s where he stands. Too much sound presses in at his ears and too much heat presses down on his shoulders and that explains the thought, explains the moment of strange wonder. If he stood behind her, if he set his hands upon her hips and pulled her back against his chest, would she know it was him? Would she tense as her hands shoot to his, relax in tactile recognition afterwards?

And then what? And what happens next? When she leans back against him, or doesn’t, what happens?

What happens next is one of his girl’s friends staring at him, the brunette leaning in close to shout into an ear hidden behind blond hair. Yells once, has to repeat herself beneath the pumping music from the speakers behind them. His heart pounds hard and heavy to a techno beat, making his chest uneven, his feet unsteady. That blond head turns, and her body turns, and the world turns, and suddenly, he can balance again. Doesn’t matter how many people are still bumping into him; he can stand perfectly fine now, thank you.

There is, however, the slight possibly that she can’t. Her expression is one of incredulity but not even the strobe lights can conceal the delighted shine of her eyes from him.

Grinning, tongue between her teeth, she holds out her hands to him.

“I don’t dance,” he tries to tell her. Unable to hear him, she steps closer, pulls back her hair and turns her head, offering her ear to his mouth. “I don’t dance,” he repeats, over-articulating, her hair tickling the tip of his nose.

One of her hands is on his sleeve, on his leather-clad upper arm. One of her thumbs is stroking and he’s not sure when that started. Then again, his palms insist that they’re on a damp top, resting over the small of a woman’s back. When he realizes his arms are around her waist is when her arms go around his neck. Her hand goes to the back of his head, sending his stomach lurching before he takes the hint and lets her yell into his ear.

“Just once?” Her hands slip to his shoulders, nearly fall to his chest once she’s done tiptoeing, done leaning into him. Her fingers can’t seem to stay still on the leather, begin to move, keep moving until her palms follow suit. It gives him a shiver despite the jacket, despite the heat, and that’s generally a bad sign.

“Too hot in here,” he answers. If he had his hands free, he’d pull at a lapel. He can feel himself sweating already, feels it consciously when he thinks to be conscious of this body.

Her tongue goes back between her teeth, like she’s got some sort of comeback to this. One of those rebuttals that’s all juvenile wit, emphasis on the juvenile. Or maybe just an innuendo. He knows there’s a bad influence he can blame here, knows there’s one for certain, but he can’t summon the name, is stuck at nothing more than a vague recollection of dark hair and a very specific jawline.

Whatever the influence, the comment goes unsaid, his girl choosing instead to rock a little, to move to a beat that doesn’t match the lunatic racing of the blasting techno. He falls into it by simple virtue of his hands on her, hers on him.

“Just once,” he amends, agrees. Discovers that whatever beat she’s moving to in her head, he knows it too. And he’s not giving in; he’s giving her something, that’s all.

He gathers her up and she gathers him in, and dancing to a song that isn’t playing means there’s no time to limit them. All it means is a fight for rhythm, the struggle to remain together and not give in to their ears or the sway and grind of the crowd. Her hands on his shoulders keep her arms against his chest, keep a small bit of space between them, keep just enough space between them.

Because maybe she knows he’d give in, if she asked, if she said. Right now, he would. Because he’s seen a fire and thought of the past itself being set aflame and now he simply needs her. Needs her to be close. To be fantastic.

To be so very alive.

He drops his head, his brow against the part of her hair, and it hits him harder than it ever has that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, when she’s gone.

“You stupid, stupid little tourist,” he says to her, a stupid, stupid man. He murmurs it to her, lips barely moving.

Her hands pull at his lapels and he knows she’s seen anyway. He lifts his head and offers his ear and she asks at a yell, “What’d you say?”

“I’m overheating!” he shouts back, more of a non sequitur than a lie.

“Outside?” She lifts her hand from him to point to the door, making herself as clear as she can. Her look is more than half concern, and he knows she’s thinking of the hospital.

He nods, drops one hand and nudges at her with the other. There’s a group that must be her friends, four girls and a bloke glancing over at them, two of the girls chattering excitedly. Typical gossiping, it looks like. And not something he wants to deal with, being there as his girl makes her goodbyes. “I’ll meet you-”

She shakes her head, grabs his hand like he’s about to disappear - which, if he thinks about it, isn’t entirely out of the question. Definitely not his sort of setting, this. He’ll admit to wanting out, to wanting air or at least a building that doesn’t smell like- yes, that is a beer someone spilled on the floor.

He sticks to the floor with every other step and she beams at him when he scowls and somehow, it’s his expression that’s the one to fold, to give up and give in. Somehow, he gets introduced to the group before they leave, the two chatting girls from before smiling at his tourist like there’s some sort of a joke going on, something they find hilarious. Gets on his nerves, just a bit, but he’s quickly distracted by how everyone refers to him as “Rose’s mechanic.”

A smile and a grin and some idle chatting should be enough to get them out of there, but one of the girls catches his arm, a solid grip. Tells him what beach they’re going to watch the fireworks at, says there’s room for one more in a way that’s not exactly an invitation, more like a return policy. She wants to make sure her friend from abroad ends the night safely, he can tell, wants that friend properly returned.

It annoys and relieves him at once. Not being trusted with his girl, knowing he’s not the only one trying to keep her safe; it’s a strange mix to feel at a poorly lit, crowded table. Better than other mixes, he supposes, and then they’re going, just the two of them, out into the night.

Out from one crowd and into another, the volume of the music dropping sharply as they exit into the more constant lighting of the streets. The humidity of human sweat vanishes, or close enough, as they leave and he pulls in a long, deep breath, glad of the air.

She clasps his hand and he shifts his grip and when their fingers are interlaced, he thinks to look to her, to wonder at her. Bright, eager eyes to meet his gaze and somehow, he never does get around to asking if she’s sure about this, if she doesn’t mind leaving her friends to run off with him.

Some answers are just that obvious.

.-.-.-.-.-.

“Roman Catholic holiday,” he answers, gesturing as much as is possible while walking, while holding her hand and trying not to hit the unsuspecting bystanders. “That bit comes tomorrow. Tonight’s the Vigil. Bit more carnival-esque than you’d expect for a religious holiday, but there you go.”

She holds his hand and hugs his arm at once, the swaying of their bodies set in matching motion to their synced steps. “And San Juan, that’d be... Saint John?”

“The Baptist, yeah,” he answers. He opens his mouth and closes it again, having the strangest feeling. Like if he starts talking, some absurd anecdote will find its way out of him, something a little strange but funny nonetheless, some story he doesn’t actually know but could tell anyway. Something about a fedora floating down a river, maybe, but he’s not sure how that could relate.

It’s an odd feeling.

“Then how come the bonfires?” she asks, prodding him out of his thoughts. “The jumping into the ocean part I get, but how come a man who dunks people in water gets a holiday with people jumping over fire?”

He rolls his eyes at that, feeling an obvious answer coming right on up. “You lot. Recycling myths and traditions all over the place. The fire bit’s pre-Christian. Jump the fire and that night, you dream up the face of whoever you’re meant to marry.”

“Oh,” she says, and there’s something in that oh that makes him break into a quick story about Cologne Boy from earlier in the night, makes him offer his sympathy in advance for dream girl. It lets them laugh and stops him from asking her if she’s jumped already, if she’d done that. Hardly superstitious, him. Hardly matters either, if she has or not. Even if things worked that way when he knows full well they don’t.

Her hand is hot in his as they walk, but he feels her shiver against his side, has the sudden, strong urge to shuck his jacket and wrap her in it, envelop her in it. Not something he’d do, no, but....

As mental images go, it’s not half bad.

Actually....

She tugs at his hand, pulling him towards a circle of people stretched across the plaza, a circle with oooh’s and ahh’s and the light of firecrackers, the whipcrack and the hiss of flame. He balks, stomach clenching, because he knows what correfocs look like, knows that there’s men dressed like demons and flame inside that circle, leaping and dancing and sending sparks into the sky, knows he doesn’t want to see it. There’s a rhythmic drumming coming from within the circle too, building in volume, building in number.

But she’ll shoulder her way in if he lets her and he’ll always let her, if only because he can’t stop her. He’s got her keys and wallet in his front pocket again, playing the role of the guardian and doing the best he can with it. Nothing’ll get stolen from her if there’s nothing on her. No reason not to let her go in without him. Not really.

“C’mere for a mo’,” he tells her instead, decides it’s his turn to pull at a hand. He brings her out of the flow of foot traffic, stepping on only a couple of feet, pulling her behind him.

“What’re we doing?” She’s looking back over her shoulder, back at the still-growing crowd, slowly realizing they’re not going to get a good view at this rate.

She’s wrong about that, actually. “We’re getting you the best seat in the house,” he tells her, tells her and kneels.

He looks up at her and she blinks down at him.

“C’mon then!” he prompts, lifting a hand to tap his shoulder. “D’you want to see or don’t you?”

She grins at him like he’s a lunatic, complies quickly enough. She stands in front of him and he ducks his head down and standing up is nearly a disaster, but it ends well, ends with her on his shoulders and her hands on his head and her legs in his steadying grip. She’s heavy on top of already heavy leather, hot on top of an already hot jacket, but she laughs so loud and well that he can’t - and won’t, and never will - mind her.

“Steady!” he calls up, hands on her shins, her trainer-clad toes tucking themselves beneath his arms, against his sides. Her legs act as blinders, his view cut down to the space between her knees. Walking to the crowd brings her to waver over him, but she has balance. She keeps atop him with the same growing ease that she keeps on his bike with. She already knows how to lean with him; this isn’t too difficult.

He feels her shift as she looks, thighs against his shoulders, her hands on his head. Her weight on the lapels of his jacket makes the edges dig into him, but only a little, not enough to cause true discomfort. He drops his hands from the skin of her legs, lowers his arms, and she keeps her feet hooked behind him, shins pressed against his sides.

She won’t fall.

He closes his eyes against the sound of firecrackers, the hiss of sparklers, but then she gasps and her fingers move and his eyes blink open to see bursts of light and clouds of smoke, hanging like a tangible afterimage. He can see the tops of the sparklers, crackling light spinning atop sticks like umbrellas of light, and the drums keep on drumming.

It makes him think of being elsewhere, but not the elsewhere of the bonfire, not that, whatever that was, wherever that was. It’s a flame he hears rather than feels, a heat constant rather than flickering touching the sides of his head. This is a beat he could nearly dance to, and he shifts to make her gasp, to make her tighten her grip and wobble above him for a moment, clinging to his sides with her shins, to his short hair with her hands.

“Oi!” he calls up and, in something that is immensely far from apology, she brushes his hair down with her fingertips, pats his crown with her palm.

His shoulders start to ache and his legs remind him of his sprint from this morning - was that just this morning, really? - and he keeps standing, keeps holding her up to where she can see, keeps holding her up as her only support. Her hands come to rest on his head once again, to still there in a different way than before. She’s relaxed now. As she should be.

She’s not half unsteady, though, and it’s more than once that he feels her jeans against his ear, more often than not. It’s that hem on the inside, the one that meets behind his head, that meets where her legs meet; that’s the one that scratches a little. Just a little, enough to make him want to turn his head, enough to keep him still.

His height lets him see, but he closes his eyes to the lights, lets them play against his eyelids, shining through in flashes of orange. He feels it through her, her weight pressing his collar and the tops of his lapels uncomfortably into him the longer she’s up there. He’s tired, knows he should let her down. He’s missing the show, knows he should open his eyes.

But to endure... to choose. In the center of this all, in the middle of the night and the city and the dancing of devils and flame, of drums sounding and drunks stumbling, of a nigh-crushing crowd of so much human heat; in the center of all this, the thought brings him calm.

He’s separate from this. He is. He can’t be so easily swept up, can’t be caught and turned into one of the many. It’s strange and it’s lonely, and for all the thought sounds like teen-aged angst, even in his head, he feels it far too acutely for it to be ignored. But, while lonely, it could be lonelier.

He reaches up to prove it to himself, to stand stably and set his hand atop the leg against his ear. He sets his hand there and it’s only one beat in the devils’ dance before her hand presses down on his, before her fingers curl around the back of his hand.

No. He’s not so lonely after all.

.-.-.-.-.-.

“That was...”

“Fantastic?” he offers, straightening up, rolling his shoulders to make sure they’re still in there right. She’s already grinning, but he wants to see her grin wider.

She does, one hand absently running down his arm before her palm fits against his. “Yeah,” she agrees, her face so very flushed, her eyes shining, reflecting artificial light and turning it true. “We got enough time to find another one before the fireworks.”

Rolling his eyes, he makes a show of shaking her off his arm, of pushing up leather sleeve that little bit it takes to read his watch. “Doesn’t look it,” he replies and when she looks disappointed, he opens his mouth and keeps on talking, his mind evidently gone. “The fire run during La Mercè, now there’s something you ought to see.”

“Fire run?” And already, her hand back against his, in his.

“S’what it translates to, correfoc. Anyway, the best one - for Barcelona, anyway, Sitges isn’t half bad - the best one’s leading up to La Mercè.”

It’s a word even she can guess the definition of. “The mercy of what?”

“Virgin Mary,” he answers, bit of a shrug at that. “It’s been a big city holiday for, oh, let me see... hundred thirty-five years now? Only really caught on around the turn of the last century, though. Mostly because of the gegants i capgrossos - big paper mache statues,” he explains before she can ask. “The festival starts practically a week before it actually begins. Add in a pyromusical and you’re all set. Take fireworks, sync them with fountains and then add an orchestra, just to give the night a soundtrack. Set them at the base of Montjuïc and....”

“Yeah?”

Looking down into her enraptured face, he shrugs only with conscious effort. “Not half bad.”

“Can we do that?” she asks, the hand not holding his playing across the leather, fingertips evidently enchanted.

“It’s in September,” he tells her, waiting for her joy to sober, for her face to fall.

It does.

“Oh,” she says.

And that’s the end of it.

.-.-.-.-.-.

They pass more than one bonfire, on the way back to the beach. Some flames have died down and others have grown and she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t ask it.

And he sees the flame and he knows some fear, knows some strange grief and guilt, but now he wants to. Because he can, now. Because this is still June, not September, and his hand is still full, not empty.

“Rose,” he says, repeats it once and again to make himself heard.

She looks at him then, mouth open in the first syllable of a reply he doesn’t hear, a reply that halts as the gleam in his eyes seeks to be reflected in hers.

He nods to the fire, knows his timing. He always knows his timing, knows he can do this. But it has to be now. Now, while the past is burning in chairs and clothes and paper, in plant and wood that know no pain. “Run,” he says, and pulls her hand.

He pulls her hand and her eyes turn bright and then he has to look forward, look to the fire and time his steps, has to shorten his strides to match hers, to keep her hand in his. Ten seconds from decision to jumping, ten and a bit, a touch, a touch of time and a touch of tension, a touch of skin and tendon, muscle and bone and heat and when she yells jump, they jump.

They jump and his boots are heavy, his jacket hot, the flames high. They jump and she shrieks, their own motion a rollercoaster of heat and sound and smoke. They jump and he looks to her in midair, to her face and her hair and her adrenaline-filled joy.

His feet find pavement before hers do, a second before hers do, less than a second. Less than a second and he pulls her hand and he turns and they turn. They spin, turning away from the flames as he pulls her into his arms, pulls her against him tight, the pair of them laughing loud and a little triumphant and he’s not separate as they stagger into a run, he’s not separate at all. Adrenaline won’t turn off and her smile won’t turn down and their hands won’t let go and he is so very, so very glad he did that, glad they did that.

They slow to a walk, to a standstill in the face of the crowds, unable to move through in their giddy state. She pulls at his arm, eyes still so bright. “I haven’t done anything like that since-”

“I know,” he tells her, a truth he can’t prove, and then they’re laughing, laughing again as her eyes make promises she won’t keep.

And he can’t help but think that maybe, maybe, when it’s time, he’ll be just that much harder to leave.

.-.-.-.-.-.

The beach is crowded, as the streets are crowded, as the clubs are crowded. There’s more than one stereo playing, the music combining with the sea’s waves and humanity’s speech until the result is a soundtrack on shuffle, with every song falling into the air in no particular order, building on one another.

She holds tightly to his hand and her smile is back across her face and he knows, he knows he has tonight. If nothing else, he has this. Even if she leaves tomorrow, she’ll remember him until the day she dies. And if that’s true, she’s his.

In some way, at least, she’s his.

It doesn’t take long to realize that even tonight, he’s going back to sharing her, a feeling as unfamiliar as it is uncomfortable. It’s not a feeling that fits inside of him, not easily.

Her friends take a bit of a search to find, come ready-equipped with a blanket and towels, have even found a spot close to a fire pit. The fire’s already going, the next bonfire in this infinitely blazing night, but his issue before seems to be over now: no more flashbacks to something he’d rather not remember anyway.

His work boots sink into the sand as his girl is pulled into a round of quick hugs and pecks on the cheek. And then she looks back and he gets pulled in, too, the blokes trying out their handshakes on him. His girl is a bit damp by now, the girls she’d hugged wet with seawater despite the time of night. That’s tradition too.

Before long, he finds his jacket rolled up in a dry towel, protected from sea and salt there as he bends down, shucks his boots and peels off his socks. Socks go inside the boots and then he slips his watch into the right one, tucking it down in there deep. He didn’t decide to do this, merely looked into a certain pair of brown eyes and found himself saying, in a low murmur he’d tried to smile away after, “Your wish is my command.”

He notes that when she asks her friends to join them, all of them - some grinning - decline.

He notes that she doesn’t much look disappointed.

The sand is cold beneath his feet as he steps off the blanket, the grains shifting beneath ball and arch and heel, molding to his step, his weight shaping the ground beneath him. It’s a thought he grins at, and then he winds up simply trying not to leer: she has a bikini beneath that top and those jeans.

Her teeth chatter as they head down to the water, as she adjusts to a night only mostly warm now, the bonfires spread out enough for the air to transition in temperature from each to each. Getting through the crowd, he sets his hand on the small of her back, on the visible curve of her spine, and her shiver goes into his palm, finds its way through him and down his own back. It’s a good shiver.

The shivers the water is sure to bring, however, promise to be of an entirely different sort. They stand together on the shore for a moment, and a moment longer, watching those on the beach and those in the water. They’re watching the world and the world isn’t watching them, not in the dark, in the lights, before the waves. And he thinks, when they look at each other, that he has thoughts he can’t describe, thoughts unfit for the language of humankind and yet understood through reflection in the eyes of a girl.

He holds her hand and her body shivers and the waves rise in motion and sound which goes unseen, unheard, unfelt. She shivers against the dark backdrop of the ocean, her shadow cast upon waves on the verge of turning into foam. The shivers and the sea and the sky and he knows this, he knows this, knows it from far away and long.... Not long ago. Something else. Some other sort of time he can’t pin down, but this, he knows.

“Woman Wept,” he murmurs to himself, the ghost of a dream of a poem in his head, if only he could think of it. It must be a poem, he thinks, gazing out into water that looks nearly still, if he looks out far enough, if he ignores the play of light on living waves that looks so very different than the play of light on a crystallized sea. That’s imagery, isn’t it? Sounds like a poem, not sure about what. Must be a poem, though.

It must be, but the mention makes her breathing hitch, a pause of motion he feels through her palm.

He turns his head, looks into her eyes; could look all the way into her, her eyes are so open. She’s staring at him, striving to stare into him, and he tries to open his eyes too, tries to let her see what he can.

“What did you say?” she asks in a breath he barely hears. He reads the question off her lips, but the answer’s already gone, slipped from his distracted mind.

“Looks wet,” he answers, always with the non sequitur, never the lie. He grins, sharp and abrupt, and he knows he can pull her with him. “Shall we?”

She yelps and he laughs as the water hits them about the knees, as his dash into the waves is checked by the waves themselves. He holds her tight, his arm around her back, and they stagger together, wet and cold and someone else whoops with them, just to make the sound.

Her hands go to his shirt and her tongue flicks out into a smile and her leg moves and - who in the world taught her to do that? - he goes down, falling into an oncoming wave, tugging her with him. His head goes under and her leg is still wrapped around his, but air is close and cold and tinged with coal and woodsmoke and salt.

His jeans cling against him in the way that only wet denim does, uncomfortable even before he lifts himself back to standing, salt and sand clinging to every bit of cloth he’s still wearing. He’s grinning, grinning so wide as he pulls her up to him, braces her with his body against the next wave, against the next, keeps on bracing her as she tries to part the wet curtain of her hair and actually see. He doesn’t think he’s used the word adorable in years, but he gives into the impulse to hug her all the same.

He hugs and she’s warm. He lifts and she shrieks.

So he flings her.

It still seems like a good idea until she comes up with a bit of seaweed, ready to throw. After that, they call it a truce. Only in light of the many innocent bystanders, mind.

By mutual decision, they leave the water some time before the fireworks begin, pulling themselves out to drip their way across the sand, around clustered people and spread blankets. Grains of sand encrust his feet, form nearly solidified masses between his toes, and he shivers and drips from the cold, wet t-shirt holding a decently sized puddle against his skin.

It’s not long before they rejoin her group and, more importantly, their supply of towels. It’s not long, no, but he can still warm her clammy arms with his hands, can still risk a kiss to her brow. An apology for the flinging, that.

She takes it well.

Once they’re back with her friends and the towels, situated so conveniently near a fire, almost enough to actually feel the heat, he has to let go of her. She wraps a towel around her, wears it like blanket as she sits on the cloth spread against the sand, as she laughs from their talk, her hair dark, the shine as wet as the rest of her. Once mostly dry, she pulls back on her top, somehow gets her wet bikini top out from under it. Her jeans stay off.

His t-shirt refuses to dry and really, he should have thought of that before he jumped into the ocean at night, but, discomfort or no, he doesn’t much mind. Toweling himself off with a cloth already halfway damp, he doesn’t much mind. The wet jeans, though, he does mind a little. He does the best he can to get the sand off his feet before bringing them onto the blanket, and that’s when the hush comes.

That’s when the fireworks start.

That’s when they stand, all of them, all the beach that wants a view that’s better than the view from a blanket. His girl looks for him, reaches for him, and he pulls her to stand in front of him, his hands moving to shoulders still cold. She keeps her fingers entwined with his, an absent movement that feels intentional. She’s tense, anticipatory.

Maybe she’s leaning back or maybe he’s pulling her or maybe it’s in his head, but they’re getting closer, her back almost to his chest, almost against, almost, she freshly dry and he still drenched. The hand not held by hers finds its way to her neck, his thumb so lightly touching skin beneath hair heavy with wet. Such a slight touch and she shivers. So does he.

“If you’re cold,” he says, “put on my jacket.”

It’s possible she didn’t hear him, under the sound of fire cracking, of explosives living up to their name, living up in the sky for one, last, brilliant moment. He makes himself watch rather than wait, makes himself watch the display in the air rather than her subtly changing lines.

As she breathes.

As she considers.

As she decides.

Releasing his hand, she takes a step back onto the blanket, reaches down. She lifts it and looks to him, her expression surprise at the weight even as her eyes ask something entirely different.

He nods, mouth open, throat closed, and she pulls it on, lifts her hair and lets it fall outside the collar rather than trapping the wet mass beneath it. He holds out his hand and she moves back to him, takes those entire two steps back to him, and he turns her to face the light as she pulls his arms tight around her. His jaw against the damp strands, he breathes in and out, a sigh she must be able to feel. He knows what the world feels like through that jacket, knows she must have felt it.

Her wet little head falls back against his equally damp shoulder, and her hair brushes against his cheek as his breath must brush against hers. He stands still, stands so very, very still as the world turns, and then she sighs too.

Yes, he thinks.

Tonight, she’s his.

.-.-.-.-.-.

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