Fic: In Human Hands (8/20?)
Title: In Human Hands
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “Rose,” he bites. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” Because he could, maybe. Because he wants to, definitely. Just for once in his life, he needs to be able to rescue someone.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The room is restless, down to the floorboards. Her blue jacket is cast across the small sofa as if thrown; the sheets on the bed seem to have been flung to the floor. The bathroom door is ajar and he doesn’t need to look inside to know she’s got a mess in there too. Everything has her mark on it, quite the feat for a hotel room.
This is a girl who could leave her handprint in the air, he thinks. If she tried. And maybe even if she didn’t.
She pulls him inside by the front of his t-shirt at first, quickly moves her hand to his. They’re two steps in and then she doesn’t seem to know what to do. He closes the door behind them, shuts the world out, cloisters them inside.
He hasn’t heard her voice in nearly a week; voicemail doesn’t count, can’t compare. He looks at her, waiting for her to speak, willing her to speak.
“Rose,” he says softly, “are you-”
“Don’t,” she tells him, says it like it’s painful to think. “Don’t, okay? The second you ask me if I’m all right, I’m going t’ start crying and I really don’t need that right now.”
He holds up the hand she’s not claiming. “I won’t ask.”
“Good.” She bites her lip, looks away.
He looks at the small, overstuffed loveseat. “Sit?”
“Okay,” she says and does, moving her jacket behind her so he could attempt to fit himself into the space between her and the arm of the couch.
He sits on the low table in front of it instead, a sturdy thing not unlike the one he has back at the flat. Fewer marks on it, though. “Sanchez wanted to know if someone murdered you,” he lies to her, trying to back her away from the verge of tears. “Thought I’d check.”
She makes a sound that might be related to amusement, knuckling her eyes and dragging the moisture away with her fingertips. “Nope. No serial killers yet.”
“Good,” he says, looks away when she sees something in his face he didn’t mean to put there. His gaze goes to the other half of the room, to the duvet on the floor. “Nightmares?”
“No,” she tells him, very quick about it.
He looks at her and it’s her turn to look away.
“It’s not that bad,” she tells him, her hands clasped in her lap.
He leans forward, his long legs on either side of hers in the cramped space between coffee table and loveseat. He leans forward enough to be lower than her, enough to need to look up at her face. Her hands in her lap slowly separate and he takes one with both of his.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because now he realizes what he’s done. And he has done something. “About Sunday.”
Surprise pulls her back to him. Not the reaction he was expecting, but better than nothing. He can work with this, can work with her asking, “What?”
“Under the overpass,” he clarifies.
“No, I- No.” She shakes her head and he has her talking. “That was fine, that was- No. I’m-” She shakes her head again, getting it in order. “That was good. I, I needed that.” She swallows and when he makes to drop her hand, she holds on tight. “This, none of this- It’s not your fault.”
She’s trying to reassure him now; she’ll tell him whatever she thinks he needs. Psychology comes in handy, he knows, and the thought makes him shake away the suddenly crowding memories of Fred.
“Then whose is it?” he asks.
The answering look on her face throws guilt into him. He’s not blind and even a blind man could tell how sorely this girl needs a hug.
“’s mine,” she tells him quietly. “My fault.”
“Rose,” he says.
“’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” She rubs at her face with the palm of her hand, breathes out a heavy sigh. “I am. I really-”
“Rose.”
She looks at him, addresses his chin instead of looking him in the eyes. “Yeah?”
He makes himself quiet, a pillar of calm. He gives her a cursory check with his eyes, finds both her legs and arms free of any noticeable bruising. Doesn’t look like she’s been physically harmed, but something has most definitely taken a hammer to her mental wellbeing.
“Tell me what happened.”
This time, he’s not asking.
Slowly, she pulls her hand from his. He can’t tell whether she’s giving him space or taking it for herself. He wants to keep holding onto her, doesn’t know if he should. Her hair falls into her face as she looks at her knees, her bare feet on the carpet between his boots. He knows her well enough to know she’s biting her lip, to know the expression across her hidden features.
Sitting very still, he watches the curve of her shoulders for shaking, for any sign of approaching tears. The urge to touch is almost overwhelming and only his inability to pick a gesture holds him back. He thinks to cover her hands with his, to gently lift her chin until she looks him in the eyes; his hands could rest on her shoulders or cradle her face. It all seems far too tender, far too much. She doesn’t want him to ask if she’s all right, not with his voice - it would be wrong to ask by touch.
Her chest and shoulders rise and fall, a breath of air going deep into her and back out. She changes her mind about contact, reaches for the hand he quickly gives her. Her touch is tentative, and when she dares a glance into his eyes, he sees a fear of rejection so strong as to border on terror.
“I was stupid,” the girl tells him with the weight of a confession. “I was stupid and ‘m really, really sorry.” She won’t look at him after that, finding a trigger for her pain in the lines of his face. “Really am.”
“It’s all right,” he answers, his forgiveness granted before she can ask. If he still hates hospitals after six and a half years, she has the right to avoid them after only one month.
“It’s not, though,” she insists. “God, I can’t believe I...” She sniffles the once, loudly and with the determination not to do it again. “I’m trying. To fix this. I’m gonna get it back.”
This is when he realizes: she’s not talking about missing his hospital stay. She’s not talking about ignoring him, avoiding him. She’s not talking about any of that, not addressing a single one of his wounds.
“Get what back?” he asks and she flinches at the edge in his voice. He can’t help it, can’t quite keep all of his pain inside now that she’s making him feel it.
“It’s his,” she says and the knife goes in deeper. “Really important, an’ I just... So stupid.”
“Rose,” he bites. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” Because he could, maybe. Because he wants to, definitely. Just for once in his life, he needs to be able to rescue someone.
For the first time today, she looks him square in the eyes, hides her emotions behind hazel-brown. “It’s a UNIT thing. It looks like a watch, but it’s not a watch. And I need it back.”
“And where’s it gone?” he asks, slowly losing the battle to be patient and understanding. She’s been apologizing to him over something she owes another man. He’s wondered how much he reminds her of her friend; now he knows. A right substitute, that’s him.
“Dunno,” she replies and he’s losing her again. “That’s just it - I don’t know. ‘S gone.”
“So, what, you put it down? Lost it in the wash? What?” He gives her a look, lets her know how bad a job she’s doing of answering him.
“Pickpocket,” she says and he can’t help but stare.
Is she serious? “Just checking, but: someone stole from you, and that’s your fault?”
She takes offense at his tone and it pulls her out of her self-pity. “Shouldn’t’ve been carrying it on me. I mean, I knew better. Should’ve known.” And back into it.
All right, time for one of them to be logical, at least. “Have you contacted the police?”
She nods.
“Checked out, I dunno, any pawn shops?”
She nods some more.
“Internet auctions?”
One more nod, her eyes gazing quietly into his. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ve got Mickey on that. My friend. Mickey.”
Her ex, if he remembers those old news articles correctly. “Bloke knows his way ‘round a computer?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Okay,” he says.
They sit in a quiet of their own making, their gazes slowly dropping to study their knees. Hers are slight and bare and show she hasn’t been taking care of herself. His are covered by black denim, darkly framing hers. Their hands rest between, fingers entwined in a loose hold, all palms and knuckles and fingertips and so very warm. He’s leaning forward and she’s leaning forward and he’s got that feeling, that little touch of a feeling he gets before he downs four glasses of water without knowing he’s thirsty.
He thinks he might want something, but he doesn’t know what.
She turns her hands over in his grip, shows her palms to his thumbs and lets them look. Lines and mounds and whorls and just the slightest bit of sweat at the beginning of a day soon to turn hot and draining. He learns her hands with the pads of his thumbs and finds he knows it all already.
“How important is it?” he asks. “This non-watch.”
“It’s,” she tries to say and her voice trembles. Her hands fold close over his thumbs, hold him still rather than let him try to comfort. “I don’t even want to think of what’ll happen if I don’t get it back.”
He breathes out rather than tell her how hopeless it is. Even if she manages to find this thing, she’ll have to buy it back from whoever the current owner is. If they realize it has something to do with anything as top secret as she’s making it sound....
“Never noticed you wearing a watch,” he realizes, twisting his hand in hers to hold her wrist. Left wrist, she’s right-handed. His thumb strokes over where a tan line isn’t. “You weren’t wearing one.”
She tenses and he stops and she doesn’t pull away after all. “It’s, ah. A fobwatch, yeah? Looks like one, I mean.”
A round shape in her pocket, he remembers, her fingertips constantly drifting to it, pressing against it through denim. He’d thought it was a mint tin, or something like that. Something she was keeping in a mint tin. Something she’d touch compulsively.
“Why were you carrying it?” he asks, even though that’s not really important, now that the thing is stolen and gone.
“It.... I had him with me,” she replies, watching their hands, studying how they grip each other without conscious control. “Just a little bit of him and I thought.... Dunno what I thought.”
She pulls one hand away to tuck her hair behind her ear. He leans back, stops leaning forward. Her other hand slips from his because he lets it.
“It was stupid,” she continues softly, her eyes very nearly finding his face. “Just like a stupid little ape, I suppose-”
“Enough of that,” he tells her, interrupts with a harder edge than he intends. “You can sit here feeling guilty at me or you can call up your bloke and....”
She turns her face away.
Slowly, he gives her back his hands and lets her hold on tight. “Your doctor,” he says, begins to say, begins to put together. “In his quarantine, did something... happen?”
She bites her lip and he knows he’s right.
“Rose,” he says softly, as softly as he can. “You can tell me.”
That golden head shakes, her bed head not getting any better for it. “He’s not gonna die,” she tells him, like she’s ordering him to arrange reality to make this so. “He’s gonna come back, an’, an’ then everything’ll be all right.” She looks him straight in the eye and lies to him: “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Yeah,” he says, because she needs him to believe her, needs him to believe for her. “He’ll be fine,” he adds, giving her hands a squeeze. “He’s got you, after all.”
She gets that guilty look again and he knows it was a little too soon for anything resembling praise.
“And, tell you what,” he says, shrugging a bit, “I’ll help you look for his non-watch.” Now it’s his turn to look her straight in the eyes and lie: “He’ll never know it was missing.”
He doesn’t dare tell her that the thing is lost for good. Not if the second of her two UNIT men is in danger of joining the first. The watch is her substitute, he’s starting to realize. If she loses it, her doctor dies. It sounds stupid, but he’s had a few coping techniques that had backfired, too.
This is the moment when he most definitely does not think about Grace Holloway.
“All right?” he asks, speaking to prove to himself that he’s still completely in the moment.
She hesitates before she nods and it makes him wonder what this watch of hers really is. “Okay,” she allows.
He waits.
She looks at him.
“This is the part where you tell me what it looks like,” he explains. “So I can look for it.”
It surprises a laugh out of her, a noise neither of them expect. A small noise but still one of his favourites. “Right, yeah,” she replies. “’Course.”
He raises his eyebrows at her.
“It’s got this design on the front. Looks like, I dunno, some model of solar systems or something. All lines and circles. Not symmetric, not centered. Silver-coloured. An’... what else....” Her eyes meet his squarely and the intensity in them nearly pushes him back, nearly pulls him forward. “You can’t open it,” she tells him and he gets that sensation again, that feeling of being pried at. It’s the memory of the sensation, but he feels it in her eyes, feels it in her command, her warning.
“Why not?” he asks. “UNIT secrets?”
“No, I mean it,” she replies, lightening her tone to cover that intensity. But it’s only covered, only hidden by a veil of expression. “You can’t open it. It can’t be opened.”
“Think your pickpocket might have managed by now,” he tells her dryly.
“No, really,” she says. “The doctor, he... He sort of, um, locked it, I s’pose. It’s a genetic lock, yeah? Something about... iso- ice’um-”
“Isomorphic.”
“Isomorphic, yeah,” she agrees, nodding, before she gives him an odd look.
He rolls his eyes. “I’ve got a vocabulary, Rose. Some words in it that go all the way up to five syllables.”
She swats at his arm, but it’s an absentminded gesture, a touch for the sake of touching. She’s looking at him like he’s all she’s got left, all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know what he’s said to bring this on. His heart leaps and then it stumbles, tripping over something that isn’t there.
“Point is,” she tells him, “you can’t open it. All right? Might damage it if you try. If you damage it, I’ll kill you.”
He nods, accepting this, wondering at why he’s accepting this. So much he’s getting himself involved with and yet he’s seen nothing of it, only has her word to hold onto as he throws his mind over mountains to come stand on her side of things.
“Only your doctor can open it?” It feels like a mad version of the sword in the stone: the advanced tech in the pocket watch.
“And me,” she adds. “Safety measures and all that.”
Certainly gives him something specific to look for. “No chance you’ve got a picture of it?”
She shakes her head and he nods, expecting as much.
“All right,” he says. “Meet me at the garage, half past five. Got a list of the places you’ve hit already?”
“Do have that,” she replies. “Sort of a list-map-combo. Hit a lot of them since Monday.”
Monday.
...All right. No wonder she never heard about his hospital stay, running around the city. He passes out and she gets stolen from and they go their separate ways to sort things out.
Except, well. Except.
“You could have called me,” he points out, tries to keep his voice light, tries to keep the accusation out.
She hears it anyway. “That would’ve been a fun chat. ‘Hi, calling to say I’m stupid.’ Didn’t really want t’-”
“I mean,” he says, “you could’ve called me back.” There’s a taste on the back of his tongue and he thinks it might be anger. He thinks so, isn’t certain. He’s never certain these days, so it doesn’t much matter. It makes him think of being thirsty and he can’t remember if he’d eaten breakfast this morning. He can’t remember most of this week, just knows she wasn’t there, wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
“...Yeah,” she says. “S’pose I could’ve.”
Could’ve, not should’ve.
She sees it in his face and they both look away.
He turns his glance downwards, directs it towards his wristwatch. He pulls his hand away to check the time and for once, it’s easier not to touch. “Right then. Best be off. Got a Chevy pining away after my attentions - best not let on how unrequited her love is.”
This is the point where he should stand. This is the point where he should and so he does, standing for just a moment with her knees still between his, with her looking up at him like she’s not ready to see him go. It’s a satisfying thought.
He steps over the corner of the coffee table and she rises from the loveseat, tugging lightly at the hem of her t-shirt. “Hey,” she says, nervous, tentative. She’s going to ask him something and she’s not sure she’s allowed to; it’s a look he knows well by this point.
“Yeah?” He folds his arms, leans back against nothing. He has a sudden feeling that he might want a wall behind him for whatever she’s about to say, might want a solid surface at his back that he can trust to stand firm.
“Are you okay?”
She shifts as she says it, looks up at him in the way that only she does. Nervous and scared and more determined than he can understand. She starts to chew on her lip and, realizing it, makes herself stop.
“C’mere,” he says and she fits into his arms before he’s done holding them out to her. She smells like restless sleep and he can feel taut muscle beneath cotton and skin. She’s stronger than she looks, more tightly wound than she lets on. “Lookit you, worrying about me. What’d you go and do a thing like that for?”
“I do ‘cause I do.” She leans into him, cheek to his shoulder. Feels nice. “Somebody has to.”
And yet, for all that, she still hasn’t caught wind of his hospital stay. Good. Better that way. He’s been upsetting her enough, lately. No more of that.
Her top is wrinkled beneath his hands, a wrinkled layer over smooth skin. “S’pose I can’t stop you from being stupid.”
She tenses and he turns his head, presses his cheek to her temple, a silent apology for the unwitting jab. She stills and he stills and they stand, held together so tightly by their own arms. He wishes he had his jacket, his jumper, wishes there was more between them to cushion all the hard edges and lines that form him into a man.
“Rose?” he asks into her hair.
“Yeah?”
It’s going to be all right. She’s going to be all right. That man of hers, her doctor, he’ll be all right. And it’ll stop hurting, someday, when she thinks of her captain. It will ache like mended bone and she’ll tell everyone about that scar, remembering his smile and commemorating it with her own.
It’ll get better.
It will.
And he’ll take care of her until it does.
After it does.
“I’m going to be late for work,” he says, and doesn’t let her go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Sanchez gripes at him when he is, but afterwards, he’s quick to demand details.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They eat lunch on their bench without talking, a bottle of something tangy between them. The liquid through the thick glass is the colour of nectarines, a slightly different shade when trailing down her chin.
She wipes it away with the back of her hand, licks the droplet from her skin with a pink flick of tongue. Her other hand sets the bottle down close to her knee, glass making a quiet, heavy sound against wood. The sounds around them swallow it up, try to and just barely fail.
The backs of his fingers brush against heated skin as cool glass chills his palm. He sets his handprint over another, a mark already made in the condensation by her smaller hand. It tastes of bitter citrus and processed sugars, tastes almost of something else as the lip of the bottle rests against his own.
This reminds him of something, the tang, the taste. This reminds him of something, of a story he could tell her, of a story he should tell her, if only he could remember what it was.
He swallows, a bitter sweetness clinging to his tongue.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The tang won’t leave his mouth, stays on his tongue through the rest of the work day. It stays in his mouth and it must be in hers too and he has nothing to drink it down with, no means of getting rid of it besides, of course, time. The self-conflicting taste mixes with his uneasiness, his strange sense of something being wrong, something being off, of having put something very important into the wrong hands.
It makes him reach for his mobile, puts his thumb over the 2. 1 is for voicemail and 2 is for her, for speed dial with him having nothing to say.
He puts his mobile away. Finds some water instead.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Something we’ll want to try is Els Encants,” he tells her, later, still wiping his hands clean on his jeans. Wiping them less dirty, maybe.
“Els Encants,” she repeats, pressing her palm against his once he’s done. “Where’s that? What’s that?”
He takes a glance upwards, thinks it’s far enough off until sunset for them to have a go at it. He’s just off work and he’s tired still, but the night can end when the sun goes down, tonight. “Not a pawnshop or an antiques store, but still worth looking through. It’s an open-air market, down by the Plaça de les Glories. Also called the Fira de Bellcaire, if that sounds familiar. There’s a lot of second-hand stuff, collectors’ items, that sort of thing. More than some stolen. If we split up and look, we might have a chance.”
She gives him a look, a doubtful one for all her determination. “How much of a chance?”
“This non-watch of yours, it was stolen Monday? Els Encants is held four times a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday,” he rattles off. “If it was going to be sold here, it’s had three chances so far, from Monday morning to today.”
She nods along, not really hearing him. “How big an if, d’you think?”
“Rose,” he says, it being his turn to give her a look. “How many people would want to buy an old watch they can’t open? Wherever it is, it looks like junk. No one’s going to buy it but you.”
She’s distracted, listening to him only vaguely. “S’not junk.”
“Said it looks like junk. Helpful, that,” he adds, in case she’s really that out of it.
Her grip on his hand tightens, squeezing. “S’not junk,” she mumbles again. “Doesn’t look like it either.”
Right, well. He’s not in a mood for an argument, him, not with her. “Either way, it might still be on someone’s table. And if whoever’s in charge of stolen goods knows how to handle himself intelligently, this watch of yours will probably end up on an online auction. Sell it without letting anyone know it’s stuck.”
“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t check-”
He stops walking and yanks on her arm.
She’s not caught up in herself enough to stumble into him, not so out of it as to fall into his arms for balance. “What-”
“We are going to check,” he tells her, looking her straight in the eyes. “We’re going to look through Els Encants for the rest of today, maybe all of tomorrow. When it closes at sunset, we can head to a library, search online. Sunday morning, there’s a little place near the Sant Antoni market - bit of a long shot, but better than sitting around doing nothing.”
They’re causing a small clog on the sidewalk by this point, but that’s not important. What matters is that she’s listening, is that she’s looking at him, really looking at him without edging away or flinching or looking guilty - like she knows about the hospital but doesn’t want to admit she abandoned him.
“Thing is,” he reasons, pressing through his own issues to push through hers, “keep going, keep asking around, and something might turn up. Be the one person who wants a watch they can’t open - be the only person anyone could hope to sell it to, and there you are. All right?”
She takes a breath, lets it out, shoulders rising and falling under his hands and when did that happen? “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I- sorry.” She looks away and he drops his hands and she takes one back anyway, threads her fingers between his. “I’m bein’ stupid. Been a long week an’ I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
He opens his mouth, forgiveness on his tongue. “That’s-”
She laughs at herself, the sound as close to unpleasant as her laughter could ever be. “You’re the last person I should be doing this to.”
He smiles. Cradles the back of her head with his free hand to better kiss her brow. “That’s what I’m here for,” he says, changing his mind from his previous that’s all right. “Haven’t driven myself away yet: think I can handle you.”
She chews on her lip, looking shyly up at him. Someone bumps against his shoulder and he remembers that they’re on a sidewalk, remembers that they’re surrounded by the world at large and Barcelona in particular. His free hand moves back, checks his wallet, falls to his side once determining that it’s still there; the motion is automatic.
And still she chews on her bottom lip. And still she looks so shy.
“I’ll buy dinner,” she says at last and he knows she needs this far more than he does, knows she needs something solid, needs something real she can do.
“I’ll eat it,” he replies, the response a simple one to find. “Not hungry yet, though. C’mon. And put your wallet in your front pocket before we get there - safer that way.” He sets the example.
She sticks two fingers in the front pocket of her denim shorts, demonstrates the too-small size. “Gonna be an issue.”
He holds out the hand not holding hers and she passes him her worn little billfold without a hitch. Into his front pocket it goes and it won’t occur to him for three streets that she didn’t so much as hesitate.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The sheer amount of stuff is staggering. A china tea set is stacked atop a sagging cardboard box, saucers mismatching and cups containing cheap bead necklaces. Unlit candles are piled together in a colourful jumble, figurines of cats and penguins and Jesus lumped next to each other on a white blanket, all of it spread over concrete. Books rest uneasily in sloping towers, bindings cracked and covers torn and they all look old enough to be first editions even when they’re clearly not. The temporary owners of these items sit in lawn chairs or on boxes, surveying their territory, waiting for any to venture closer for a look.
Some stalls look more like inedible picnics, spread out on sheets; some are booths with tables and canopies, creating rare spot of shade. Beneath a green cloth roof, a rainbow of women’s undergarments waves in the breeze, piles of socks stacked high below bras and dream-catchers made with thongs. The sun glints through birches lining the street in places, in patches, turns the green to gold and makes the white shine. They keep walking.
The air smells like car exhaust and salt water and the musky age trapped in a hundred attics. Every kind of flower adds its claim into the atmosphere, some fresh, some wilting, all full of colour. The scent of dried fruit and salted nuts competes with this, wages battle in the nose against whoever it is that’s cooking pork sausages nearby, spicy ones that set his mouth to watering even without the taste. There’s chocolate and vegetables and lacy figures of delicate sugar. Huge heads of lettuce form green hills beneath hanging hands of bananas, under bags of oranges. Paper bags swallow purchased produce; metal scales swing from hangers and everyone watches the weighing needle’s path through the numbers and notches.
The smells are loud and the noises are louder, bantering and bartering and bickering. People carry shopping bags, plastic and cloth alike, make noise as they move. Friends call to one another; less-than-friends insult each other across a group of strangers. Something close to singing happens near a portable radio, but he’s not about to call it that. Someone touches his arse, takes nothing, and he decides to think of it as a compliment. To his foresight or to his behind, he’s not certain.
It’s difficult to watch it all instead of her, nigh impossible to watch where they’re going when she’s getting that look in her eyes, the wide-eyed look of someone who only wishes they were dreaming so that they could wake up.
There is so, so much here, all piled in. Clothing and paintings fight for dominance on a table, the battered frames likely worth more than the pictures. A jar shaped like a duck has salt- and peppershaker ducklings to go with its cracked bill. All the glasses look like glass to the eye, turn plastic to the touch. Well-loved dolls rest in a retired rocking chair, a rope-haired angel leaning against a button-eyed monkey atop a paisley-patterned cushion.
They look at it, and look at it, and she holds his hand so tightly.
She brings her eyes to his face. Slight sunburn still gives her the look of a constant blush but there is nothing embarrassed or shy in that gaze. “How d’you say ‘I want t’ buy a watch’?”
There’s a feeling in his gut, and he thinks it might be pride. “Quiero comprar un reloj de bolsillo.”
“Quiero compar...”
“Quiero comprar,” he corrects gently, rolling his r’s for her entertainment.
“Quiero comprar,” she replies, smiling against her will, giving a passable try of her own at the rolling.
“Un reloj de bolsillo.” He keeps his expression serious, aiming to make hers less so.
It works, her eyes growing as bright as her smile, as her clever little mind. “Un reloj de bolseyo.”
Close enough, with that London accent. “Quiero comprar un reloj de bolsillo.”
“Quiero comprar un reloj de bolsiyo,” she replies, accent horrible but the words understandable.
He grins at her, a wide expression across his entire face, and it sparks an answering grin from her. He pulls her into him, lifts her in that crowd, and she’s laughing against him, true and joyful and he can believe that maybe, just maybe, everything will be all right.
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “Rose,” he bites. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” Because he could, maybe. Because he wants to, definitely. Just for once in his life, he needs to be able to rescue someone.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The room is restless, down to the floorboards. Her blue jacket is cast across the small sofa as if thrown; the sheets on the bed seem to have been flung to the floor. The bathroom door is ajar and he doesn’t need to look inside to know she’s got a mess in there too. Everything has her mark on it, quite the feat for a hotel room.
This is a girl who could leave her handprint in the air, he thinks. If she tried. And maybe even if she didn’t.
She pulls him inside by the front of his t-shirt at first, quickly moves her hand to his. They’re two steps in and then she doesn’t seem to know what to do. He closes the door behind them, shuts the world out, cloisters them inside.
He hasn’t heard her voice in nearly a week; voicemail doesn’t count, can’t compare. He looks at her, waiting for her to speak, willing her to speak.
“Rose,” he says softly, “are you-”
“Don’t,” she tells him, says it like it’s painful to think. “Don’t, okay? The second you ask me if I’m all right, I’m going t’ start crying and I really don’t need that right now.”
He holds up the hand she’s not claiming. “I won’t ask.”
“Good.” She bites her lip, looks away.
He looks at the small, overstuffed loveseat. “Sit?”
“Okay,” she says and does, moving her jacket behind her so he could attempt to fit himself into the space between her and the arm of the couch.
He sits on the low table in front of it instead, a sturdy thing not unlike the one he has back at the flat. Fewer marks on it, though. “Sanchez wanted to know if someone murdered you,” he lies to her, trying to back her away from the verge of tears. “Thought I’d check.”
She makes a sound that might be related to amusement, knuckling her eyes and dragging the moisture away with her fingertips. “Nope. No serial killers yet.”
“Good,” he says, looks away when she sees something in his face he didn’t mean to put there. His gaze goes to the other half of the room, to the duvet on the floor. “Nightmares?”
“No,” she tells him, very quick about it.
He looks at her and it’s her turn to look away.
“It’s not that bad,” she tells him, her hands clasped in her lap.
He leans forward, his long legs on either side of hers in the cramped space between coffee table and loveseat. He leans forward enough to be lower than her, enough to need to look up at her face. Her hands in her lap slowly separate and he takes one with both of his.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because now he realizes what he’s done. And he has done something. “About Sunday.”
Surprise pulls her back to him. Not the reaction he was expecting, but better than nothing. He can work with this, can work with her asking, “What?”
“Under the overpass,” he clarifies.
“No, I- No.” She shakes her head and he has her talking. “That was fine, that was- No. I’m-” She shakes her head again, getting it in order. “That was good. I, I needed that.” She swallows and when he makes to drop her hand, she holds on tight. “This, none of this- It’s not your fault.”
She’s trying to reassure him now; she’ll tell him whatever she thinks he needs. Psychology comes in handy, he knows, and the thought makes him shake away the suddenly crowding memories of Fred.
“Then whose is it?” he asks.
The answering look on her face throws guilt into him. He’s not blind and even a blind man could tell how sorely this girl needs a hug.
“’s mine,” she tells him quietly. “My fault.”
“Rose,” he says.
“’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” She rubs at her face with the palm of her hand, breathes out a heavy sigh. “I am. I really-”
“Rose.”
She looks at him, addresses his chin instead of looking him in the eyes. “Yeah?”
He makes himself quiet, a pillar of calm. He gives her a cursory check with his eyes, finds both her legs and arms free of any noticeable bruising. Doesn’t look like she’s been physically harmed, but something has most definitely taken a hammer to her mental wellbeing.
“Tell me what happened.”
This time, he’s not asking.
Slowly, she pulls her hand from his. He can’t tell whether she’s giving him space or taking it for herself. He wants to keep holding onto her, doesn’t know if he should. Her hair falls into her face as she looks at her knees, her bare feet on the carpet between his boots. He knows her well enough to know she’s biting her lip, to know the expression across her hidden features.
Sitting very still, he watches the curve of her shoulders for shaking, for any sign of approaching tears. The urge to touch is almost overwhelming and only his inability to pick a gesture holds him back. He thinks to cover her hands with his, to gently lift her chin until she looks him in the eyes; his hands could rest on her shoulders or cradle her face. It all seems far too tender, far too much. She doesn’t want him to ask if she’s all right, not with his voice - it would be wrong to ask by touch.
Her chest and shoulders rise and fall, a breath of air going deep into her and back out. She changes her mind about contact, reaches for the hand he quickly gives her. Her touch is tentative, and when she dares a glance into his eyes, he sees a fear of rejection so strong as to border on terror.
“I was stupid,” the girl tells him with the weight of a confession. “I was stupid and ‘m really, really sorry.” She won’t look at him after that, finding a trigger for her pain in the lines of his face. “Really am.”
“It’s all right,” he answers, his forgiveness granted before she can ask. If he still hates hospitals after six and a half years, she has the right to avoid them after only one month.
“It’s not, though,” she insists. “God, I can’t believe I...” She sniffles the once, loudly and with the determination not to do it again. “I’m trying. To fix this. I’m gonna get it back.”
This is when he realizes: she’s not talking about missing his hospital stay. She’s not talking about ignoring him, avoiding him. She’s not talking about any of that, not addressing a single one of his wounds.
“Get what back?” he asks and she flinches at the edge in his voice. He can’t help it, can’t quite keep all of his pain inside now that she’s making him feel it.
“It’s his,” she says and the knife goes in deeper. “Really important, an’ I just... So stupid.”
“Rose,” he bites. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” Because he could, maybe. Because he wants to, definitely. Just for once in his life, he needs to be able to rescue someone.
For the first time today, she looks him square in the eyes, hides her emotions behind hazel-brown. “It’s a UNIT thing. It looks like a watch, but it’s not a watch. And I need it back.”
“And where’s it gone?” he asks, slowly losing the battle to be patient and understanding. She’s been apologizing to him over something she owes another man. He’s wondered how much he reminds her of her friend; now he knows. A right substitute, that’s him.
“Dunno,” she replies and he’s losing her again. “That’s just it - I don’t know. ‘S gone.”
“So, what, you put it down? Lost it in the wash? What?” He gives her a look, lets her know how bad a job she’s doing of answering him.
“Pickpocket,” she says and he can’t help but stare.
Is she serious? “Just checking, but: someone stole from you, and that’s your fault?”
She takes offense at his tone and it pulls her out of her self-pity. “Shouldn’t’ve been carrying it on me. I mean, I knew better. Should’ve known.” And back into it.
All right, time for one of them to be logical, at least. “Have you contacted the police?”
She nods.
“Checked out, I dunno, any pawn shops?”
She nods some more.
“Internet auctions?”
One more nod, her eyes gazing quietly into his. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ve got Mickey on that. My friend. Mickey.”
Her ex, if he remembers those old news articles correctly. “Bloke knows his way ‘round a computer?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Okay,” he says.
They sit in a quiet of their own making, their gazes slowly dropping to study their knees. Hers are slight and bare and show she hasn’t been taking care of herself. His are covered by black denim, darkly framing hers. Their hands rest between, fingers entwined in a loose hold, all palms and knuckles and fingertips and so very warm. He’s leaning forward and she’s leaning forward and he’s got that feeling, that little touch of a feeling he gets before he downs four glasses of water without knowing he’s thirsty.
He thinks he might want something, but he doesn’t know what.
She turns her hands over in his grip, shows her palms to his thumbs and lets them look. Lines and mounds and whorls and just the slightest bit of sweat at the beginning of a day soon to turn hot and draining. He learns her hands with the pads of his thumbs and finds he knows it all already.
“How important is it?” he asks. “This non-watch.”
“It’s,” she tries to say and her voice trembles. Her hands fold close over his thumbs, hold him still rather than let him try to comfort. “I don’t even want to think of what’ll happen if I don’t get it back.”
He breathes out rather than tell her how hopeless it is. Even if she manages to find this thing, she’ll have to buy it back from whoever the current owner is. If they realize it has something to do with anything as top secret as she’s making it sound....
“Never noticed you wearing a watch,” he realizes, twisting his hand in hers to hold her wrist. Left wrist, she’s right-handed. His thumb strokes over where a tan line isn’t. “You weren’t wearing one.”
She tenses and he stops and she doesn’t pull away after all. “It’s, ah. A fobwatch, yeah? Looks like one, I mean.”
A round shape in her pocket, he remembers, her fingertips constantly drifting to it, pressing against it through denim. He’d thought it was a mint tin, or something like that. Something she was keeping in a mint tin. Something she’d touch compulsively.
“Why were you carrying it?” he asks, even though that’s not really important, now that the thing is stolen and gone.
“It.... I had him with me,” she replies, watching their hands, studying how they grip each other without conscious control. “Just a little bit of him and I thought.... Dunno what I thought.”
She pulls one hand away to tuck her hair behind her ear. He leans back, stops leaning forward. Her other hand slips from his because he lets it.
“It was stupid,” she continues softly, her eyes very nearly finding his face. “Just like a stupid little ape, I suppose-”
“Enough of that,” he tells her, interrupts with a harder edge than he intends. “You can sit here feeling guilty at me or you can call up your bloke and....”
She turns her face away.
Slowly, he gives her back his hands and lets her hold on tight. “Your doctor,” he says, begins to say, begins to put together. “In his quarantine, did something... happen?”
She bites her lip and he knows he’s right.
“Rose,” he says softly, as softly as he can. “You can tell me.”
That golden head shakes, her bed head not getting any better for it. “He’s not gonna die,” she tells him, like she’s ordering him to arrange reality to make this so. “He’s gonna come back, an’, an’ then everything’ll be all right.” She looks him straight in the eye and lies to him: “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Yeah,” he says, because she needs him to believe her, needs him to believe for her. “He’ll be fine,” he adds, giving her hands a squeeze. “He’s got you, after all.”
She gets that guilty look again and he knows it was a little too soon for anything resembling praise.
“And, tell you what,” he says, shrugging a bit, “I’ll help you look for his non-watch.” Now it’s his turn to look her straight in the eyes and lie: “He’ll never know it was missing.”
He doesn’t dare tell her that the thing is lost for good. Not if the second of her two UNIT men is in danger of joining the first. The watch is her substitute, he’s starting to realize. If she loses it, her doctor dies. It sounds stupid, but he’s had a few coping techniques that had backfired, too.
This is the moment when he most definitely does not think about Grace Holloway.
“All right?” he asks, speaking to prove to himself that he’s still completely in the moment.
She hesitates before she nods and it makes him wonder what this watch of hers really is. “Okay,” she allows.
He waits.
She looks at him.
“This is the part where you tell me what it looks like,” he explains. “So I can look for it.”
It surprises a laugh out of her, a noise neither of them expect. A small noise but still one of his favourites. “Right, yeah,” she replies. “’Course.”
He raises his eyebrows at her.
“It’s got this design on the front. Looks like, I dunno, some model of solar systems or something. All lines and circles. Not symmetric, not centered. Silver-coloured. An’... what else....” Her eyes meet his squarely and the intensity in them nearly pushes him back, nearly pulls him forward. “You can’t open it,” she tells him and he gets that sensation again, that feeling of being pried at. It’s the memory of the sensation, but he feels it in her eyes, feels it in her command, her warning.
“Why not?” he asks. “UNIT secrets?”
“No, I mean it,” she replies, lightening her tone to cover that intensity. But it’s only covered, only hidden by a veil of expression. “You can’t open it. It can’t be opened.”
“Think your pickpocket might have managed by now,” he tells her dryly.
“No, really,” she says. “The doctor, he... He sort of, um, locked it, I s’pose. It’s a genetic lock, yeah? Something about... iso- ice’um-”
“Isomorphic.”
“Isomorphic, yeah,” she agrees, nodding, before she gives him an odd look.
He rolls his eyes. “I’ve got a vocabulary, Rose. Some words in it that go all the way up to five syllables.”
She swats at his arm, but it’s an absentminded gesture, a touch for the sake of touching. She’s looking at him like he’s all she’s got left, all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know what he’s said to bring this on. His heart leaps and then it stumbles, tripping over something that isn’t there.
“Point is,” she tells him, “you can’t open it. All right? Might damage it if you try. If you damage it, I’ll kill you.”
He nods, accepting this, wondering at why he’s accepting this. So much he’s getting himself involved with and yet he’s seen nothing of it, only has her word to hold onto as he throws his mind over mountains to come stand on her side of things.
“Only your doctor can open it?” It feels like a mad version of the sword in the stone: the advanced tech in the pocket watch.
“And me,” she adds. “Safety measures and all that.”
Certainly gives him something specific to look for. “No chance you’ve got a picture of it?”
She shakes her head and he nods, expecting as much.
“All right,” he says. “Meet me at the garage, half past five. Got a list of the places you’ve hit already?”
“Do have that,” she replies. “Sort of a list-map-combo. Hit a lot of them since Monday.”
Monday.
...All right. No wonder she never heard about his hospital stay, running around the city. He passes out and she gets stolen from and they go their separate ways to sort things out.
Except, well. Except.
“You could have called me,” he points out, tries to keep his voice light, tries to keep the accusation out.
She hears it anyway. “That would’ve been a fun chat. ‘Hi, calling to say I’m stupid.’ Didn’t really want t’-”
“I mean,” he says, “you could’ve called me back.” There’s a taste on the back of his tongue and he thinks it might be anger. He thinks so, isn’t certain. He’s never certain these days, so it doesn’t much matter. It makes him think of being thirsty and he can’t remember if he’d eaten breakfast this morning. He can’t remember most of this week, just knows she wasn’t there, wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
“...Yeah,” she says. “S’pose I could’ve.”
Could’ve, not should’ve.
She sees it in his face and they both look away.
He turns his glance downwards, directs it towards his wristwatch. He pulls his hand away to check the time and for once, it’s easier not to touch. “Right then. Best be off. Got a Chevy pining away after my attentions - best not let on how unrequited her love is.”
This is the point where he should stand. This is the point where he should and so he does, standing for just a moment with her knees still between his, with her looking up at him like she’s not ready to see him go. It’s a satisfying thought.
He steps over the corner of the coffee table and she rises from the loveseat, tugging lightly at the hem of her t-shirt. “Hey,” she says, nervous, tentative. She’s going to ask him something and she’s not sure she’s allowed to; it’s a look he knows well by this point.
“Yeah?” He folds his arms, leans back against nothing. He has a sudden feeling that he might want a wall behind him for whatever she’s about to say, might want a solid surface at his back that he can trust to stand firm.
“Are you okay?”
She shifts as she says it, looks up at him in the way that only she does. Nervous and scared and more determined than he can understand. She starts to chew on her lip and, realizing it, makes herself stop.
“C’mere,” he says and she fits into his arms before he’s done holding them out to her. She smells like restless sleep and he can feel taut muscle beneath cotton and skin. She’s stronger than she looks, more tightly wound than she lets on. “Lookit you, worrying about me. What’d you go and do a thing like that for?”
“I do ‘cause I do.” She leans into him, cheek to his shoulder. Feels nice. “Somebody has to.”
And yet, for all that, she still hasn’t caught wind of his hospital stay. Good. Better that way. He’s been upsetting her enough, lately. No more of that.
Her top is wrinkled beneath his hands, a wrinkled layer over smooth skin. “S’pose I can’t stop you from being stupid.”
She tenses and he turns his head, presses his cheek to her temple, a silent apology for the unwitting jab. She stills and he stills and they stand, held together so tightly by their own arms. He wishes he had his jacket, his jumper, wishes there was more between them to cushion all the hard edges and lines that form him into a man.
“Rose?” he asks into her hair.
“Yeah?”
It’s going to be all right. She’s going to be all right. That man of hers, her doctor, he’ll be all right. And it’ll stop hurting, someday, when she thinks of her captain. It will ache like mended bone and she’ll tell everyone about that scar, remembering his smile and commemorating it with her own.
It’ll get better.
It will.
And he’ll take care of her until it does.
After it does.
“I’m going to be late for work,” he says, and doesn’t let her go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Sanchez gripes at him when he is, but afterwards, he’s quick to demand details.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They eat lunch on their bench without talking, a bottle of something tangy between them. The liquid through the thick glass is the colour of nectarines, a slightly different shade when trailing down her chin.
She wipes it away with the back of her hand, licks the droplet from her skin with a pink flick of tongue. Her other hand sets the bottle down close to her knee, glass making a quiet, heavy sound against wood. The sounds around them swallow it up, try to and just barely fail.
The backs of his fingers brush against heated skin as cool glass chills his palm. He sets his handprint over another, a mark already made in the condensation by her smaller hand. It tastes of bitter citrus and processed sugars, tastes almost of something else as the lip of the bottle rests against his own.
This reminds him of something, the tang, the taste. This reminds him of something, of a story he could tell her, of a story he should tell her, if only he could remember what it was.
He swallows, a bitter sweetness clinging to his tongue.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The tang won’t leave his mouth, stays on his tongue through the rest of the work day. It stays in his mouth and it must be in hers too and he has nothing to drink it down with, no means of getting rid of it besides, of course, time. The self-conflicting taste mixes with his uneasiness, his strange sense of something being wrong, something being off, of having put something very important into the wrong hands.
It makes him reach for his mobile, puts his thumb over the 2. 1 is for voicemail and 2 is for her, for speed dial with him having nothing to say.
He puts his mobile away. Finds some water instead.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Something we’ll want to try is Els Encants,” he tells her, later, still wiping his hands clean on his jeans. Wiping them less dirty, maybe.
“Els Encants,” she repeats, pressing her palm against his once he’s done. “Where’s that? What’s that?”
He takes a glance upwards, thinks it’s far enough off until sunset for them to have a go at it. He’s just off work and he’s tired still, but the night can end when the sun goes down, tonight. “Not a pawnshop or an antiques store, but still worth looking through. It’s an open-air market, down by the Plaça de les Glories. Also called the Fira de Bellcaire, if that sounds familiar. There’s a lot of second-hand stuff, collectors’ items, that sort of thing. More than some stolen. If we split up and look, we might have a chance.”
She gives him a look, a doubtful one for all her determination. “How much of a chance?”
“This non-watch of yours, it was stolen Monday? Els Encants is held four times a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday,” he rattles off. “If it was going to be sold here, it’s had three chances so far, from Monday morning to today.”
She nods along, not really hearing him. “How big an if, d’you think?”
“Rose,” he says, it being his turn to give her a look. “How many people would want to buy an old watch they can’t open? Wherever it is, it looks like junk. No one’s going to buy it but you.”
She’s distracted, listening to him only vaguely. “S’not junk.”
“Said it looks like junk. Helpful, that,” he adds, in case she’s really that out of it.
Her grip on his hand tightens, squeezing. “S’not junk,” she mumbles again. “Doesn’t look like it either.”
Right, well. He’s not in a mood for an argument, him, not with her. “Either way, it might still be on someone’s table. And if whoever’s in charge of stolen goods knows how to handle himself intelligently, this watch of yours will probably end up on an online auction. Sell it without letting anyone know it’s stuck.”
“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t check-”
He stops walking and yanks on her arm.
She’s not caught up in herself enough to stumble into him, not so out of it as to fall into his arms for balance. “What-”
“We are going to check,” he tells her, looking her straight in the eyes. “We’re going to look through Els Encants for the rest of today, maybe all of tomorrow. When it closes at sunset, we can head to a library, search online. Sunday morning, there’s a little place near the Sant Antoni market - bit of a long shot, but better than sitting around doing nothing.”
They’re causing a small clog on the sidewalk by this point, but that’s not important. What matters is that she’s listening, is that she’s looking at him, really looking at him without edging away or flinching or looking guilty - like she knows about the hospital but doesn’t want to admit she abandoned him.
“Thing is,” he reasons, pressing through his own issues to push through hers, “keep going, keep asking around, and something might turn up. Be the one person who wants a watch they can’t open - be the only person anyone could hope to sell it to, and there you are. All right?”
She takes a breath, lets it out, shoulders rising and falling under his hands and when did that happen? “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I- sorry.” She looks away and he drops his hands and she takes one back anyway, threads her fingers between his. “I’m bein’ stupid. Been a long week an’ I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
He opens his mouth, forgiveness on his tongue. “That’s-”
She laughs at herself, the sound as close to unpleasant as her laughter could ever be. “You’re the last person I should be doing this to.”
He smiles. Cradles the back of her head with his free hand to better kiss her brow. “That’s what I’m here for,” he says, changing his mind from his previous that’s all right. “Haven’t driven myself away yet: think I can handle you.”
She chews on her lip, looking shyly up at him. Someone bumps against his shoulder and he remembers that they’re on a sidewalk, remembers that they’re surrounded by the world at large and Barcelona in particular. His free hand moves back, checks his wallet, falls to his side once determining that it’s still there; the motion is automatic.
And still she chews on her bottom lip. And still she looks so shy.
“I’ll buy dinner,” she says at last and he knows she needs this far more than he does, knows she needs something solid, needs something real she can do.
“I’ll eat it,” he replies, the response a simple one to find. “Not hungry yet, though. C’mon. And put your wallet in your front pocket before we get there - safer that way.” He sets the example.
She sticks two fingers in the front pocket of her denim shorts, demonstrates the too-small size. “Gonna be an issue.”
He holds out the hand not holding hers and she passes him her worn little billfold without a hitch. Into his front pocket it goes and it won’t occur to him for three streets that she didn’t so much as hesitate.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The sheer amount of stuff is staggering. A china tea set is stacked atop a sagging cardboard box, saucers mismatching and cups containing cheap bead necklaces. Unlit candles are piled together in a colourful jumble, figurines of cats and penguins and Jesus lumped next to each other on a white blanket, all of it spread over concrete. Books rest uneasily in sloping towers, bindings cracked and covers torn and they all look old enough to be first editions even when they’re clearly not. The temporary owners of these items sit in lawn chairs or on boxes, surveying their territory, waiting for any to venture closer for a look.
Some stalls look more like inedible picnics, spread out on sheets; some are booths with tables and canopies, creating rare spot of shade. Beneath a green cloth roof, a rainbow of women’s undergarments waves in the breeze, piles of socks stacked high below bras and dream-catchers made with thongs. The sun glints through birches lining the street in places, in patches, turns the green to gold and makes the white shine. They keep walking.
The air smells like car exhaust and salt water and the musky age trapped in a hundred attics. Every kind of flower adds its claim into the atmosphere, some fresh, some wilting, all full of colour. The scent of dried fruit and salted nuts competes with this, wages battle in the nose against whoever it is that’s cooking pork sausages nearby, spicy ones that set his mouth to watering even without the taste. There’s chocolate and vegetables and lacy figures of delicate sugar. Huge heads of lettuce form green hills beneath hanging hands of bananas, under bags of oranges. Paper bags swallow purchased produce; metal scales swing from hangers and everyone watches the weighing needle’s path through the numbers and notches.
The smells are loud and the noises are louder, bantering and bartering and bickering. People carry shopping bags, plastic and cloth alike, make noise as they move. Friends call to one another; less-than-friends insult each other across a group of strangers. Something close to singing happens near a portable radio, but he’s not about to call it that. Someone touches his arse, takes nothing, and he decides to think of it as a compliment. To his foresight or to his behind, he’s not certain.
It’s difficult to watch it all instead of her, nigh impossible to watch where they’re going when she’s getting that look in her eyes, the wide-eyed look of someone who only wishes they were dreaming so that they could wake up.
There is so, so much here, all piled in. Clothing and paintings fight for dominance on a table, the battered frames likely worth more than the pictures. A jar shaped like a duck has salt- and peppershaker ducklings to go with its cracked bill. All the glasses look like glass to the eye, turn plastic to the touch. Well-loved dolls rest in a retired rocking chair, a rope-haired angel leaning against a button-eyed monkey atop a paisley-patterned cushion.
They look at it, and look at it, and she holds his hand so tightly.
She brings her eyes to his face. Slight sunburn still gives her the look of a constant blush but there is nothing embarrassed or shy in that gaze. “How d’you say ‘I want t’ buy a watch’?”
There’s a feeling in his gut, and he thinks it might be pride. “Quiero comprar un reloj de bolsillo.”
“Quiero compar...”
“Quiero comprar,” he corrects gently, rolling his r’s for her entertainment.
“Quiero comprar,” she replies, smiling against her will, giving a passable try of her own at the rolling.
“Un reloj de bolsillo.” He keeps his expression serious, aiming to make hers less so.
It works, her eyes growing as bright as her smile, as her clever little mind. “Un reloj de bolseyo.”
Close enough, with that London accent. “Quiero comprar un reloj de bolsillo.”
“Quiero comprar un reloj de bolsiyo,” she replies, accent horrible but the words understandable.
He grins at her, a wide expression across his entire face, and it sparks an answering grin from her. He pulls her into him, lifts her in that crowd, and she’s laughing against him, true and joyful and he can believe that maybe, just maybe, everything will be all right.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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