Fic: In Human Hands (11a/24?)
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: A tilt of the head, a lift of the eyebrows and he can’t help it, has given up trying to help it.
He’s happy.
AN: The meaning for the chapter title is "one who celebrates" and not the priest definition. Just so we're all clear. Aaaand, this chapter was so long, it's in two pieces.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The Determined
The Unaware
The Celebrant
There’s a muffled noise from around the small of his back. It’s soft and tired and followed by a bit of movement. He keeps his eyes closed, ignoring both sound and sensation, ignoring the red of light reaching through his eyelids. His arm is more asleep than the rest of him is now; his legs are hanging off the....
Hold on.
He opens his eyes, blinking into artificial illumination. The coffee table stares back at him from this angle, rings on the surface reflecting light like so many worn eyes. He stares back at it for a moment, his half-dreaming mind pondering the rightness of sentience in his surroundings. The refrigerator hums from across the room, louder than the soft, steady breath behind him, and it sounds like a friend, like a cheetah’s purr.
Humming a reply of self-directed amusement, he soon grunts instead at the stiffness of his body, in his legs and arm and hand. His fingers are still between the pages of Don Quixote, the book held loosely against his stomach by his hand and hers.
Shifting as slowly, as smoothly as he can, he moves the book from stiff hand to numb hand to put it on the coffee table, covering up some of those eyes. He nearly fumbles the paperback, almost drops it to the floor. It’s not that wide of a couch and there’s already one person too many on it.
Her fingers brush over the hairs on his wrist, try to close over the end of a jumper’s sleeve, a jumper he’s not wearing. That touch falls from him as he shifts off the couch, flexing his hand, moving his fingers, trying not to hiss at the unpleasant revival from numbness. He’s not half so stiff or sore as he could be, so they couldn’t’ve been asleep for long.
He pulls out his mobile from where it’s probably made a rectangular bruise against his hip and checks the time. A bit after four in the morning.
That settles it. He’s not walking her home at this hour and she’s not going anywhere without him, this time of night.
She shifts into the warm spot he left with a petulant “mmunph,” turning her face against the cushion, the light hitting her face now that he’s not there to shield it. One leg hangs off, one sock-clad foot. He’s not entirely certain where her shoes are, or when she took them off.
Right then.
He spends a moment, just standing there, just standing there awkwardly in his lit flat at four in the morning.
It’s an absurdly long moment.
After, he shakes his head at himself, blaming uncomfortable sleep and not having much of even that. He turns off the lights and heads to bed, pauses when he does. A thought brings him to his closet, to the top shelf with the extra blanket he has no use for in the summer nights. It’s an oddity of temperature, the blanket, like all his wool jumpers, and he decides for the thousandth time that he’s simply bad at packing.
There’s an extra blanket, but only one pillow and she hugs it to her chest instead of using it properly. Still. Too late to take it back, now that it’s been turned into the world’s most un-bear-like teddy bear. He’d only wake her up trying.
She clasps her hands together when she sleeps, he can’t help but notice. Weird thing to do, that. It makes her elbows lock with the pillow between them, an uncomfortable looking hug.
Well. None of his business.
He goes to his room and shuts the door behind him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He wakes with faded whispers in his ears, his t-shirt from yesterday no longer bundled up beneath his head. He grabs at his mobile, presses buttons blindly until he shuts the alarm off.
After that, brain function begins to return to the usual levels, bringing him the powers of recollection and logic. Making a mental note not to sleep in jeans in the future, he gets up and nearly goes to the door before he remembers that the sensation of air against skin equates to not having a shirt on. He pulls on a fresh t-shirt, shoving his head through the hole, and that feeling of being bare still fails to recede. It’ll go away soon enough, though; he knows from experience, from every single morning.
Going into the living room, he sees no one up and about, sees the back of the couch. Bathroom door’s open; no one in there. She’s still asleep then, and he peers over the back of the couch to make sure, to find messy hair and a shape bound up in a blanket. The pillow has fallen onto the floor.
He walks quietly to the kitchenette, bare feet making the transition from rough carpet to cool linoleum. The bananas on top of the fridge are finally looking ripe, he decides, breaking one from the many and sitting down on the counter.
Eating his breakfast, he has an odd feeling, a sense of déjà vu that he’s coming to associate with his little lost tourist. Is this the first time, then, that he’s tucked her into a couch after reading her to sleep?
He has to think about it.
In the end, the clock on the microwave stops his wondering for him, silently informing him that, great joy, it’s time to go to work. Maybe if he didn’t have such a routine schedule, he thinks. Maybe then....
Maybe then, what? What then?
He doesn’t know. Seems to be having a lot of strange thoughts this morning, though. As always, he blames sleep. And then, for good measure, he downs a glass of water.
When he’s done, she’s still asleep and he still has to go. He finds a scrap of paper - a Chinese take-away menu - and a pen, jots down a quick note. He sets the note down on the coffee table and then fights a remarkably quiet battle with his key ring. Frees his extra key. That goes down on top of the note.
He adds a banana for good measure.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Gone to the garage. Lock up when you leave.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Hours later, he still feels as if he should have written more.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Hours later, she shows up at the garage. Her hair is wet at the ends, probably drying from a shower, and her clothes are different from yesterday, from this morning.
He sees her and grins.
She grins back.
She’s got something in her hands, but then, so does he. His happens to be a soldering iron. Hers is a touch smaller, fits in one hand. She makes almost as if to go over to him and he shakes his head beneath the ruckus that is the radio once Pedro takes hold of it. He has to finish up first.
She understands, points to here and outside, and he nods, grinning a bit as she taps her ear with a theatric wince.
He watches her leave - leave to stand outside the garage, mind, not to go anywhere without him - before he gets back to the task at hand, before he recalls what he was doing with that radiator in the first place. It’s difficult, today, to pull his focus back to his work, but that’s hardly unusual, hardly....
A quick glance towards the door finds her there, leaning against the doorframe as if the metal were, well. As if it were him.
She blushes, her head ducking, and he’s already grinned so much this morning that a little more can’t hurt.
And it’s so easy to prod her. A tilt of the head, a lift of the eyebrows and it doesn’t matter that he can feel Pedro ignoring them. He can’t help it, has given up trying to help it.
He’s happy.
It takes some time before he’s done and he has to force himself not to rush. He’s not entirely sure what he’s doing today, only that it will work and he’s done it before. It feels like some sort of movement he used to know the name for, like a technique of calculation he can use but not explain. It falls in the gap between knowing how to add and knowing how to multiply, and it’s familiar enough a gap for him not to press his own mind. He’ll recall soon enough, once she’s not hanging around and distracting him.
His next glance up brings his eyes to hers, makes the directed nod of her head a direction he can follow. He ducks his head slightly, instinctively, to see Sanchez standing in the door of the office, watching them with an expression he’s used to feeling on his own face. It’s an expression he personally directs at idiot teenagers clogging up doorways as they try to fit through in tight pairs; it’s half amusement, half incredulity at the sight before him.
Sanchez proclaims them both absurd and eternally amusing before, with a snick beneath Pedro’s music, decidedly shutting the door to his office.
They look at one another then, unsure of whether they ought to laugh.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Walking out to lunch, he thinks she’s about to slip her hand into his, is surprised when he feels a small piece of metal instead of warm skin.
“What’s this?” he asks even as he looks at it, even as he recognizes it.
“S’yours,” she answers with an uneven shrug, her hand going to his elbow when he fails to pocket the key, fails to empty his hand for her to take. She gives him a small tug to stop his feet. Crosswalk, he distantly registers, hearing cars and knowing only vaguely that those same machines are in his peripheral vision.
He looks down at her as she looks up, the pair of them standing in a growing crowd, waiting for the light to change. Her face is clear, guileless, but uncertain. Wondering. This isn’t a ploy but an honest question. The key quickly warms in his hand and it feels as if it should hurt more when the notches press into the pads of his curled fingers. She’s waiting for him to tell her one way or the other, for him to hand it back to her or keep it for himself. Maybe she’s waiting.
Or maybe she’s just looking up at him, confused at his hesitation in pocketing it, simply wondering at what’s in his head the same way he wonders at what’s in hers.
“So it is,” he replies, holding it in his hand for a time longer. For some reason, his gaze goes to her neck, to the long chain she sometimes wears beneath her top, the silver barely visible beneath her hair. Someone gave her that, both the chain and the key attached to it. She’s worn it more since her mint tin watch vanished, and so he thinks he knows who the giver of that gift was. Knows who it must have been.
“So it is,” he says again, and then pockets it. Keeps his hand in his pocket.
The light changes, her soft grip falling from his arm as they cross. It raises his hackles up, the lack of contact in the crowd, but the sum total of his response is to tighten his fist around the key when she lags behind, leaves his side. It sets his nerves on edge. She’s already been pick-pocketed once; he doesn’t fancy having it happen for the second time right behind him. And so it sets his nerves on edge.
One hand pocketed, one empty in the air, he reaches backwards and their fingers fumble against each other. He looks at her sharply, caught in a sudden anxiety he can’t name.
Their hands catch, fingers lacing, and he traps her thumb beneath his, blunt and rough over firm and gentle.
Their palms press together, so very, very tightly.
Their arms brush, short-sleeved and sleeveless.
He swallows.
Her gaze is heavy on him, on the side of his face, on his neck. It moves without wandering or roaming, filled with more purpose than he can acknowledge. He knows it is.
He doesn’t need to look to see.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s a covered patio sort of thing where they eat, full of both locals and tourists. It’s outside but there’s a roof and walls and furniture and something about the indecision of definition draws him here today.
That, and the smells. Bananas are good, but only one does not a breakfast make - or so his stomach is informing him as it gnaws at itself.
The next table over, that looks good. He gives the food a good, long study before noting the occupants of the table, before he sees mother and black-haired daughter. It doesn’t matter that the girl’s too young or too old, whichever way he looks at it.
His gaze tries to fall to his silverware, his empty stomach more easily ignored than his full head. Instead of looking down, he looks to her, to his little tourist who doesn’t seem quite so little. His stomach rumbles again and he smiles at his girl’s expression, that little look all full of questions she won’t ask, all those questions she’ll wait for him to ask her about.
She sips her water, sets the glass down. Wipes the chill of ice from her lips with the back of her other hand.
“There’s this thing people are talking about,” she eventually says, shifting a little beneath his attention now that she has it. “Friday night, yeah?”
His mind flips though his mental guidebook, comes up with a holiday. “The Festival of San Juan, you mean?”
She nods. “Think we’d still be able to go to Els Encants?”
“Not for long,” he replies after a spot of thinking. “Don’t suppose most would want to waste their holiday that way.”
She nods again, makes a noise like that’s all she meant to ask about. It’s not.
And so he waits.
Her eyes are hopeful, and her hand lies by the stem of her water glass, lies palm up and empty.
“The actual holiday’s on Saturday,” he feels the need to point out, the first to break the silence. “The night before is when you get all the bonfires and jumping into the ocean, typically.”
“So what d’you think?” she asks, leaning forward a bit. “About bonfires and stuff?”
“That it’s probably a bad idea to have a night out drinking and then try and jump over one,” he answers, the reply at once honest and dense.
She’s not deterred. It makes him want to grin. “There’s gonna be all these fireworks, yeah? On the beach. Some of my friends, they’ve been talking about it for a while.”
His gaze flickers to the side, goes to a passing waiter carrying food which is evidently not for them. His eyes soon return to hers, fall to her open hand and rise once more to her face.
“Night out for you and the girls, then?” he asks, a part of him wondering why he’s never really asked about what she does all day without him, who she bothers when he’s not around to be bothered. And it occurs to him that he wants to know a little more than he should.
“Yeah. Gonna hit a couple bars, watch the corre- the corre-”
“Correfocs,” he supplies.
“The blokes dancing with firecrackers, yeah,” she agrees and then asks again: “So what d’you think?”
“Sounds like you’ll have fun,” he says, speaking before he so much as considers it. There’s a reason for his decision, a rational one, if he looks for it. But there’s another one, as irrational as they come, and that’s the first reason to come to mind.
She gave him the key back.
He shouldn’t even mind that she did. He shouldn’t care. Hell, he should’ve said thank-you and been done with it. This girl he’s known for a month and a half - but almost two months, almost that - and he gives her the key to his flat? Just to lock up, mind. Just to lock up. Just to close the door and make sure no one else got in once she’d left. And it’s not as if he owns anything of value to begin with.
He doesn’t think his thoughts - his irrational, irritating thoughts - show on his face, not much, but she doesn’t need much. She knows him too well.
In some ways.
“You don’t want to come?” she asks him, somehow hurt that he hasn’t picked up an invitation that isn’t an invitation, only implied permission for him to tag along.
“A pack of girls barely out of their teens and a forty-three-year-old man?” he asks right back, finding that rational reason instantly once he decides to look for it. “Sounds fantastic, but I’ll pass. You have fun,” he adds, able to hold back the part of him that wants to tack on another piece of advice, one around the lines of Don’t get knocked up. Not that he thinks she will or would or, or any of that. It’s just the thought of the night, and the activities that come with the night.
She doesn’t give up so easily, but then, she never does.
“You could mock stuff,” she offers, somehow realizing how tempting that is. “Or, I mean, there’s....” She flushes, just a little, and his hand moves of its own accord to fill hers. “There’s dancin’. Unless you can’t,” she adds, quick about it, an impish gleam in her eye.
“What, and you can?” he shoots right back, the pair of them ignoring how their hands play, fingers sliding against fingers. He wants to know exactly how slow service is here, in this moment, wants to know exactly how long they have before an interruption breaks this and makes their decisions for them.
Her eyebrows rise, this response obviously not the expected one. Clearly, she’s yet to realize that he does occasionally use a good offense as his defense of choice. “I can dance.”
“You mean ‘bob to music’,” he assumes, presumes with a purpose. He loves the face she makes, when he contradicts.
“I mean dancing.” Her free hand tucks her hair behind her ear and his eyes follow the motion, fingertips pausing against her palm. “Swing, for one.”
His eyebrows rise, but the movement is all intent, no surprise. He knows her too well to be surprised.
She shrugs, and her smile knows him too.
Beside her water glass, circles form on her palm for a fingertip to trace, her hand lying almost flat against the tablecloth, fingers barely curled. Neither watches as those circles grow from large to tight, as they take on soft lines and hard arcs, as friction fades with the damp sweat in a day so very hot. He knows she’s not watching because he’s looking at her eyes.
They both know the other isn’t watching their hands.
Her fingers lift from the cloth of the table, lift and rise and the tips of those slim digits ghost against his palm from beneath. The slight touch stilling his hand, the tracing wavers, the circle indenting itself to be contrary.
There must be lines on his palm, lines like her circles that demand to be traced, to be brought into reality through the electricity of synapses, of a nervous system far beyond the point of being nervous. These are lines to be traced with fingernail and fingertip, to be brushed against and never satisfyingly touched.
The slow stroke slides across palm to the underside of his stilled fingers, slides there and curls. Her fingers curl and his fingers curl and his hand goes down to meet hers, their digits twined like yin and yang, only his thumb left unheld, left free to touch the soft blade of her hand. Her thumb rises to his knuckles, to touch those roughened joints, to try to. His arm adjusts, catering to her reach, his hand striving for the pad of her thumb.
“Rose,” he says, his voice taking on the roughness of his hands.
“Yeah?” she breathes, her eyes full of him and never before so extraordinary. He can see into her, can see so far into her, so very far and deep. Though skin-to-skin, his first thought is mind-to-mind. It’s a fanciful thought. A fanciful thought, but suitable for a man who does fancy.
“How did you sleep,” he asks her slowly, “last night?” His gaze neither falls nor drifts to their hands. It’s simply there.
Her thumb rests against his knuckle. Presses down, or maybe he imagines it does.
“Good,” she says, and when her thumb strokes a little, he’s not imaging it.
“Lumpy couch,” he reminds her, giving her the opportunity to amend or rephrase or reaffirm.
“You’re not comfy either, but I still slept good.” She smiles as she says it, means the first part as a dig, as a playful poke. She might mean it that way, but all the same, she blushes at the interpretation she reads in his eyes.
He grins.
Her smile falters.
And so does his. “Rose-”
“Wake me up next time, okay?” Her fingers tighten around his, fingernails digging into the skin below his second knuckle. It’s impossible not to feel.
“It was four in the morning,” he replies, explains. “By the time I woke up, it was too late to-”
Another squeeze of her fingers around his, pressing his fingers into her palm. “I meant when you left. Wake me up next time. Hate waking up with everybody already gone.”
“I left a note,” he points out, his voice leaving no doubt of his scorn for behavior so domestic.
“And a banana,” she agrees, leaving it up to him to mention the key. She might be, or he might be over-thinking it. She smiles and then says, mimicking his accent: “Bananas are good.”
He feels his expression go soft, scorn and worry alike evaporating. Has to blink and look up in confusion when their long-absent waiter finally returns with a pair of plates. He gives the man a nod, keeping that hand beneath his own, and she doesn’t so much as comment until later, until a pause as he chews and she doesn’t.
“That’s the hand I eat with,” she says, her grip loose but her hand yet to pull back.
“Tough,” he replies, giving those fingers a squeeze. It’s playful, not possessive. It’s all just play.
There’s a moment for her to think before she grins at him, tongue between her teeth. “You sayin’ you goin’ t’ feed me?”
Hastily, he releases her hand. “Keep the domestics at home, thank you.”
She only grins wider. “I try, but you don’t like them there either.”
He looks at her, and she looks at him, and only then does she realize what she’s just said.
Quickly picking up her fork, she pokes at her food rather than look back up at him, plays with refried beans like they’re mashed potatoes. It’s too much of a reaction for a joke gone awkward. It means a slip of the tongue, but he gives her a bit of time, lets her become steady. If he speaks, he’ll seize upon the comment, grab it and ask about the key, demand to know what could possibly be going on in that little human brain of hers.
And so he sips his water instead, trying not to freeze his lips on the ice. When he sets the glass down, the frozen water sounds like chimes. It’s as good a detail as any to focus on, and one he’s sure he’s noticed before.
“So is that a ‘no’, then?” she asks, immediately pulling him from his thoughts by offering him a glance at hers.
Is that a “no” to home, is that what she’s asking? To giving her back the key and letting her have the couch? To her moving in?
He can’t be thinking this, really, he can’t be thinking this, but somehow he is and it’s a good thought, a very good thought. He can buy another pillow; he doesn’t mind. It sounds crazy in his own mind, but it’s always sounded crazy and it’s always been the way he’s conducted his life. He might have thought he’d have learned not to pull near-strangers so completely into his life by this point - and maybe he has. She’s no stranger, not now. They’re already together every day. He’s not making the same mistake he did with Grace: a kiss and a thrill and then an invitation turned down flat.
“What do you want?” he asks her, voice filled with consideration to keep all the hope out.
“For you to come on Friday,” she tells him, thoroughly on a different page. “Just for a bit.”
She’s kept hope out of her voice, too.
“...I might do,” he allows. “Not much for that sort of thing, though, me.”
“I know,” she says, is quick to say it. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They eat in the closest thing to silence as there ever is between them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
But only for a time.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She tells him about the friends she has here, in the city. University students, the ones her age, mostly, university students on break and bent on using every inch of it.
“You can’t measure time in inches,” he tells her.
“What if you, dunno, reverse the polarity or somethin’?” she counters, sounds like she’s quoting.
“Of what, a ruler?”
“Point taken.”
Anyway, they’re good friends. One of them - that would be Tonya - has come around with her to all the pawn shops and antique stores she hasn’t hit with him. Tonya’s father is in the business, apparently, so they’ve got a connection. Tonya’s been keeping an ear out on their behalf.
“Not half bad then,” he gathers.
“Nope. Not half.”
Back to the point, they’re planning on going to this bar and then this one - the drinks are cheaper in the first and Elicia likes the DJ in the second - and then they’re gonna be around this plaza for a while before going to the beach for the fireworks. This beach, those fireworks.
“Someone’s gonna be busy,” he remarks.
“Yeah,” she says and looks at him to ask if he’s someone, too.
He chews his food. Takes a drink after. Spicy, and it stays spicy. There are some tastes even water can’t completely wash out, not right away.
“You should have fun,” he tells her, yet again. “Be good for you, spendin’ time with people your age.”
He says it because he knows she hasn’t got a comeback to that, hasn’t any additional argument that can beat the world’s most awkward elephant sitting between them.
“Yeah,” she says, like that was the answer she was expecting. “S’pose so.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
She doesn’t bring it up again for the rest of the week, but it sits in his mind nonetheless. There are days of following her around in her search, but Friday’s the thought in his head, always Friday. No longer the start of the weekend that he used to dread, only the day with a night he doesn’t know how to deal with.
Not knowing how to deal with it means not talking about it. Which in turn means neglecting to mention that he hasn’t got work on Friday, the weekend starting early for the sake of San Juan. Or Sant Joan, depending. This is one of those cases where he prefers the Spanish over the Catalan - no real reason why - so San Juan it is.
He feels restless and listless, a horrible combination at any time, but particularly bad before nine in the morning. If it’s only quarter past eight and he doesn’t know what to do with himself now, well. Today is going to be a long day.
And a hot one, he realizes, opening the window in the kitchenette only to receive a blast of heat along with a blast of sound. He shuts the window after waiting a moment for a breeze that’s not half slow in coming, goes to the fridge to check the freezer afterwards. Beyond a couple of frozen meals he hasn’t touched, there’s nothing, not even ice. He should get on that.
He wastes a good ten minutes finding washcloths and bowls, turns the bowls upside down and soaks the cloths beneath the tap. Washcloths over the bowls and the bowls in the freezer, he’s got a pair of icehats underway. Not sure where he learned that trick, but judging by the way this June is going, it’s going to be a hot July - he’ll need every bit of cold he can get.
So now it’s eight-thirty.
Almost.
His flat is empty, very, very empty and so it follows that there’s nothing to do in there. He opens the closet, eying both jacket and motorcycle helmet for a moment. He could go out, waste a day, come back and... and have her gone already, into the night.
He stares into that closet for far too long, has to keep telling himself that no, it’s far, far too hot for his jacket. He feels too light without it, feels bare without something to add to his lanky frame. The t-shirt’s not enough, has never been enough, but that’s all he can wear right now.
He makes himself move, eventually, hating to be unable to roam when that’s what’s always worked before, when that’s what has always made his mind move, pulling it along with his body. He opens the door to his flat, exits, and locks the door behind him. He walks down three flights of stairs without incident, hands in his pockets rather than on the railing. He leaves the apartment building.
And he thinks, without knowing why, to run.
His work boots thud against the sidewalk, distinct to him amid all the sounds of the city, all the sounds of the world and he grins, wide, sudden, manic. He grins and runs, choosing his path by which way is open, by red and green and stop and go, and always picking go.
A hill turns the street downwards and he runs atop it the same way he would run down a rockslide, forcing his feet to always be there when he lands. Barreling through crowds seldom works, so he skirts around them, bounds around them, pushes off a wall one-handed to push himself back into the flow, back into the run, his marathon sprint. He pulls his breath into his body, his lungs straining in painful counterpoint to his legs.
Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what his body is telling him; his mind knows better, knows not to stop until it’s time to stop, knows it can overpower body. His mind knows to run, even if his body doesn’t, even if this city doesn’t.
He stumbles to a stop half a city away from where he started, panting, breathing hard, his side aching an absurd amount. A moment is spent with him bent over, his hands on his knees, before he straightens, before he looks up at the side of a familiar hotel and grins as best he can.
A look through the double doors reveals nothing worth the look, though, and he stays outside for the time it takes to steady his breath. His side aches and his throat burns and his legs want to shake and the worst pain is that he can’t remember the last time he ran like this. He used to love it, the running.
He still does.
His body is begging for a bench, demanding an explanation for his sprint, but he has neither. There are certain things he has to do, he feels, to be himself. And it might just be the power of endorphins, but he can’t remember the last time he felt so very alive. So full of the rush of movement, of travel. When was the last time he’d taken the old girl for a ride, his battered old bike? Something else to do, something he has to do.
Maybe they’ll do that today, or tomorrow. Not tonight, no; her nights are never his, but currently, he can’t bring himself to care. Not when this tired, aching body can bear to straighten, can insist that it’s not done yet. He steadies his breath, plucks damp shirt from chest to let a small amount of hot air in. He swipes a hand over his brow and over his hair, gone long enough without a cut for it to touch his forehead, to brush there uncomfortably when sweat-dampened.
He leans back against the wall of the hotel to wait and that’s when he decides that yes, this is going to be a fantastic day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It is.
.-.-.-.-.-.
There’s a part of his mind that strains like a child’s imagination as the evening draws near. It’s some little bit of him that insists that if he tries, if he really, truly tries, he can hold back time itself - if only for a moment.
How there could be a moment outside of time is an issue he doesn’t have an answer to, but it’s mildly entertaining to think about as he returns her to her hotel, walking this time. It took some time, but she’s been able to cope with it, spending her hours in a different way than in an endless quest for a false timepiece. She relaxed after a while, laughed. Maybe even forgotten a little.
Their hands sweat against each other as they walk in a quiet that applies to only them. The city is in the throes of celebration, or will be soon. Cars are still trying to make their way in; pedestrians are flocking; coppers are roping off this street and that. He sees a man sweeping clear a section of partitioned off pavement with a push broom, predicts correfocs there in the near future, humans and fireworks joining together for an act of beautiful stupidity. Or maybe it’ll be a bonfire there; there’s a long enough area leading up to what would be a prime spot, plenty enough space to get a running start and jump over.
He looks around them because he’s not sure if he can look at her. Because maybe she’ll plead and he’ll get annoyed. Because maybe she won’t and he’ll get irritated. Maybe she’ll ask, just one more time, and he’ll feel awful.
No, he doesn’t look at her.
Not until he walks her to those double doors. Not until it’s time for him to release her hand and he makes her tug it free instead, both of them grinning all the while. They stand there, in the dwindling natural light, and she opens her mouth to say something he won’t risk hearing.
“Thanks for lunch,” he interrupts, and when she pauses, pauses and then hugs him, he thinks he might have done this right.
“Thanks for dinner,” she counters, body and breath hot with the day, with her quick little life. Her top clings to the curve of her back beneath his hand and his fingertips think to - but fail to - play with the line of her spine. Her hair sticks to his face and neck and then she pulls back.
He tries for a smile, not sure what she’s expecting to see in his face.
“See you tomorrow, then?” she asks, and if she looks hopeful, there’s no telling what for. No telling what for, besides for him.
“Yeah,” he says, and leans back in. It’s a soft kiss, to her cheek instead of her brow, soft and quick and just that.
But he can feel her mouth open and his palm can feel muscle beneath skin, through cloth. Her expression is only confused when he pulls back, almost only confused.
“What was that for?” she asks him, has to attempt the first word twice, then once more.
He shrugs and grins, as cheeky of a bastard as he knows how to be. “When in Spain,” he answers.
She recovers, rolls her eyes at him. And then she smiles, too.
“See you,” he says.
“Not if I see you first,” she answers, and they take a moment to smile at each other.
He walks away, immensely, immensely pleased with himself.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The flat’s okay for a little while. A bit hot, but it always is, just a bit. Usually gets better when it’s later, when it’s noise instead of heat that he doesn’t want to let in through the windows.
“What time is it?” he mumbles to himself, inspecting his hair in the mirror after a much needed shower. Amazing, how much better a man can feel with a fresh shirt and a clean body. Still, seeing the damp strands against his forehead, he knows it’s time for a haircut. Past time. It pokes at his ears, can actually go in different directions when he runs his hand over his scalp.
He spends a short period of time looking around for a comb he doesn’t have and that clinches it: haircut, soon. For some reason, he’s got nothing with him to buzz it down with, has been letting that slip for almost two months now. It’s like all those wool jumpers in June; all those little things he keeps forgetting.
Ah well. Something to do in the week to come.
It occurs to him that he’s just wasting time, putting off the night for as long as he can. The window is open in the other room and he can hear it, can practically feel the city take on the excitement that only a holiday is the proper excuse for. He hears it and he feels it and he wants out there, he realizes. He wants to go and live a little, go out to where so many are living a little. Enough people so that, together, they might all just be living a lot.
Key word, that. Together.
Still. Living only a little is still better than not living at all.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s not half bad, this.
He can’t see the stars for the light of the streets, for the blaze of them. Pausing for a bonfire, his nose fills with ash and human sweat and the excessive cologne of the bloke standing next to him, the scents not so much mingling together as crowding each other. It almost overwhelms the ever-constant scents of salt and sea, of concrete and car exhaust.
Music floods into the street from bars and restaurants and open windows. Shouts are heard from every throat, every voice raised for any listening ear to catch. The air throbs with sound, an erratic heartbeat that sets his pounding against the cage of his ribs.
Bonfire flames leap high and locals leap higher, young men running to launch themselves over the fire and not always land on their feet. His hands clap and his voice raises itself and he realizes that, yes, he is grinning and applauding along with the crowd and the bloke with the aftershave issues yells something to him under the noise around them and he only laughs in reply, because this is it. This is why he loves cities and why he adores Barcelona.
Tourists stand amazed and locals shout and they can still be told apart, but they’re not apart anymore, not really, not where it counts. Doesn’t matter where they’re from when this is where they’ve gone to.
For tonight, it doesn’t matter.
Cologne Boy shoves a camera into his hand, yells a question in German, pointing at the flames, and he nods, mouthing back an answer instead of even trying to compete with the cheers as the jumpers make it, the shrieks as they nearly don’t.
He stands there, disposable camera between his hands, as Cologne Boy joins the waiting line, stands ready with his eyes wide and mouth split into a nervous grin. The boy’s sweating, bouncing a bit to loosen up. Watching the kid, he finds himself nodding assurance, feels his palms grow damp from more than the heat, more than the press of bodies around him. He focuses on the fire, brings up the camera to mechanically stare at the place where the boy will jump.
Paper and furniture and clothing burns in the pile along with so much wood, all these relics of the past burning away, burning and crackling and sending embers into the sky in the semblance of stars, in pale mockery of them. This close, the smell of ash keeps rising, the grey motes drifting in the air, the smoke infusing the breeze, slipping bit by bit into his throat.
It’s all the old things that burn. Renewal, his mind insists it means; his mind knows it means. It’s renewal. But it’s destruction first. Textbooks and journals go up so very quickly, clothing slower, furniture the slowest of all. The wisdom and memory; the people; and finally, at the last, the supports. The structure. All burning, the charring traveling from the bottom to the top, burning piece falling onto burning piece to send embers flying up into the dark night to wink out. All burning. All-
The boy leaps.
His hands perform the simple task, shake a little, and the boy falls into a roll over the pavement, laughing and shouting and thrilled enough to hug the stranger he’s given his camera, thrilled enough that it could bring another man’s stomach to clench. He gives the camera back, thrusts it into the boy’s hands in much the same way the boy handed it to him.
Brown eyes look at him in an adrenaline-filled gaze. “Do you want to-”
“No,” he says.
Quick, and almost harsh. It takes the boy aback.
“No,” he says again, softer this time, if any shout can be called soft. “No thanks.”
He slips away, quick as he can, shaken in a way he can’t quite explain, in a way he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to risk wondering about. Because that sounded like German, first time talking to the boy. No thinking about that, no turning back. He keeps on walking, his destination known rather than chosen.
He doubts she’d have gone to the second club by now.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She hasn’t.
.-.-.-.-.-.
TO PART 2 OF THE OVERSIZED CHAPTER OF OVERSIZENESS
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: A tilt of the head, a lift of the eyebrows and he can’t help it, has given up trying to help it.
He’s happy.
AN: The meaning for the chapter title is "one who celebrates" and not the priest definition. Just so we're all clear. Aaaand, this chapter was so long, it's in two pieces.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The Determined
The Unaware
The Celebrant
There’s a muffled noise from around the small of his back. It’s soft and tired and followed by a bit of movement. He keeps his eyes closed, ignoring both sound and sensation, ignoring the red of light reaching through his eyelids. His arm is more asleep than the rest of him is now; his legs are hanging off the....
Hold on.
He opens his eyes, blinking into artificial illumination. The coffee table stares back at him from this angle, rings on the surface reflecting light like so many worn eyes. He stares back at it for a moment, his half-dreaming mind pondering the rightness of sentience in his surroundings. The refrigerator hums from across the room, louder than the soft, steady breath behind him, and it sounds like a friend, like a cheetah’s purr.
Humming a reply of self-directed amusement, he soon grunts instead at the stiffness of his body, in his legs and arm and hand. His fingers are still between the pages of Don Quixote, the book held loosely against his stomach by his hand and hers.
Shifting as slowly, as smoothly as he can, he moves the book from stiff hand to numb hand to put it on the coffee table, covering up some of those eyes. He nearly fumbles the paperback, almost drops it to the floor. It’s not that wide of a couch and there’s already one person too many on it.
Her fingers brush over the hairs on his wrist, try to close over the end of a jumper’s sleeve, a jumper he’s not wearing. That touch falls from him as he shifts off the couch, flexing his hand, moving his fingers, trying not to hiss at the unpleasant revival from numbness. He’s not half so stiff or sore as he could be, so they couldn’t’ve been asleep for long.
He pulls out his mobile from where it’s probably made a rectangular bruise against his hip and checks the time. A bit after four in the morning.
That settles it. He’s not walking her home at this hour and she’s not going anywhere without him, this time of night.
She shifts into the warm spot he left with a petulant “mmunph,” turning her face against the cushion, the light hitting her face now that he’s not there to shield it. One leg hangs off, one sock-clad foot. He’s not entirely certain where her shoes are, or when she took them off.
Right then.
He spends a moment, just standing there, just standing there awkwardly in his lit flat at four in the morning.
It’s an absurdly long moment.
After, he shakes his head at himself, blaming uncomfortable sleep and not having much of even that. He turns off the lights and heads to bed, pauses when he does. A thought brings him to his closet, to the top shelf with the extra blanket he has no use for in the summer nights. It’s an oddity of temperature, the blanket, like all his wool jumpers, and he decides for the thousandth time that he’s simply bad at packing.
There’s an extra blanket, but only one pillow and she hugs it to her chest instead of using it properly. Still. Too late to take it back, now that it’s been turned into the world’s most un-bear-like teddy bear. He’d only wake her up trying.
She clasps her hands together when she sleeps, he can’t help but notice. Weird thing to do, that. It makes her elbows lock with the pillow between them, an uncomfortable looking hug.
Well. None of his business.
He goes to his room and shuts the door behind him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He wakes with faded whispers in his ears, his t-shirt from yesterday no longer bundled up beneath his head. He grabs at his mobile, presses buttons blindly until he shuts the alarm off.
After that, brain function begins to return to the usual levels, bringing him the powers of recollection and logic. Making a mental note not to sleep in jeans in the future, he gets up and nearly goes to the door before he remembers that the sensation of air against skin equates to not having a shirt on. He pulls on a fresh t-shirt, shoving his head through the hole, and that feeling of being bare still fails to recede. It’ll go away soon enough, though; he knows from experience, from every single morning.
Going into the living room, he sees no one up and about, sees the back of the couch. Bathroom door’s open; no one in there. She’s still asleep then, and he peers over the back of the couch to make sure, to find messy hair and a shape bound up in a blanket. The pillow has fallen onto the floor.
He walks quietly to the kitchenette, bare feet making the transition from rough carpet to cool linoleum. The bananas on top of the fridge are finally looking ripe, he decides, breaking one from the many and sitting down on the counter.
Eating his breakfast, he has an odd feeling, a sense of déjà vu that he’s coming to associate with his little lost tourist. Is this the first time, then, that he’s tucked her into a couch after reading her to sleep?
He has to think about it.
In the end, the clock on the microwave stops his wondering for him, silently informing him that, great joy, it’s time to go to work. Maybe if he didn’t have such a routine schedule, he thinks. Maybe then....
Maybe then, what? What then?
He doesn’t know. Seems to be having a lot of strange thoughts this morning, though. As always, he blames sleep. And then, for good measure, he downs a glass of water.
When he’s done, she’s still asleep and he still has to go. He finds a scrap of paper - a Chinese take-away menu - and a pen, jots down a quick note. He sets the note down on the coffee table and then fights a remarkably quiet battle with his key ring. Frees his extra key. That goes down on top of the note.
He adds a banana for good measure.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Gone to the garage. Lock up when you leave.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Hours later, he still feels as if he should have written more.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Hours later, she shows up at the garage. Her hair is wet at the ends, probably drying from a shower, and her clothes are different from yesterday, from this morning.
He sees her and grins.
She grins back.
She’s got something in her hands, but then, so does he. His happens to be a soldering iron. Hers is a touch smaller, fits in one hand. She makes almost as if to go over to him and he shakes his head beneath the ruckus that is the radio once Pedro takes hold of it. He has to finish up first.
She understands, points to here and outside, and he nods, grinning a bit as she taps her ear with a theatric wince.
He watches her leave - leave to stand outside the garage, mind, not to go anywhere without him - before he gets back to the task at hand, before he recalls what he was doing with that radiator in the first place. It’s difficult, today, to pull his focus back to his work, but that’s hardly unusual, hardly....
A quick glance towards the door finds her there, leaning against the doorframe as if the metal were, well. As if it were him.
She blushes, her head ducking, and he’s already grinned so much this morning that a little more can’t hurt.
And it’s so easy to prod her. A tilt of the head, a lift of the eyebrows and it doesn’t matter that he can feel Pedro ignoring them. He can’t help it, has given up trying to help it.
He’s happy.
It takes some time before he’s done and he has to force himself not to rush. He’s not entirely sure what he’s doing today, only that it will work and he’s done it before. It feels like some sort of movement he used to know the name for, like a technique of calculation he can use but not explain. It falls in the gap between knowing how to add and knowing how to multiply, and it’s familiar enough a gap for him not to press his own mind. He’ll recall soon enough, once she’s not hanging around and distracting him.
His next glance up brings his eyes to hers, makes the directed nod of her head a direction he can follow. He ducks his head slightly, instinctively, to see Sanchez standing in the door of the office, watching them with an expression he’s used to feeling on his own face. It’s an expression he personally directs at idiot teenagers clogging up doorways as they try to fit through in tight pairs; it’s half amusement, half incredulity at the sight before him.
Sanchez proclaims them both absurd and eternally amusing before, with a snick beneath Pedro’s music, decidedly shutting the door to his office.
They look at one another then, unsure of whether they ought to laugh.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Walking out to lunch, he thinks she’s about to slip her hand into his, is surprised when he feels a small piece of metal instead of warm skin.
“What’s this?” he asks even as he looks at it, even as he recognizes it.
“S’yours,” she answers with an uneven shrug, her hand going to his elbow when he fails to pocket the key, fails to empty his hand for her to take. She gives him a small tug to stop his feet. Crosswalk, he distantly registers, hearing cars and knowing only vaguely that those same machines are in his peripheral vision.
He looks down at her as she looks up, the pair of them standing in a growing crowd, waiting for the light to change. Her face is clear, guileless, but uncertain. Wondering. This isn’t a ploy but an honest question. The key quickly warms in his hand and it feels as if it should hurt more when the notches press into the pads of his curled fingers. She’s waiting for him to tell her one way or the other, for him to hand it back to her or keep it for himself. Maybe she’s waiting.
Or maybe she’s just looking up at him, confused at his hesitation in pocketing it, simply wondering at what’s in his head the same way he wonders at what’s in hers.
“So it is,” he replies, holding it in his hand for a time longer. For some reason, his gaze goes to her neck, to the long chain she sometimes wears beneath her top, the silver barely visible beneath her hair. Someone gave her that, both the chain and the key attached to it. She’s worn it more since her mint tin watch vanished, and so he thinks he knows who the giver of that gift was. Knows who it must have been.
“So it is,” he says again, and then pockets it. Keeps his hand in his pocket.
The light changes, her soft grip falling from his arm as they cross. It raises his hackles up, the lack of contact in the crowd, but the sum total of his response is to tighten his fist around the key when she lags behind, leaves his side. It sets his nerves on edge. She’s already been pick-pocketed once; he doesn’t fancy having it happen for the second time right behind him. And so it sets his nerves on edge.
One hand pocketed, one empty in the air, he reaches backwards and their fingers fumble against each other. He looks at her sharply, caught in a sudden anxiety he can’t name.
Their hands catch, fingers lacing, and he traps her thumb beneath his, blunt and rough over firm and gentle.
Their palms press together, so very, very tightly.
Their arms brush, short-sleeved and sleeveless.
He swallows.
Her gaze is heavy on him, on the side of his face, on his neck. It moves without wandering or roaming, filled with more purpose than he can acknowledge. He knows it is.
He doesn’t need to look to see.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s a covered patio sort of thing where they eat, full of both locals and tourists. It’s outside but there’s a roof and walls and furniture and something about the indecision of definition draws him here today.
That, and the smells. Bananas are good, but only one does not a breakfast make - or so his stomach is informing him as it gnaws at itself.
The next table over, that looks good. He gives the food a good, long study before noting the occupants of the table, before he sees mother and black-haired daughter. It doesn’t matter that the girl’s too young or too old, whichever way he looks at it.
His gaze tries to fall to his silverware, his empty stomach more easily ignored than his full head. Instead of looking down, he looks to her, to his little tourist who doesn’t seem quite so little. His stomach rumbles again and he smiles at his girl’s expression, that little look all full of questions she won’t ask, all those questions she’ll wait for him to ask her about.
She sips her water, sets the glass down. Wipes the chill of ice from her lips with the back of her other hand.
“There’s this thing people are talking about,” she eventually says, shifting a little beneath his attention now that she has it. “Friday night, yeah?”
His mind flips though his mental guidebook, comes up with a holiday. “The Festival of San Juan, you mean?”
She nods. “Think we’d still be able to go to Els Encants?”
“Not for long,” he replies after a spot of thinking. “Don’t suppose most would want to waste their holiday that way.”
She nods again, makes a noise like that’s all she meant to ask about. It’s not.
And so he waits.
Her eyes are hopeful, and her hand lies by the stem of her water glass, lies palm up and empty.
“The actual holiday’s on Saturday,” he feels the need to point out, the first to break the silence. “The night before is when you get all the bonfires and jumping into the ocean, typically.”
“So what d’you think?” she asks, leaning forward a bit. “About bonfires and stuff?”
“That it’s probably a bad idea to have a night out drinking and then try and jump over one,” he answers, the reply at once honest and dense.
She’s not deterred. It makes him want to grin. “There’s gonna be all these fireworks, yeah? On the beach. Some of my friends, they’ve been talking about it for a while.”
His gaze flickers to the side, goes to a passing waiter carrying food which is evidently not for them. His eyes soon return to hers, fall to her open hand and rise once more to her face.
“Night out for you and the girls, then?” he asks, a part of him wondering why he’s never really asked about what she does all day without him, who she bothers when he’s not around to be bothered. And it occurs to him that he wants to know a little more than he should.
“Yeah. Gonna hit a couple bars, watch the corre- the corre-”
“Correfocs,” he supplies.
“The blokes dancing with firecrackers, yeah,” she agrees and then asks again: “So what d’you think?”
“Sounds like you’ll have fun,” he says, speaking before he so much as considers it. There’s a reason for his decision, a rational one, if he looks for it. But there’s another one, as irrational as they come, and that’s the first reason to come to mind.
She gave him the key back.
He shouldn’t even mind that she did. He shouldn’t care. Hell, he should’ve said thank-you and been done with it. This girl he’s known for a month and a half - but almost two months, almost that - and he gives her the key to his flat? Just to lock up, mind. Just to lock up. Just to close the door and make sure no one else got in once she’d left. And it’s not as if he owns anything of value to begin with.
He doesn’t think his thoughts - his irrational, irritating thoughts - show on his face, not much, but she doesn’t need much. She knows him too well.
In some ways.
“You don’t want to come?” she asks him, somehow hurt that he hasn’t picked up an invitation that isn’t an invitation, only implied permission for him to tag along.
“A pack of girls barely out of their teens and a forty-three-year-old man?” he asks right back, finding that rational reason instantly once he decides to look for it. “Sounds fantastic, but I’ll pass. You have fun,” he adds, able to hold back the part of him that wants to tack on another piece of advice, one around the lines of Don’t get knocked up. Not that he thinks she will or would or, or any of that. It’s just the thought of the night, and the activities that come with the night.
She doesn’t give up so easily, but then, she never does.
“You could mock stuff,” she offers, somehow realizing how tempting that is. “Or, I mean, there’s....” She flushes, just a little, and his hand moves of its own accord to fill hers. “There’s dancin’. Unless you can’t,” she adds, quick about it, an impish gleam in her eye.
“What, and you can?” he shoots right back, the pair of them ignoring how their hands play, fingers sliding against fingers. He wants to know exactly how slow service is here, in this moment, wants to know exactly how long they have before an interruption breaks this and makes their decisions for them.
Her eyebrows rise, this response obviously not the expected one. Clearly, she’s yet to realize that he does occasionally use a good offense as his defense of choice. “I can dance.”
“You mean ‘bob to music’,” he assumes, presumes with a purpose. He loves the face she makes, when he contradicts.
“I mean dancing.” Her free hand tucks her hair behind her ear and his eyes follow the motion, fingertips pausing against her palm. “Swing, for one.”
His eyebrows rise, but the movement is all intent, no surprise. He knows her too well to be surprised.
She shrugs, and her smile knows him too.
Beside her water glass, circles form on her palm for a fingertip to trace, her hand lying almost flat against the tablecloth, fingers barely curled. Neither watches as those circles grow from large to tight, as they take on soft lines and hard arcs, as friction fades with the damp sweat in a day so very hot. He knows she’s not watching because he’s looking at her eyes.
They both know the other isn’t watching their hands.
Her fingers lift from the cloth of the table, lift and rise and the tips of those slim digits ghost against his palm from beneath. The slight touch stilling his hand, the tracing wavers, the circle indenting itself to be contrary.
There must be lines on his palm, lines like her circles that demand to be traced, to be brought into reality through the electricity of synapses, of a nervous system far beyond the point of being nervous. These are lines to be traced with fingernail and fingertip, to be brushed against and never satisfyingly touched.
The slow stroke slides across palm to the underside of his stilled fingers, slides there and curls. Her fingers curl and his fingers curl and his hand goes down to meet hers, their digits twined like yin and yang, only his thumb left unheld, left free to touch the soft blade of her hand. Her thumb rises to his knuckles, to touch those roughened joints, to try to. His arm adjusts, catering to her reach, his hand striving for the pad of her thumb.
“Rose,” he says, his voice taking on the roughness of his hands.
“Yeah?” she breathes, her eyes full of him and never before so extraordinary. He can see into her, can see so far into her, so very far and deep. Though skin-to-skin, his first thought is mind-to-mind. It’s a fanciful thought. A fanciful thought, but suitable for a man who does fancy.
“How did you sleep,” he asks her slowly, “last night?” His gaze neither falls nor drifts to their hands. It’s simply there.
Her thumb rests against his knuckle. Presses down, or maybe he imagines it does.
“Good,” she says, and when her thumb strokes a little, he’s not imaging it.
“Lumpy couch,” he reminds her, giving her the opportunity to amend or rephrase or reaffirm.
“You’re not comfy either, but I still slept good.” She smiles as she says it, means the first part as a dig, as a playful poke. She might mean it that way, but all the same, she blushes at the interpretation she reads in his eyes.
He grins.
Her smile falters.
And so does his. “Rose-”
“Wake me up next time, okay?” Her fingers tighten around his, fingernails digging into the skin below his second knuckle. It’s impossible not to feel.
“It was four in the morning,” he replies, explains. “By the time I woke up, it was too late to-”
Another squeeze of her fingers around his, pressing his fingers into her palm. “I meant when you left. Wake me up next time. Hate waking up with everybody already gone.”
“I left a note,” he points out, his voice leaving no doubt of his scorn for behavior so domestic.
“And a banana,” she agrees, leaving it up to him to mention the key. She might be, or he might be over-thinking it. She smiles and then says, mimicking his accent: “Bananas are good.”
He feels his expression go soft, scorn and worry alike evaporating. Has to blink and look up in confusion when their long-absent waiter finally returns with a pair of plates. He gives the man a nod, keeping that hand beneath his own, and she doesn’t so much as comment until later, until a pause as he chews and she doesn’t.
“That’s the hand I eat with,” she says, her grip loose but her hand yet to pull back.
“Tough,” he replies, giving those fingers a squeeze. It’s playful, not possessive. It’s all just play.
There’s a moment for her to think before she grins at him, tongue between her teeth. “You sayin’ you goin’ t’ feed me?”
Hastily, he releases her hand. “Keep the domestics at home, thank you.”
She only grins wider. “I try, but you don’t like them there either.”
He looks at her, and she looks at him, and only then does she realize what she’s just said.
Quickly picking up her fork, she pokes at her food rather than look back up at him, plays with refried beans like they’re mashed potatoes. It’s too much of a reaction for a joke gone awkward. It means a slip of the tongue, but he gives her a bit of time, lets her become steady. If he speaks, he’ll seize upon the comment, grab it and ask about the key, demand to know what could possibly be going on in that little human brain of hers.
And so he sips his water instead, trying not to freeze his lips on the ice. When he sets the glass down, the frozen water sounds like chimes. It’s as good a detail as any to focus on, and one he’s sure he’s noticed before.
“So is that a ‘no’, then?” she asks, immediately pulling him from his thoughts by offering him a glance at hers.
Is that a “no” to home, is that what she’s asking? To giving her back the key and letting her have the couch? To her moving in?
He can’t be thinking this, really, he can’t be thinking this, but somehow he is and it’s a good thought, a very good thought. He can buy another pillow; he doesn’t mind. It sounds crazy in his own mind, but it’s always sounded crazy and it’s always been the way he’s conducted his life. He might have thought he’d have learned not to pull near-strangers so completely into his life by this point - and maybe he has. She’s no stranger, not now. They’re already together every day. He’s not making the same mistake he did with Grace: a kiss and a thrill and then an invitation turned down flat.
“What do you want?” he asks her, voice filled with consideration to keep all the hope out.
“For you to come on Friday,” she tells him, thoroughly on a different page. “Just for a bit.”
She’s kept hope out of her voice, too.
“...I might do,” he allows. “Not much for that sort of thing, though, me.”
“I know,” she says, is quick to say it. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They eat in the closest thing to silence as there ever is between them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
But only for a time.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She tells him about the friends she has here, in the city. University students, the ones her age, mostly, university students on break and bent on using every inch of it.
“You can’t measure time in inches,” he tells her.
“What if you, dunno, reverse the polarity or somethin’?” she counters, sounds like she’s quoting.
“Of what, a ruler?”
“Point taken.”
Anyway, they’re good friends. One of them - that would be Tonya - has come around with her to all the pawn shops and antique stores she hasn’t hit with him. Tonya’s father is in the business, apparently, so they’ve got a connection. Tonya’s been keeping an ear out on their behalf.
“Not half bad then,” he gathers.
“Nope. Not half.”
Back to the point, they’re planning on going to this bar and then this one - the drinks are cheaper in the first and Elicia likes the DJ in the second - and then they’re gonna be around this plaza for a while before going to the beach for the fireworks. This beach, those fireworks.
“Someone’s gonna be busy,” he remarks.
“Yeah,” she says and looks at him to ask if he’s someone, too.
He chews his food. Takes a drink after. Spicy, and it stays spicy. There are some tastes even water can’t completely wash out, not right away.
“You should have fun,” he tells her, yet again. “Be good for you, spendin’ time with people your age.”
He says it because he knows she hasn’t got a comeback to that, hasn’t any additional argument that can beat the world’s most awkward elephant sitting between them.
“Yeah,” she says, like that was the answer she was expecting. “S’pose so.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
She doesn’t bring it up again for the rest of the week, but it sits in his mind nonetheless. There are days of following her around in her search, but Friday’s the thought in his head, always Friday. No longer the start of the weekend that he used to dread, only the day with a night he doesn’t know how to deal with.
Not knowing how to deal with it means not talking about it. Which in turn means neglecting to mention that he hasn’t got work on Friday, the weekend starting early for the sake of San Juan. Or Sant Joan, depending. This is one of those cases where he prefers the Spanish over the Catalan - no real reason why - so San Juan it is.
He feels restless and listless, a horrible combination at any time, but particularly bad before nine in the morning. If it’s only quarter past eight and he doesn’t know what to do with himself now, well. Today is going to be a long day.
And a hot one, he realizes, opening the window in the kitchenette only to receive a blast of heat along with a blast of sound. He shuts the window after waiting a moment for a breeze that’s not half slow in coming, goes to the fridge to check the freezer afterwards. Beyond a couple of frozen meals he hasn’t touched, there’s nothing, not even ice. He should get on that.
He wastes a good ten minutes finding washcloths and bowls, turns the bowls upside down and soaks the cloths beneath the tap. Washcloths over the bowls and the bowls in the freezer, he’s got a pair of icehats underway. Not sure where he learned that trick, but judging by the way this June is going, it’s going to be a hot July - he’ll need every bit of cold he can get.
So now it’s eight-thirty.
Almost.
His flat is empty, very, very empty and so it follows that there’s nothing to do in there. He opens the closet, eying both jacket and motorcycle helmet for a moment. He could go out, waste a day, come back and... and have her gone already, into the night.
He stares into that closet for far too long, has to keep telling himself that no, it’s far, far too hot for his jacket. He feels too light without it, feels bare without something to add to his lanky frame. The t-shirt’s not enough, has never been enough, but that’s all he can wear right now.
He makes himself move, eventually, hating to be unable to roam when that’s what’s always worked before, when that’s what has always made his mind move, pulling it along with his body. He opens the door to his flat, exits, and locks the door behind him. He walks down three flights of stairs without incident, hands in his pockets rather than on the railing. He leaves the apartment building.
And he thinks, without knowing why, to run.
His work boots thud against the sidewalk, distinct to him amid all the sounds of the city, all the sounds of the world and he grins, wide, sudden, manic. He grins and runs, choosing his path by which way is open, by red and green and stop and go, and always picking go.
A hill turns the street downwards and he runs atop it the same way he would run down a rockslide, forcing his feet to always be there when he lands. Barreling through crowds seldom works, so he skirts around them, bounds around them, pushes off a wall one-handed to push himself back into the flow, back into the run, his marathon sprint. He pulls his breath into his body, his lungs straining in painful counterpoint to his legs.
Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what his body is telling him; his mind knows better, knows not to stop until it’s time to stop, knows it can overpower body. His mind knows to run, even if his body doesn’t, even if this city doesn’t.
He stumbles to a stop half a city away from where he started, panting, breathing hard, his side aching an absurd amount. A moment is spent with him bent over, his hands on his knees, before he straightens, before he looks up at the side of a familiar hotel and grins as best he can.
A look through the double doors reveals nothing worth the look, though, and he stays outside for the time it takes to steady his breath. His side aches and his throat burns and his legs want to shake and the worst pain is that he can’t remember the last time he ran like this. He used to love it, the running.
He still does.
His body is begging for a bench, demanding an explanation for his sprint, but he has neither. There are certain things he has to do, he feels, to be himself. And it might just be the power of endorphins, but he can’t remember the last time he felt so very alive. So full of the rush of movement, of travel. When was the last time he’d taken the old girl for a ride, his battered old bike? Something else to do, something he has to do.
Maybe they’ll do that today, or tomorrow. Not tonight, no; her nights are never his, but currently, he can’t bring himself to care. Not when this tired, aching body can bear to straighten, can insist that it’s not done yet. He steadies his breath, plucks damp shirt from chest to let a small amount of hot air in. He swipes a hand over his brow and over his hair, gone long enough without a cut for it to touch his forehead, to brush there uncomfortably when sweat-dampened.
He leans back against the wall of the hotel to wait and that’s when he decides that yes, this is going to be a fantastic day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It is.
.-.-.-.-.-.
There’s a part of his mind that strains like a child’s imagination as the evening draws near. It’s some little bit of him that insists that if he tries, if he really, truly tries, he can hold back time itself - if only for a moment.
How there could be a moment outside of time is an issue he doesn’t have an answer to, but it’s mildly entertaining to think about as he returns her to her hotel, walking this time. It took some time, but she’s been able to cope with it, spending her hours in a different way than in an endless quest for a false timepiece. She relaxed after a while, laughed. Maybe even forgotten a little.
Their hands sweat against each other as they walk in a quiet that applies to only them. The city is in the throes of celebration, or will be soon. Cars are still trying to make their way in; pedestrians are flocking; coppers are roping off this street and that. He sees a man sweeping clear a section of partitioned off pavement with a push broom, predicts correfocs there in the near future, humans and fireworks joining together for an act of beautiful stupidity. Or maybe it’ll be a bonfire there; there’s a long enough area leading up to what would be a prime spot, plenty enough space to get a running start and jump over.
He looks around them because he’s not sure if he can look at her. Because maybe she’ll plead and he’ll get annoyed. Because maybe she won’t and he’ll get irritated. Maybe she’ll ask, just one more time, and he’ll feel awful.
No, he doesn’t look at her.
Not until he walks her to those double doors. Not until it’s time for him to release her hand and he makes her tug it free instead, both of them grinning all the while. They stand there, in the dwindling natural light, and she opens her mouth to say something he won’t risk hearing.
“Thanks for lunch,” he interrupts, and when she pauses, pauses and then hugs him, he thinks he might have done this right.
“Thanks for dinner,” she counters, body and breath hot with the day, with her quick little life. Her top clings to the curve of her back beneath his hand and his fingertips think to - but fail to - play with the line of her spine. Her hair sticks to his face and neck and then she pulls back.
He tries for a smile, not sure what she’s expecting to see in his face.
“See you tomorrow, then?” she asks, and if she looks hopeful, there’s no telling what for. No telling what for, besides for him.
“Yeah,” he says, and leans back in. It’s a soft kiss, to her cheek instead of her brow, soft and quick and just that.
But he can feel her mouth open and his palm can feel muscle beneath skin, through cloth. Her expression is only confused when he pulls back, almost only confused.
“What was that for?” she asks him, has to attempt the first word twice, then once more.
He shrugs and grins, as cheeky of a bastard as he knows how to be. “When in Spain,” he answers.
She recovers, rolls her eyes at him. And then she smiles, too.
“See you,” he says.
“Not if I see you first,” she answers, and they take a moment to smile at each other.
He walks away, immensely, immensely pleased with himself.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The flat’s okay for a little while. A bit hot, but it always is, just a bit. Usually gets better when it’s later, when it’s noise instead of heat that he doesn’t want to let in through the windows.
“What time is it?” he mumbles to himself, inspecting his hair in the mirror after a much needed shower. Amazing, how much better a man can feel with a fresh shirt and a clean body. Still, seeing the damp strands against his forehead, he knows it’s time for a haircut. Past time. It pokes at his ears, can actually go in different directions when he runs his hand over his scalp.
He spends a short period of time looking around for a comb he doesn’t have and that clinches it: haircut, soon. For some reason, he’s got nothing with him to buzz it down with, has been letting that slip for almost two months now. It’s like all those wool jumpers in June; all those little things he keeps forgetting.
Ah well. Something to do in the week to come.
It occurs to him that he’s just wasting time, putting off the night for as long as he can. The window is open in the other room and he can hear it, can practically feel the city take on the excitement that only a holiday is the proper excuse for. He hears it and he feels it and he wants out there, he realizes. He wants to go and live a little, go out to where so many are living a little. Enough people so that, together, they might all just be living a lot.
Key word, that. Together.
Still. Living only a little is still better than not living at all.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s not half bad, this.
He can’t see the stars for the light of the streets, for the blaze of them. Pausing for a bonfire, his nose fills with ash and human sweat and the excessive cologne of the bloke standing next to him, the scents not so much mingling together as crowding each other. It almost overwhelms the ever-constant scents of salt and sea, of concrete and car exhaust.
Music floods into the street from bars and restaurants and open windows. Shouts are heard from every throat, every voice raised for any listening ear to catch. The air throbs with sound, an erratic heartbeat that sets his pounding against the cage of his ribs.
Bonfire flames leap high and locals leap higher, young men running to launch themselves over the fire and not always land on their feet. His hands clap and his voice raises itself and he realizes that, yes, he is grinning and applauding along with the crowd and the bloke with the aftershave issues yells something to him under the noise around them and he only laughs in reply, because this is it. This is why he loves cities and why he adores Barcelona.
Tourists stand amazed and locals shout and they can still be told apart, but they’re not apart anymore, not really, not where it counts. Doesn’t matter where they’re from when this is where they’ve gone to.
For tonight, it doesn’t matter.
Cologne Boy shoves a camera into his hand, yells a question in German, pointing at the flames, and he nods, mouthing back an answer instead of even trying to compete with the cheers as the jumpers make it, the shrieks as they nearly don’t.
He stands there, disposable camera between his hands, as Cologne Boy joins the waiting line, stands ready with his eyes wide and mouth split into a nervous grin. The boy’s sweating, bouncing a bit to loosen up. Watching the kid, he finds himself nodding assurance, feels his palms grow damp from more than the heat, more than the press of bodies around him. He focuses on the fire, brings up the camera to mechanically stare at the place where the boy will jump.
Paper and furniture and clothing burns in the pile along with so much wood, all these relics of the past burning away, burning and crackling and sending embers into the sky in the semblance of stars, in pale mockery of them. This close, the smell of ash keeps rising, the grey motes drifting in the air, the smoke infusing the breeze, slipping bit by bit into his throat.
It’s all the old things that burn. Renewal, his mind insists it means; his mind knows it means. It’s renewal. But it’s destruction first. Textbooks and journals go up so very quickly, clothing slower, furniture the slowest of all. The wisdom and memory; the people; and finally, at the last, the supports. The structure. All burning, the charring traveling from the bottom to the top, burning piece falling onto burning piece to send embers flying up into the dark night to wink out. All burning. All-
The boy leaps.
His hands perform the simple task, shake a little, and the boy falls into a roll over the pavement, laughing and shouting and thrilled enough to hug the stranger he’s given his camera, thrilled enough that it could bring another man’s stomach to clench. He gives the camera back, thrusts it into the boy’s hands in much the same way the boy handed it to him.
Brown eyes look at him in an adrenaline-filled gaze. “Do you want to-”
“No,” he says.
Quick, and almost harsh. It takes the boy aback.
“No,” he says again, softer this time, if any shout can be called soft. “No thanks.”
He slips away, quick as he can, shaken in a way he can’t quite explain, in a way he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to risk wondering about. Because that sounded like German, first time talking to the boy. No thinking about that, no turning back. He keeps on walking, his destination known rather than chosen.
He doubts she’d have gone to the second club by now.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She hasn’t.
.-.-.-.-.-.
TO PART 2 OF THE OVERSIZED CHAPTER OF OVERSIZENESS
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