Fic: In Human Hands (1/?)
Title: In Human Hands
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “I’m Rose,” she says, stresses the second word as if she thinks he might be slow or as if she thinks he needs reminding of a crucial fact. It does sound like a reminder. Maybe she said before and he forgot. He’s not very good with names.
“John Smith,” he replies.
The Tourist
It’s just one more day, another day after the day before, another day coming before the day after. Sun up, sun down; the world rotates and forces them all to come along with it.
It’s always just one more day and it’s driving him up the wall.
On this particular one more day, he’s working through siesta again, forgoing company for additional hours and somewhat unnerving his employer. Strange how he’d throw all the days away and yet always ask for more hours. His new employer isn’t complaining, has in fact hired him on that reputation of constant, flawless work. It’s a reputation he prides himself on, as a man, as a mechanic.
This being the case, it’s an unusual thing indeed when he straightens up from the open bonnet of the car to speak to the random tourist who’s stumbled into the garage.
“Hey,” she says, tucking a strand of long blond hair behind her ear before sticking her hand back into her pocket. “D’you speak English? ¿Hablas inglés?”
Definitely a tourist, one that doesn’t even know how to conjugate when speaking to strangers. The London accent of her speech is almost tangible. “Enough to get by in restaurants,” he replies, only somewhat sarcastically.
To his surprise, the girl smiles instead of taking the hint and leaving. “What, restaurants run by picky English professors?”
He shrugs, wonders how far she’ll take it. “Wouldn’t recommend eating there, mind. Culinary minds and literary ones don’t much mix.”
“Oh I dunno,” the girl replies, shrugging as well. “Somebody’s gotta write the cookbooks, yeah?”
He realizes he’s actually bantering with a tourist and wipes off his hands with a rag to emphasize the fact that he’s being interrupted from work. “So what d’you want?”
“Looking for directions, actually,” she says, which makes sense for someone walking into an auto repair shop. “But . . .” She looks at him, seems to considering him in his light blue boiler suit, splattered with oil and grease. “Yeah, never mind,” she decides and turns to leave.
That, he decides, is downright insulting. “Oi! I think I’d know the city I live in.”
She turns back, looks at him, a small frown on her face that almost looks playful. “If you’re Spanish, how come you sound like you’re from the North?”
“Spain has a north,” he counters and when she laughs, he finds himself grinning.
“Okay then,” she decides, “tell me what there’s to see in Barcelona.”
He blinks at her, the faint trace of amusement disappearing. “Are you serious? This is a garage, not Tourist Information.”
“’m not a tourist: I’m a traveler,” she says with a shake of her head and he only scoffs. He’s certainly never heard that one before, definitely not. Not from a teenager, at least.
“Right, ‘course you are,” he agrees, condescending in no small amount. “Get a guidebook.”
Her face hardens in a way he’s not expecting, makes him wonder if she’s going to cry or strike him or yell. It lasts for a moment and leaves him intrigued, piques his interest as it hasn’t been piqued in quite some time.
She shakes her head, looks like a normal teenager once more - normal, if stupid. “If you want to know what’s going on in a school, ask the janitor. If you want to know where people go, ask the car guy.”
He raises his eyebrows. “You sure about that second part?”
“You’ve got the same outfit,” she says with a shrug and a tongue-touched smile, as if this point is somehow important. No, she’s joking; he can tell. Either joking, or stupider than he imagined.
Well, if it’ll get rid of her: “Try the Sagrada Família.”
“That’s the church with the spires, yeah?” she asks and he rolls his eyes.
“Yes, it’s the church with the spires,” he answers, purposefully going back to car and pointedly picking up his wrench again. “And this is an engine with an attitude problem, so if you don’t mind - and even if you do - I’m going to be administering some forceful therapy in a mo’ and I’m going to be doing it with you not here.”
She doesn’t move, just looks at him in a way that sets him on edge. “Percussive maintenance sort of therapy?” she asks and the term makes him blink. It sounds like one of his own thoughts, feels like it belongs in his head.
“Loud, but effective,” he agrees, not entirely certain why he’s still talking to her. Why the hell did he call her back when she’d started to leave before?
Her lips quirk and he doesn’t get it, doesn’t like it. “Patients ever complain about your bedside manner?”
“Nope,” he replies. “Quite the physician, me.”
She grins at him outright and finally turns to leave. “Yeah, I bet. See you.”
He grunts in reply, turns back to the waiting engine. And something tickles at the back of his mind, brushes against his thoughts like a mosquito he’ll never be able to slap in time.
“What’s your name?” he asks without meaning to, straightening to look at her once more.
She pauses in the doorway of the garage, this small girl framed in the large entrance. The sunlight doesn’t so much hit her hair as stroke it, doesn’t so much strike her as kiss her bare shoulders. Maybe it’s the tank top that’s familiar or maybe it’s the smile. It could be nothing more than a well-known accent. But it’s definitely something.
“I’m Rose,” she says, stresses the second word as if she thinks he might be slow or as if she thinks he needs reminding of a crucial fact. It does sound like a reminder. Maybe she said before and he forgot. He’s not very good with names.
“John Smith,” he replies.
“See you,” she says and leaves and, much to his frustration, the engine continues to be temperamental for the rest of the day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
On the next one more day, he feels someone staring at the back of his head and ignores them. Very pointedly, he ignores them, rattles things a bit more loudly than necessary.
“Um . . .” says a voice from behind.
“What?” he asks, keeps his tone short and clipped and wonders what she’s doing back here.
She looks awkward today, awkward and slightly sunburned. “Sorry, just - are you a ‘mister’ or a ‘señor’?”
Neither. “I’m a ‘John’,” he replies automatically before inwardly kicking himself. She was going to be formal and then he opens his mouth and invites familiarity. “Just ‘Smith’,” he amends before she gets the wrong idea.
“Tyler,” she says.
He actually looks at her. “What?”
“S’my last name,” she explains.
“Good for you, Rose Tyler,” he congratulates with a roll of the eyes. Now, to the point: “Did you drop something here yesterday?”
“Nah, I just-” She pauses, bites her lip. “The Sagrada Família. S’beautiful.”
Understatement, he thinks. “If you think it’s good now, you should see it when it’s finished,” he replies. “Only takes ‘em a hundred forty-four years.”
She looks at him oddly and he realizes how that must have sounded, like he’s already seen the finished project when completion is years off.
“Take a look at the building plans,” he adds for explanation.
“That’d be something to see, yeah,” she says and - no, no she’s not, but yes she is, damn - she sits down on one of the folding chairs by the wall.
“What’re you doing?” he asks, looking at her like she’s mental. Which she may well be.
“Sittin’,” she replies and shrugs.
He can see that. “What for?”
She shrugs again. “Well, you see, you’ve got this chair, yeah? And it looked lonely ‘cause no one was using it.”
That’s a new one. Not that there’s ever been an old one, as far as he’s concerned. Who spends their afternoons bothering mechanics? “No anthropomorphic objects in here.”
She perks up at that, looks at him with an interest that isn’t so much renewed as simply enhanced. He wishes he knew what he was doing that was so fascinating - then he could stop. “What’s that mean?” she asks.
He rolls his eyes but tells her anyway. “Means it has qualities like a person. Personification and the like.”
After considering this for a second, she points to the car. “You’ve got an antha- anthro?”
“Anthropomorphic.”
“Anthropormorphic engine over there,” she counters, putting one too many “r”s into the word. “That patient of yours.”
For a moment, he considers being very rude in Spanish, but that strikes him as being childish and thus a win for her. He’s not sure if they’re playing a game or having a contest or if they’re both simply very, very bored.
He just looks at her instead.
She looks back at him evenly, far too evenly for a teenager.
“How old are you?” he asks, wondering about appearances and ages belied.
There’s a pause as she thinks. “Twenty-ish,” she says as he raises his eyebrows. “How about you?”
“Forty-ish,” he replies. “And I suppose you mean eighteen and a couple months.”
“Twenty and a month or so,” she counters. “And I guess you mean like . . . forty-four?”
Not the most insulting guess he’s ever heard, but it still annoys him. “Forty-three.”
She grins.
“What?”
“I had the better guess, that’s all,” she says and shrugs and continues to sit there.
He goes back to work and she keeps sitting there. He swears at the engine and she stays as she is. He discovers the problem and finds that he’s made accidentally made another and she’s still there. Watching him. He spends a year’s worth of patience within five minutes.
“Haven’t you got someone else to bother?” he finally asks.
“No,” she replies bluntly and it annoys him. He’s the sarcastic one here.
“Leave,” he tells her and it makes her blink.
She recovers quickly and he wonders if she really was startled as she asks, “What’s a good place to go?”
“You’ve got almost seventy parks, half a dozen beaches, museums and shops aplenty, and probably a couple thousand randy idiots who’d love to play tour guide for you,” he snipes. “Go bother one of them.”
“They’re annoying,” she says mildly and it’s possibly the most sensible thing he’s ever heard out of her mouth.
“Not my problem,” he answers and still she sits there, waiting him out. “Labyrinth Park,” he tells her and that gets her attention.
She ignores the unspoken suggestion that she get herself lost and smiles at him. It’s different from her smiles before and he thinks about her tongue, the way it peeked through her lips and teeth. It’s a memorable smile, that’s all, that’s the reason why he recognizes that this one is different.
For one bizarre, horrifying moment, he actually wonders if she’s about to cry.
Thankfully, that turns out to be a misinterpretation of her look and no tears are shed. Good. That means he can snark at her with a guilt-free conscience.
The waver in her smile - if it ever did exist - has disappeared before he can fully process it and she asks him only for directions to the park. In the end, he wipes his hands off and draws her an elementary map on the back of a flyer, the girl watching him do so.
He hands it to her sternly, radiating the desire to return to his cantankerous tanker of a car. Damn ugly thing.
She accepts it seriously, too seriously, and when she says thanks, her tongue peeks through her teeth for just a second. “Grazias, Smith,” she says and he rolls his eyes and she only grins wider.
“Don’t get lost,” he tells her and only when she’s gone does he realize that it’s not what he meant to say.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Hey,” she greets him, there for the third day in a row. “I got out eventually.”
“I couldn’t’ve guessed,” he remarks dryly and gives up the fight right there, grabbing his rag and wiping his hands off. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Car’s gone,” she realizes.
So it is, and good riddance. “Again: never would have guessed.”
She laughs at that, laughs like he’s actually got a sense of humour and he feels himself smile. “Good thing I popped ‘round then,” she replies.
It’s strange, the way he doesn’t have a comeback for that.
“You’d be bored and clueless,” she adds, misinterpreting his silence for incomprehension.
“But not thick,” he counters, belittles. He feels more like himself for it.
Biting her lip, she looks at him, takes a step forward to stand before him. He looks down at her, eyebrows rising.
She lifts her hand and taps him on the forehead with her knuckles.
He’s not entirely sure why he let her do that.
“Nope,” she says. “Definitely thick.”
He rolls his eyes and swats her hand away. “I’ve got a wrench I can hit you with,” he reminds her.
She laughs again and it makes him fear he’s actually become an entertainment for her. “S’heavy?”
“A bit,” he confirms.
There’s something behind her eyes, something that reminds him of something else. “Ah, better not bother you, then.”
“Best not,” he agrees and why is he grinning?
“I’ll get out of your hair, I suppose,” she tells him and yes, this is good.
“Montjuïc,” he says as she leaves.
Blond hair spills across her shoulders as she glances back, as she turns towards him. “What?”
“The hill,” he clarifies. “Great view, old fortresses.”
“Yeah?” she asks and just like that, he knows this is going to become a routine. It already has.
“The Catalan museum’s worth a look. Archaeology. But if you want to get to the top, look for the Funicular de Montjuïc.”
“Funicular?” she echoes and it sounds less like teenaged parroting and more like she’s impressing it upon her mind.
“Funicular railway,” he explains. “Think a train going up a steep hill with cable to help it.”
“You’d be the one to know,” she muses and her tone makes him wonder.
“Why’s that?”
She looks at him like it should be obvious. “Mechanic knowing how trains work? Not exactly a surprise, now, is it?”
“Suppose not,” he says, but she’s still got him thinking.
He thinks a bit more after she leaves, thinks too much. Enough thinking, he’s had. That’s why he came to Barcelona, after all.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“La Avinguda Diagonal,” he tells her the second she enters the garage the following day. He points. “That way. Go shop or something.”
She laughs and leaves him to his solitary work but there’s no satisfaction to be found in it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s just one more day, another day after the day before, another day coming before the day after. Sun up, sun down; the world rotates and forces them all to come along with it.
It’s always just one more day and this one in particular is driving him up the wall. Call it “domingo” or call it “Sunday,” there’s only one result, one he puts off for as long as he can before finally giving in.
In terms of things to occupy him or even in general, his flat is a joke and today, the garage is closed. No tinkering to take the mind away. He entertains the notion of asking his neighbors for odd jobs before quickly dismissing it; it’s a bizarre request and it would entail talking to them.
He can’t spend the day indoors, has tried that in the past and it always throws him off horribly for the rest of the week. He tries to anyway, paces and putters and skims through Dickens and Don Quixote both. That doesn’t last long and he’s soon to be found slipping his keys into his pocket, soon to be found slipping out his door and down the stairs, slipping out into the street and feeling like there’s nothing he can hold onto.
So he walks.
And he wanders.
And when he finds himself looking around for a blond in a tank top, he heads back, vaguely considers eating food and dismisses the thought.
He gets back to the apartment building, runs up to his flat and grabs his jacket, shoves the thick helmet onto his head. And down he goes and off he rumbles, taking the bike slowly at first, taking it slowly until he gets out of the city and hits the highway.
There’s a part of him that winces inside for the price of the gas and a part of him that goes on a guilt trip. For no reason he can name, he cares about the environment of this bloody stupid planet more than he cares about most of the people he deals with on a semi-regular basis.
Though that’s not saying much.
He rides until he stops and he stops until he can’t stay still. The cycle repeats. He gets a lunch he wishes were tasteless from a roadside stand, idly wonders about food poisoning. The wondering continues, turns to life and other topics he wishes wouldn’t have such a lingering taste either.
Once he’s used too much gas to rationalize the waste, he rides back, makes his return but not the same way he came. It’s a game he plays to lose, riding off and getting lost and finding his way back. It’s a game he plays too often, one he’s memorized all the answers to, one he wins every single time.
First place doesn’t offer much of a prize and the truly unfortunate bit is that it’s not even cash-refundable.
He parks his bike, considers spending some time tonight changing the oil and decides not to. Now that the engine of irritability is gone, odds are that he’ll be back to oil changes and break pad replacement all week. And to think, for a moment, he was wondering why he was bored with his life.
That night, he sleeps and dreams and Fred smiles at him on graduation day, smiles at him like the arrogant little annoyance she is as she makes a comment or two about her triple bloody first and his perfectly respectable fifty-one percent, the second attempt not an issue.
They’re not looking at each other but he can feel her grinning at him, can feel her hand at his sleeve. Her hand in his pocket as she searches for his house keys, her hand touching and firm and her smile firm and knowing.
They spring apart when Susan walks in on them because she’s young still, too young to see her step-dad-to-be getting molested by her mother, has to be young, too young, isn’t even born yet, hasn’t been born or died yet and Fred’s next to him and laughing at him in a way that makes him happy and when he reaches for her, his hand hits the wall and he remembers that he got a smaller bed when he moved just so he wouldn’t have to go through this every single night.
He curses in more languages than he knows and his words scare sleep away.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Hullo, Rose,” he says, calls the girl by name for the first time.
It makes her smile. “Hey, you.”
She sits there and he works and the noises of his efforts don’t seem quite so out of place with someone else to hear them.
“What’d you do without me yesterday?” he asks because she seems to want to say something.
She shrugs in a way that reminds him of himself, a way that makes him think she might be copying him. “Went to the beach, mostly,” she answers. “Ended up playing volleyball - sorry, voleibol - with a bunch of people - couldn’t understand anything more than names and the score but, yeah, it was fun.”
He looks at her, takes in her deepening tan, thinks her obviously dyed hair might be getting sun-bleached. She’s wearing one of those things, those wrap-around-skirt things over bathing suit bottoms and her mostly-buttoned short-sleeved blouse lets him know what colour the bikini is, lets him know the shade of skin over her stomach.
How the hell hasn’t this girl found someone else to bother?
“Have you got this thing for complete strangers?” he asks.
“Sort of, yeah,” she agrees and looks at him like it’s some sort of a joke he should get, looks disappointed when his clueless state is made clear by his expression.
He really doesn’t understand her. “So you like not knowing what’s going on?”
She shrugs again, and yes, that’s definitely his mannerism. “Could’ve found a group that spoke English or tried Spanglish or something, but that wouldn’t’ve been half as fun. Besides, ‘m learning a lot.” He thinks she’s looking at him like she expects him to be proud, but that’s just him being tired. He hates sleep and sleep hates him right back.
“So . . . a good day,” he concludes.
“Yeah,” she says, “but if you think that means I’m leaving you alone, you’ve got another think coming.”
She’s mental. She’s completely mental.
“Fantastic,” he mutters with a roll of the eyes and she only smiles in reply.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “I’m Rose,” she says, stresses the second word as if she thinks he might be slow or as if she thinks he needs reminding of a crucial fact. It does sound like a reminder. Maybe she said before and he forgot. He’s not very good with names.
“John Smith,” he replies.
The Tourist
It’s just one more day, another day after the day before, another day coming before the day after. Sun up, sun down; the world rotates and forces them all to come along with it.
It’s always just one more day and it’s driving him up the wall.
On this particular one more day, he’s working through siesta again, forgoing company for additional hours and somewhat unnerving his employer. Strange how he’d throw all the days away and yet always ask for more hours. His new employer isn’t complaining, has in fact hired him on that reputation of constant, flawless work. It’s a reputation he prides himself on, as a man, as a mechanic.
This being the case, it’s an unusual thing indeed when he straightens up from the open bonnet of the car to speak to the random tourist who’s stumbled into the garage.
“Hey,” she says, tucking a strand of long blond hair behind her ear before sticking her hand back into her pocket. “D’you speak English? ¿Hablas inglés?”
Definitely a tourist, one that doesn’t even know how to conjugate when speaking to strangers. The London accent of her speech is almost tangible. “Enough to get by in restaurants,” he replies, only somewhat sarcastically.
To his surprise, the girl smiles instead of taking the hint and leaving. “What, restaurants run by picky English professors?”
He shrugs, wonders how far she’ll take it. “Wouldn’t recommend eating there, mind. Culinary minds and literary ones don’t much mix.”
“Oh I dunno,” the girl replies, shrugging as well. “Somebody’s gotta write the cookbooks, yeah?”
He realizes he’s actually bantering with a tourist and wipes off his hands with a rag to emphasize the fact that he’s being interrupted from work. “So what d’you want?”
“Looking for directions, actually,” she says, which makes sense for someone walking into an auto repair shop. “But . . .” She looks at him, seems to considering him in his light blue boiler suit, splattered with oil and grease. “Yeah, never mind,” she decides and turns to leave.
That, he decides, is downright insulting. “Oi! I think I’d know the city I live in.”
She turns back, looks at him, a small frown on her face that almost looks playful. “If you’re Spanish, how come you sound like you’re from the North?”
“Spain has a north,” he counters and when she laughs, he finds himself grinning.
“Okay then,” she decides, “tell me what there’s to see in Barcelona.”
He blinks at her, the faint trace of amusement disappearing. “Are you serious? This is a garage, not Tourist Information.”
“’m not a tourist: I’m a traveler,” she says with a shake of her head and he only scoffs. He’s certainly never heard that one before, definitely not. Not from a teenager, at least.
“Right, ‘course you are,” he agrees, condescending in no small amount. “Get a guidebook.”
Her face hardens in a way he’s not expecting, makes him wonder if she’s going to cry or strike him or yell. It lasts for a moment and leaves him intrigued, piques his interest as it hasn’t been piqued in quite some time.
She shakes her head, looks like a normal teenager once more - normal, if stupid. “If you want to know what’s going on in a school, ask the janitor. If you want to know where people go, ask the car guy.”
He raises his eyebrows. “You sure about that second part?”
“You’ve got the same outfit,” she says with a shrug and a tongue-touched smile, as if this point is somehow important. No, she’s joking; he can tell. Either joking, or stupider than he imagined.
Well, if it’ll get rid of her: “Try the Sagrada Família.”
“That’s the church with the spires, yeah?” she asks and he rolls his eyes.
“Yes, it’s the church with the spires,” he answers, purposefully going back to car and pointedly picking up his wrench again. “And this is an engine with an attitude problem, so if you don’t mind - and even if you do - I’m going to be administering some forceful therapy in a mo’ and I’m going to be doing it with you not here.”
She doesn’t move, just looks at him in a way that sets him on edge. “Percussive maintenance sort of therapy?” she asks and the term makes him blink. It sounds like one of his own thoughts, feels like it belongs in his head.
“Loud, but effective,” he agrees, not entirely certain why he’s still talking to her. Why the hell did he call her back when she’d started to leave before?
Her lips quirk and he doesn’t get it, doesn’t like it. “Patients ever complain about your bedside manner?”
“Nope,” he replies. “Quite the physician, me.”
She grins at him outright and finally turns to leave. “Yeah, I bet. See you.”
He grunts in reply, turns back to the waiting engine. And something tickles at the back of his mind, brushes against his thoughts like a mosquito he’ll never be able to slap in time.
“What’s your name?” he asks without meaning to, straightening to look at her once more.
She pauses in the doorway of the garage, this small girl framed in the large entrance. The sunlight doesn’t so much hit her hair as stroke it, doesn’t so much strike her as kiss her bare shoulders. Maybe it’s the tank top that’s familiar or maybe it’s the smile. It could be nothing more than a well-known accent. But it’s definitely something.
“I’m Rose,” she says, stresses the second word as if she thinks he might be slow or as if she thinks he needs reminding of a crucial fact. It does sound like a reminder. Maybe she said before and he forgot. He’s not very good with names.
“John Smith,” he replies.
“See you,” she says and leaves and, much to his frustration, the engine continues to be temperamental for the rest of the day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
On the next one more day, he feels someone staring at the back of his head and ignores them. Very pointedly, he ignores them, rattles things a bit more loudly than necessary.
“Um . . .” says a voice from behind.
“What?” he asks, keeps his tone short and clipped and wonders what she’s doing back here.
She looks awkward today, awkward and slightly sunburned. “Sorry, just - are you a ‘mister’ or a ‘señor’?”
Neither. “I’m a ‘John’,” he replies automatically before inwardly kicking himself. She was going to be formal and then he opens his mouth and invites familiarity. “Just ‘Smith’,” he amends before she gets the wrong idea.
“Tyler,” she says.
He actually looks at her. “What?”
“S’my last name,” she explains.
“Good for you, Rose Tyler,” he congratulates with a roll of the eyes. Now, to the point: “Did you drop something here yesterday?”
“Nah, I just-” She pauses, bites her lip. “The Sagrada Família. S’beautiful.”
Understatement, he thinks. “If you think it’s good now, you should see it when it’s finished,” he replies. “Only takes ‘em a hundred forty-four years.”
She looks at him oddly and he realizes how that must have sounded, like he’s already seen the finished project when completion is years off.
“Take a look at the building plans,” he adds for explanation.
“That’d be something to see, yeah,” she says and - no, no she’s not, but yes she is, damn - she sits down on one of the folding chairs by the wall.
“What’re you doing?” he asks, looking at her like she’s mental. Which she may well be.
“Sittin’,” she replies and shrugs.
He can see that. “What for?”
She shrugs again. “Well, you see, you’ve got this chair, yeah? And it looked lonely ‘cause no one was using it.”
That’s a new one. Not that there’s ever been an old one, as far as he’s concerned. Who spends their afternoons bothering mechanics? “No anthropomorphic objects in here.”
She perks up at that, looks at him with an interest that isn’t so much renewed as simply enhanced. He wishes he knew what he was doing that was so fascinating - then he could stop. “What’s that mean?” she asks.
He rolls his eyes but tells her anyway. “Means it has qualities like a person. Personification and the like.”
After considering this for a second, she points to the car. “You’ve got an antha- anthro?”
“Anthropomorphic.”
“Anthropormorphic engine over there,” she counters, putting one too many “r”s into the word. “That patient of yours.”
For a moment, he considers being very rude in Spanish, but that strikes him as being childish and thus a win for her. He’s not sure if they’re playing a game or having a contest or if they’re both simply very, very bored.
He just looks at her instead.
She looks back at him evenly, far too evenly for a teenager.
“How old are you?” he asks, wondering about appearances and ages belied.
There’s a pause as she thinks. “Twenty-ish,” she says as he raises his eyebrows. “How about you?”
“Forty-ish,” he replies. “And I suppose you mean eighteen and a couple months.”
“Twenty and a month or so,” she counters. “And I guess you mean like . . . forty-four?”
Not the most insulting guess he’s ever heard, but it still annoys him. “Forty-three.”
She grins.
“What?”
“I had the better guess, that’s all,” she says and shrugs and continues to sit there.
He goes back to work and she keeps sitting there. He swears at the engine and she stays as she is. He discovers the problem and finds that he’s made accidentally made another and she’s still there. Watching him. He spends a year’s worth of patience within five minutes.
“Haven’t you got someone else to bother?” he finally asks.
“No,” she replies bluntly and it annoys him. He’s the sarcastic one here.
“Leave,” he tells her and it makes her blink.
She recovers quickly and he wonders if she really was startled as she asks, “What’s a good place to go?”
“You’ve got almost seventy parks, half a dozen beaches, museums and shops aplenty, and probably a couple thousand randy idiots who’d love to play tour guide for you,” he snipes. “Go bother one of them.”
“They’re annoying,” she says mildly and it’s possibly the most sensible thing he’s ever heard out of her mouth.
“Not my problem,” he answers and still she sits there, waiting him out. “Labyrinth Park,” he tells her and that gets her attention.
She ignores the unspoken suggestion that she get herself lost and smiles at him. It’s different from her smiles before and he thinks about her tongue, the way it peeked through her lips and teeth. It’s a memorable smile, that’s all, that’s the reason why he recognizes that this one is different.
For one bizarre, horrifying moment, he actually wonders if she’s about to cry.
Thankfully, that turns out to be a misinterpretation of her look and no tears are shed. Good. That means he can snark at her with a guilt-free conscience.
The waver in her smile - if it ever did exist - has disappeared before he can fully process it and she asks him only for directions to the park. In the end, he wipes his hands off and draws her an elementary map on the back of a flyer, the girl watching him do so.
He hands it to her sternly, radiating the desire to return to his cantankerous tanker of a car. Damn ugly thing.
She accepts it seriously, too seriously, and when she says thanks, her tongue peeks through her teeth for just a second. “Grazias, Smith,” she says and he rolls his eyes and she only grins wider.
“Don’t get lost,” he tells her and only when she’s gone does he realize that it’s not what he meant to say.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Hey,” she greets him, there for the third day in a row. “I got out eventually.”
“I couldn’t’ve guessed,” he remarks dryly and gives up the fight right there, grabbing his rag and wiping his hands off. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Car’s gone,” she realizes.
So it is, and good riddance. “Again: never would have guessed.”
She laughs at that, laughs like he’s actually got a sense of humour and he feels himself smile. “Good thing I popped ‘round then,” she replies.
It’s strange, the way he doesn’t have a comeback for that.
“You’d be bored and clueless,” she adds, misinterpreting his silence for incomprehension.
“But not thick,” he counters, belittles. He feels more like himself for it.
Biting her lip, she looks at him, takes a step forward to stand before him. He looks down at her, eyebrows rising.
She lifts her hand and taps him on the forehead with her knuckles.
He’s not entirely sure why he let her do that.
“Nope,” she says. “Definitely thick.”
He rolls his eyes and swats her hand away. “I’ve got a wrench I can hit you with,” he reminds her.
She laughs again and it makes him fear he’s actually become an entertainment for her. “S’heavy?”
“A bit,” he confirms.
There’s something behind her eyes, something that reminds him of something else. “Ah, better not bother you, then.”
“Best not,” he agrees and why is he grinning?
“I’ll get out of your hair, I suppose,” she tells him and yes, this is good.
“Montjuïc,” he says as she leaves.
Blond hair spills across her shoulders as she glances back, as she turns towards him. “What?”
“The hill,” he clarifies. “Great view, old fortresses.”
“Yeah?” she asks and just like that, he knows this is going to become a routine. It already has.
“The Catalan museum’s worth a look. Archaeology. But if you want to get to the top, look for the Funicular de Montjuïc.”
“Funicular?” she echoes and it sounds less like teenaged parroting and more like she’s impressing it upon her mind.
“Funicular railway,” he explains. “Think a train going up a steep hill with cable to help it.”
“You’d be the one to know,” she muses and her tone makes him wonder.
“Why’s that?”
She looks at him like it should be obvious. “Mechanic knowing how trains work? Not exactly a surprise, now, is it?”
“Suppose not,” he says, but she’s still got him thinking.
He thinks a bit more after she leaves, thinks too much. Enough thinking, he’s had. That’s why he came to Barcelona, after all.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“La Avinguda Diagonal,” he tells her the second she enters the garage the following day. He points. “That way. Go shop or something.”
She laughs and leaves him to his solitary work but there’s no satisfaction to be found in it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s just one more day, another day after the day before, another day coming before the day after. Sun up, sun down; the world rotates and forces them all to come along with it.
It’s always just one more day and this one in particular is driving him up the wall. Call it “domingo” or call it “Sunday,” there’s only one result, one he puts off for as long as he can before finally giving in.
In terms of things to occupy him or even in general, his flat is a joke and today, the garage is closed. No tinkering to take the mind away. He entertains the notion of asking his neighbors for odd jobs before quickly dismissing it; it’s a bizarre request and it would entail talking to them.
He can’t spend the day indoors, has tried that in the past and it always throws him off horribly for the rest of the week. He tries to anyway, paces and putters and skims through Dickens and Don Quixote both. That doesn’t last long and he’s soon to be found slipping his keys into his pocket, soon to be found slipping out his door and down the stairs, slipping out into the street and feeling like there’s nothing he can hold onto.
So he walks.
And he wanders.
And when he finds himself looking around for a blond in a tank top, he heads back, vaguely considers eating food and dismisses the thought.
He gets back to the apartment building, runs up to his flat and grabs his jacket, shoves the thick helmet onto his head. And down he goes and off he rumbles, taking the bike slowly at first, taking it slowly until he gets out of the city and hits the highway.
There’s a part of him that winces inside for the price of the gas and a part of him that goes on a guilt trip. For no reason he can name, he cares about the environment of this bloody stupid planet more than he cares about most of the people he deals with on a semi-regular basis.
Though that’s not saying much.
He rides until he stops and he stops until he can’t stay still. The cycle repeats. He gets a lunch he wishes were tasteless from a roadside stand, idly wonders about food poisoning. The wondering continues, turns to life and other topics he wishes wouldn’t have such a lingering taste either.
Once he’s used too much gas to rationalize the waste, he rides back, makes his return but not the same way he came. It’s a game he plays to lose, riding off and getting lost and finding his way back. It’s a game he plays too often, one he’s memorized all the answers to, one he wins every single time.
First place doesn’t offer much of a prize and the truly unfortunate bit is that it’s not even cash-refundable.
He parks his bike, considers spending some time tonight changing the oil and decides not to. Now that the engine of irritability is gone, odds are that he’ll be back to oil changes and break pad replacement all week. And to think, for a moment, he was wondering why he was bored with his life.
That night, he sleeps and dreams and Fred smiles at him on graduation day, smiles at him like the arrogant little annoyance she is as she makes a comment or two about her triple bloody first and his perfectly respectable fifty-one percent, the second attempt not an issue.
They’re not looking at each other but he can feel her grinning at him, can feel her hand at his sleeve. Her hand in his pocket as she searches for his house keys, her hand touching and firm and her smile firm and knowing.
They spring apart when Susan walks in on them because she’s young still, too young to see her step-dad-to-be getting molested by her mother, has to be young, too young, isn’t even born yet, hasn’t been born or died yet and Fred’s next to him and laughing at him in a way that makes him happy and when he reaches for her, his hand hits the wall and he remembers that he got a smaller bed when he moved just so he wouldn’t have to go through this every single night.
He curses in more languages than he knows and his words scare sleep away.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Hullo, Rose,” he says, calls the girl by name for the first time.
It makes her smile. “Hey, you.”
She sits there and he works and the noises of his efforts don’t seem quite so out of place with someone else to hear them.
“What’d you do without me yesterday?” he asks because she seems to want to say something.
She shrugs in a way that reminds him of himself, a way that makes him think she might be copying him. “Went to the beach, mostly,” she answers. “Ended up playing volleyball - sorry, voleibol - with a bunch of people - couldn’t understand anything more than names and the score but, yeah, it was fun.”
He looks at her, takes in her deepening tan, thinks her obviously dyed hair might be getting sun-bleached. She’s wearing one of those things, those wrap-around-skirt things over bathing suit bottoms and her mostly-buttoned short-sleeved blouse lets him know what colour the bikini is, lets him know the shade of skin over her stomach.
How the hell hasn’t this girl found someone else to bother?
“Have you got this thing for complete strangers?” he asks.
“Sort of, yeah,” she agrees and looks at him like it’s some sort of a joke he should get, looks disappointed when his clueless state is made clear by his expression.
He really doesn’t understand her. “So you like not knowing what’s going on?”
She shrugs again, and yes, that’s definitely his mannerism. “Could’ve found a group that spoke English or tried Spanglish or something, but that wouldn’t’ve been half as fun. Besides, ‘m learning a lot.” He thinks she’s looking at him like she expects him to be proud, but that’s just him being tired. He hates sleep and sleep hates him right back.
“So . . . a good day,” he concludes.
“Yeah,” she says, “but if you think that means I’m leaving you alone, you’ve got another think coming.”
She’s mental. She’s completely mental.
“Fantastic,” he mutters with a roll of the eyes and she only smiles in reply.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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