Fic: In Human Hands (14/24?)
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: He wants to say he’s overreacting. He knows he’s overreacting. But he knows why he is, even if he’s hardly about to say it, hardly about to admit it, even to himself. And with that sort of a reason for reacting, it’s more like plain reacting, isn’t it?
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The Determined
The Unaware
The Celebrant
The Nurse
The Visitor
The Illusion
He knows it’s a dream.
He knows it’s a dream, but dreams have power. Dreams are power, depending on who you ask. On whenwhere you go. He knows it’s a dream.
Because the girl’s across his lap, sleeping.
Because Fred’s behind him, alive.
He always did used to be surrounded by women.
"I think it's cute," Fred says, looking over his shoulder at the girl in his arms. Her hand strokes his back and her blood drips down his skin and into the couch. "The way she holds onto you, I mean. Shame you'll ruin her."
"No," he says, shaking his head. The couch turns red beneath his thighs.
"Then let her go."
"No," he says again and the cushion is stained beneath them both.
He turns his head to find Fred is gone, her breath still cool against the back of his neck.
It’s more or less the worst way to wake up in the morning.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
But it does get him thinking.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
He gets more time for thinking when lunch rolls around, when what should be lunch rolls around.
“¿Donde está tu chica?” Sanchez asks him, locking up one of the doors before tossing over the keys.
He catches them one-handed, metal jabbing at skin. “She’s just late.” The garage door clanks down, the lock sliding into place with a satisfying noise, one of the first satisfying things in his day so far.
The garage owner walks over to him as he finishes locking up, takes his keys back. “That makes a change.”
“If she’s making a bother, I could-”
Sanchez waves his hands in negation. “A pretty face in my garage? It’s been years since I had such fortune.”
“Your wife popped ‘round last week,” he reminds the other man, more than a touch dryly.
“Years,” Sanchez repeats. “And besides, they got on well.”
“She does with most,” he agrees and it’s only when Sanchez taps him on the shoulder that he realizes he’s staring down the street.
Sanchez doesn’t say anything, not right away. He just looks at him, considers him, determines whether to butt in or keep out.
The decision Sanchez makes is one he’s not half grateful for.
The Spaniard simply shakes his head, simply sighs and tells him, “She’s probably chatting at a newsstand, tu Rosita.”
He nods, pulls his mouth into a smile. “Yeah.” There’s a pause before he adds - a pause where he knows he’s letting on more than he should, where he’s feeling more than he should - before he adds, “See you after lunch.”
The other man takes the hint well, leaves with short parting words and a small backwards wave.
And so he stands there.
And so he waits.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He hates waiting.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The metal door of the garage begins to burn beneath his back, warming from the sun, but it’s only beginning, that heat. It’s uneven metal, dinged up, and the door sways a bit from his weight, rattling while it’s at it. Foot traffic’s dying down along the sidewalk as siesta continues, as people get home and stay there, or get to wherever they’re going if not home.
His feet begin to hurt from standing still.
He’s standing in direct sunlight, knows he should move, get somewhere shady. The sunburn remains an irritant across his face and he can feel his sweat as it moves across his skin. He checks his watch, more than impatient, more than a touch irritated.
He knows the impatience will vanish once the waiting’s resolved, knows the irritation will evaporate the moment he sees her, but knowing what will happen doesn’t make the present any better. Makes it even worse, sometimes. Where is that girl?
When his stomach starts rumbling at him, it occurs to him to call.
He looks less like an overgrown loiterer once he’s standing there with a mobile pressed to his ear and he makes that into a small improvement on the situation by force of will. The mobile rings, keeps on ringing, and he crosses his feet at the ankle as he leans, still waiting.
She picks up.
“Where-”
“I’ve got it!” The only way to describe her voice is a squeal, a giddy, girlish squeal that takes him entirely by surprise. “I haven’t got it in my hands, but Tonya - from the bar on San Juan? You met her, the one whose dad has an antique shop? Tonya heard from this man, yeah? Tourist bloke, but a collector. He’d done some shopping around on Saturday, got to talking with Tonya at the shop this morning and she asked him about the design and he’d seen one like it- he’s seen it.”
“I-”
“He wasn’t sure what shop it had been at - he’d been at a couple - but most hadn’t been open on San Juan, so we’ve been making all these calls to the shops to figure out what one it was and now I think we’ve got it. We’re goin’ right now.”
She goes on to give him the address, but he’s stopped listening. All this, what she’s going on about, it’s not important.
“Rose,” he says, interrupting, “I’ll meet you at the usual bench for lunch.”
“Don’t know if I can,” she answers, rushes that out so she can get back to her topic of choice. She still sounds half-breathless, still so very excited. It’s clearly heard above the sounds of the crowds she must be moving through. “Oh my god, this is brilliant. It’s fantastic - go on, say it: it’s fantastic!”
He rolls his eyes, doesn’t hold back on the sarcasm. “Fantastic,” he gives her.
“Everything’s gonna be all right,” she gushes, not catching his tone or maybe not able to make it out, walking through the streets. He wants it to be because she can’t make it out - otherwise, she’s blatantly ignoring him. “Oh my god, just one more month and we’re gone-”
He hangs up.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He shuts his phone off for good measure.
.-.-.-.-.-.
So that’s all well and good, then, he thinks to himself, griping far more than he wants to be. The stone bench he sits on isn’t theirs, but he doesn’t want it to be. If he’d wanted to sit there, he would have gone there. But he didn’t want the market there, didn’t want to weave between stalls with a hand unheld.
Doesn’t help that it’s a feeling he’s going to have to get used to anyway. He just doesn’t want to get used to it already, not now with her still in the city. In the city for one month more. Just one more month.
He’s been kicking himself since he heard those words out of her mouth, been resisting the urge to hit himself in the head for letting her in so far, for bloody believing her in all of this. How blind did he have to be? That watch going missing was important enough to her that she didn’t bother to pop ‘round for almost a week, not even asking for help. Not even noticing he’d been sent to hospital.
And all the concern over him after - how much for her dead captain? How much for her quarantined doctor? Both of them in hospital at once, only one of them she can contact, so what does she do? Bothers him about his age, about his life expectancy, shoves all her fears of another man’s mortality onto him, makes him deal with it because she can’t.
She needs him because he’s solid, because he looks stable enough to lean on, and that should be enough, that should be something he can cope with but it’s not and he hates it and he sounds like a child inside his own head. He feels like he’s been whining and stupid when he was told no from the start, when he should understand already what’s going on around him.
She’s alone. She’s stuck. She’s grieving.
And he’s here.
And yes, it’s more than that - it has to be more than that, has to be, can’t not be more than that - but that’s the basis, that’s the foundation. That’s what she wants from him.
What really burns is how he understands that, how he can’t quite seem to find a way to blame her for it, not completely. Because he knows what she’s been through and he knows how young she is - oh, is he aware of how young she is - and it’s too much for her. It’s too much for most anyone, far more than he’d ever want her to have to live with. Death and separation and loneliness crammed into two decades of living; there’s not enough time in that life for pain to diffuse into.
He wants to say he’s overreacting. He knows he’s overreacting. But he knows why he is, even if he’s hardly about to say it, hardly about to admit it, even to himself. And with that sort of a reason for reacting, it’s more like plain reacting, isn’t it?
If this had happened a month ago - if he’d realized it a month ago; it had been happening a month ago, it’d been happening for two months already - if he’d realized it a month ago, he would’ve just let go. He would have backed off and been relieved and just let her go because it’s not him she’s clinging onto.
Hindsight does amazing things to conversations, twists them around. So does thinking on your own, stewing on your own, and he tries to keep a balance, tries to stay sane if he can’t be calm. It doesn’t go so well, goes far less well when he thinks of Saturday, thinks of San Juan and her coddling him, her hovering over him and asking him that.
“If you were the doctor,” she’d said. If he were the doctor, would he forgive her? If her lost, sick, soon-to-be-terribly-angry man were him instead, would he not be terribly angry? Would he tell her some little hypothetical thing to make her feel better about losing government secrets in the form of a pocket watch? Would he mind pretending for a moment to be the man she wanted him to be?
No wonder she hadn’t let him kiss her, after.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Looking back, he can’t remember if he ate lunch.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The afternoon is a slow one, but his hands have never been faster. His body moves with a clarity of purpose that his mind takes shelter in, that his mind merges into. His movements are hard, precise. No sloppy caress of the parts, no savouring check of work already known to be well done.
With Sanchez holed up in his office and Pedro blasting his ears off with oversized headphones, he hasn’t got any reason to pay attention to his surroundings, hasn’t got any reason to glance up towards the doors. There are people walking by, but they’re only people. They’re no one he knows.
He patches up a coolant leak, then tinkers with the coolant temperature sensors, checks the thermistor. He takes screwdriver and pliers to the air filter, removes and replaces it. Done with the car, he looks at the old filter for a while before he dumps it, looks at all the clogging grit that had been killing the mileage. Smells weird.
It’s not called for, but he wants to slide beneath, wants to check out the underbelly with grease on his hands and oil dripping down. It’s not called for, but he wants to, and he tells himself tomorrow, tells himself soon. It’s not a car he wants, either.
It’s the road.
And wind.
And his leather jacket.
His legs feel like they’re shaking from standing still, shaking with stillness and then smooth from motion. His arm raises, his knuckles rap against a plywood door, and he’s speaking, and the door’s open, and Sanchez is speaking too. Because the car’s fine, all checked out, and there’s nothing else at the mo’, not really, Pedro’s got it handled, and- yes. He’d love to leave early.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He sprints the way back to his flat just because he can.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s missed this. The chill of it, the chill and the force of the wind against leather. He goes from overheating in his jacket to being almost cool, feels his world increase in speed and decrease in temperature and it’s one of those little, tiny things he never knew he loved until he lost it. Lost it and found it again.
Barcelona behind him, he takes off to Girona, takes some back roads for a bit but rejoins the main way for convenience’s sake. With over seventy kilometres his exit, he’s got time to think about these things, about the things he hasn’t been doing. He hasn’t ridden since before his time in hospital. And why not? Because of the search for that watch of hers, that’s why.
He sounds bitter in his own head. He is bitter.
He’s bitter and he’s dwelling on it and he’s going around in metaphorical circles while he continues in a literal straight line. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t like the feeling that he should try and figure it out.
Because he’s running away.
Because he’s getting some perspective.
Because he’s showing her that she’s not the only one who can leave.
He gives himself a mental shake, revs the engine to give himself something to hear. And it’s a good thing to hear, a soothing thing. The shake beneath his hands and feet and legs, the wind strong enough to lean into, wind strong enough to be a support; it’s such a good thing.
Battered blue and rumbling engines never felt so much like home.
.-.-.-.-.-.
On foot, it takes almost half an hour of wandering until he forgets to forget her.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Back to a stone wall, he can see the Pyrenees between the short buildings, likes the juxtaposition. Manmade and the mountains, the close and the far; stone both. He can see them, far off and topped with snow. Brownish rock sticking up through that white, sticking up through snow just within sight of his eyes, and yet he stands here sweating through his shirt.
His jacket, folded over his arm, is a weight almost excessively warm. That’s the problem with traveling by bike: the leather jacket is only good for the motion of it, never the stopping.
It’s not a jacket that belongs on a man who’s only standing still. Not in this heat. Trying to defy that little rule of reason and logic has already stuck him in the hospital. Well, more or less.
He thinks about the hospital and then he thinks about her and really, when did that start to happen, all his thoughts on this impossible, irritating loop? It’s hardly the first time this has happened to him, hardly the first time he’s felt like this and acted like this, hardly the first time, hardly that: it’s so removed from the first time that he knows exactly how it all will end.
He shakes his head, tries and fails to clear it.
It’s impossible to clear his head when he can wander through the town and reach for her absent hand, can keep thinking she’s there. He looks to the Pyrenees and thinks of the story behind the name, thinks of a blond little tourist talking about Greek myths. Thinks of her doctor reading to her the same way he reads to her.
Thinks of the look of her, somehow finding a way to lie cradled against his side, comfortable where there shouldn’t be any comfort to be found. Just resting there, just breathing with her hair against his arm and her cheek to his shoulder and her chest rising and falling so slow and so steady that she must be asleep, must be and yet isn’t.
And her protest, those half muffled sounds of displeasure when he tries to move, when she doesn’t quite fit beneath his arm or against his side. The way she sits up again when he comes back from the loo, giving him space for him to make a gap for her to fill. That look she gives him then, that look she gives him all the time. When they’re walking with her in the lead; when she’s been on the opposite side of a stall for all of a minute; whenever he’s the second one to their bench, she gives him that look.
Like she’s amazed he hasn’t vanished.
It’s too obvious to think about, too painfully true.
Because he’s not a replacement.
He’s just an idiot.
.-.-.-.-.-.
If he can be allowed the simile, kick-starting his bike is like kick-starting the world. He goes from numb and stupid to rattled and alive in the time it takes for the motor to revive. The ride back to Barcelona is over an hour, likely more with traffic.
It’s an hour more for her to wonder where he’s gone off to, for her to console herself over the loss of him with the regaining of the watch. He doesn’t even have a proper reason for being gone.
“I got jealous” isn’t a proper reason.
.-.-.-.-.-.
By the time he gets back, his stomach is killing him. He doesn’t remember lunch and he can’t recall breakfast and he definitely knows that he rode right through dinner. By the time he parks his bike in its spot outside the apartment building, he’s feeling more than a little dizzy. Depending on how he feels after getting something to eat, he might be able to blame his entire fit on crankiness from low blood sugar.
He yanks off his helmet, shucks his jacket, and carries the both of them up the stairs rather than wear them. He gets more looks than he’s used to, feels strange about it, isn’t sure if it’s not just him being out of breath. He’s been making a mess out of his own mind all day; now, it’s finally turning physical.
Or maybe it’s the lack of food or drink, he reminds himself, forcing his mind away from the morbid as he climbs up the last of his three flights of stairs. He can’t seem to stop thinking like that. Really, he can’t seem to stop....
It’s so abrupt, the sight of her, that he actually does stop thinking.
Her back to his door, she sits on the worn carpet with her mobile in both hands, sits with her head bowed and hair veiling her face. She doesn’t look up as he approaches and he has to wonder how long she’s been sitting there, to get used to footsteps walking by.
It’s when he stops that she looks up. And it’s that look again, the one he’s not imagining, or misremembering. It’s that look, a gaze that needs his to match it.
He needs to hold her in reply, but his hands are already full.
She stands up, pressing one hand back against the door for balance, and it makes her lean away from him, just a little. She tucks her phone into her pocket, tucks her hair behind her ear. It scares him a little, how much he can’t read her.
“Lleida or Girona?” she asks.
“Girona,” he says, surprised she remembered what he told her yesterday, surprised she had paid so close attention to that rejected invitation.
“Oh,” she says and nods a little, her face pretending to smile. “How was it? Nice?”
“Rose,” he says and her face stops pretending. “You didn’t get all the way up here to ask how Girona was.” Sneak in, more like. She probably followed someone up - she’s been here enough to be a familiar face.
She bites her lip. Shakes her head. Her eyes press shut as she does.
“Hold this, would you?” he tells her rather than asks, setting his helmet in her hands so he can get his keys. And then, because she seems to need it, he unfolds his jacket from over his arm, drapes it around her shoulders. It hangs heavy on her, but she seems to lighten.
He gets the door open, shoos her inside. Once over the threshold, she visibly relaxes. When he closes the door and throws the lock back on, she looks almost secure, might feel almost safe. She hands him back the helmet but keeps the jacket on, pulls it closed around her like a cloak or a blanket. She’s only got a tank-top on underneath, might actually need the additional warmth, might want it.
“What?” she asks him, confused, and that’s when he realizes he’s smiling.
He shakes his head at her, gesturing her to the couch. “Just you and that jacket.”
She sits herself down, shrugs beneath too-large shoulders as he sits down on the coffee table. “Leather fetish.”
His mind goes in some very interesting directions before he decides she’s joking, before she sticks her tongue out at him at the look on his face.
He rolls his eyes and she smiles and then that smile fades.
He’s pretty sure he knows what that means. “So about that watch.” And then he adds, before she can ask, before she wonder at his lack of explanation: “Phone died mid-call - never did hear how that worked out.”
“They sold it,” she says, confirming what he already knows and accepting his falsehood wholesale. “On Saturday.” She gives a sigh more frustrated than sad or tired, pulls the jacket tight around her as she looks away. “Sold in the early afternoon, paid for in cash. No name, no way of gettin’ one.”
He’d take her hand, but she’s all wrapped up in leather. “What about a description?”
“Maybe early twenties, brown hair, English tourist,” she answers. “With a granddad who collects pocket watches, apparently.”
He can feel his eyebrows rising. “Where’d that last bit come from?”
She shrugs a little. “Helpful bloke at the shop. The owner called him in ‘cause he’s friends with Tonya’s dad - the owner is, not the bloke. The bloke said-”
He shakes his head, holds up his hand. “Walk me through this from the start. Chronological would be a help.”
“Right,” she says, sort of breathes the word, has to think. “Well, this morning. Tonya heard from a collector that he’d seen a hunter-case watch like the doctor’s. Geometrical shapes on the lid, lack of ticking noises, probably crown-wind, all that. No idea if it’s crown-set or pin-set or whatever the other option is, but it’s not really a watch, y’know, so I wish people would just stop asking how you set it, ‘cause I have no idea. It’s not the most distinguishing feature.”
“Rose,” he prompts.
“Right, sorry.” She lets out another breath, makes herself slow down. “Right. Too much in my head about watches sometimes now, sorry. The collector told Tonya about the watch at the other shop, yeah? Said it’d been there Saturday morning. Said it’d stood out to him some way he couldn’t quite pin down but he hadn’t gotten it ‘cause it was broken. And, I mean, you’d think, if even a man who really likes pocket watches won’t buy it, it’s safe, right?”
He nods, has to fight to stay where he is, has to fight to sit across from her instead of sitting next to her, instead of pulling her against him and getting completely sidetracked. Instead of doing exactly what she doesn’t need him to do. Not right now, anyway.
“But it got sold,” she continues. “Couple of hours later, even. The bloke at the shop, Jaime? Said it was probably a bit before two. The bloke who bought it seemed to be in a rush, Jaime said,” she adds, tacks that on there as if it couldn’t possibly mean the tourist had a bus to catch, as if the new owner of that watch might not have had a two-day head start to no-one-knew-where.
“That grandfather bit,” he starts to say, that piece of information sticking in his head for a reason he can’t quite pin down. He should be asking after who got the watch there in the first place, asking about why cash instead of a card, but his mind stuck there first.
She looks down, is clearly hugging herself beneath the layer of leather. “He was in a rush to get his granddad a souvenir before he left. He was with a friend - Jaime overhead ‘em talking.”
“He wanted to get it before he left Barcelona? For the day or...?”
She shrugs a little and watching the jacket move on her keeps him calm. “Dunno,” she says, and the small break in her voice moves him from table to couch, moves him and fills his arms.
“You’re sure it’s the right watch?” he asks, his chin atop a blond head, his chin atop brunette roots. He can’t help but feel it when she nods.
“I drew them a picture.”
She says it with such certainty that it’s almost childlike, that he can’t prevent the small noise he makes in reply.
“No, really,” she says. “It’s a distinctive design.”
He hums a noncommittal sound, taking her word for it. Thinks it’s a little strange that through all the searching through Els Encants, he’s only ever heard the thing described as an unopenable watch that he wasn’t to try to open. She’s a strange one, his girl.
“You a good artist?” he thinks to ask, thinks to ask it in the way she needs asking.
She swats him, fights against a smile. He can’t see it or hear it, but he knows it’s there, knows the shift in her as she unwinds into his side, just a little bit more and a little more than that. He knows what the world feels like through leather; knowing what she feels like through it isn’t a challenge.
“Good enough,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They sit there for a moment longer, breathing and thinking. He holds her a bit tighter. She doesn’t complain.
“You put in a request to UNIT yet?” he asks, and it’s hard not to notice the way she goes stiff, even beneath the jacket. “Sounds like they could be some help,” he adds, still trying to be helpful, now just a little... not suspicious, but certainly something.
“It’s... not really,” she answers. He’s not sure what she’s admitting to.
“You have told them about their watch bein’ missin’?” he checks.
“’Course I did,” she tells him, tells him quick. With her back against his chest, he can’t see enough of her expression to dissect the tone. “UNIT’s kinda busy right now, though.”
“’Course.”
Another moment of them thinking, just trying to work it through.
“Security camera in the shop?” he asks, ignoring his stomach as it decides to rumble. Never did eat that dinner. “Can’t UNIT get into the CCTV?”
“They’ve already taped over Saturday’s tape in the shop,” she answers. “No robbery or anything, so no reason not to.”
“But the CCTV? Something outside the shop maybe?”
She shakes her head, hair tickling his throat. “It’s on a side street. Dunno if there’s a camera there.”
“Hardly would hurt to check at this point,” he reminds her.
It’s her turn then to make a noncommittal noise. She twists in his arms, reaches for him, and then it’s soft skin beneath his hands instead of battered leather. “Wish I could’ve gone with you,” she says and he knows it’s only because she needs a change of topic, he knows that. But she gets her arm behind his back, gets her arm almost around his waist against the couch as she fits beneath his arm; her other hand rises to his far shoulder and with her cheek against the close one, she’s practically speaking against his throat.
“Next time,” he offers her, his hand on her arm across his chest, his hand on her elbow and far from still. His thumb strokes and her diaphragm responds, as if his touch were within flesh and between bone instead of atop it. The unsteady flow of her breath is keenly felt against his throat, impossible to ignore. “We can go all the way up to the Pyrenees, have a snowball fight.”
She laughs a little, a large and a small puff of breath, the one following the other, both tickling. “I’d like that.”
“Friday,” he tells her. “Could leave then, at least.” And then, needing to but not wanting to ask it: “You going to be busy over the watch still?”
“I think, by then, I’m gonna need another break,” she tells him, confides in him. She says it like she’s scared he won’t approve, like he’ll think she’s running away.
As if he’d mind.
His thumb strokes into her skin, brushes over the tiny hairs of her arm. “Could go the whole weekend,” he says, like he’s only just thought of it. “Ride up on Friday, wander around until we get back. Get lost a bit.”
She squeezes him, hugs him tight. “God, yes. I’d love that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” And she rests her forehead against his pulse.
It’s perfect, and so he can’t help but ruin it. “Unless something about your watch pops up.”
He expects her to go still, but she doesn’t. She sinks into him instead, doesn’t so much actively press against him as fall into him; it feels a bit like gravity, the way she lets the world hold her against him.
“I wish...” she says, is about to say. She laughs a little, but it’s not the sound he loves. “I wish too much, don’t I?”
“Just keep on bein’ careful about it,” he advises, has to advise. It’s one of those things, by this point, one of their things.
“I guess I’m just.... I’m sorry, okay?”
Trying to look at her means trying to pull back and she lets him do neither, holds on like she thinks the movement indicates rejection.
“What for?” And why’s she the one apologizing when he’s the one who ran off today? The urge to confess his hang-up rises and he presses it down.
She shrugs a little, the movement made into him, but the gesture of uncertainty doesn’t match what’s in her mind. “You’re just tryin’ t’ be you and sometimes I can’t be me anymore. Too much stuff in the way. Makes me miss, well.”
“Not having stuff in the way?” he offers.
“Yeah,” she answers, nuzzles closer like she’s tired and it makes him feel wide awake.
He shouldn’t ask it, wants to ask it. “And what happens when there’s nothing in the way?”
That’s the question that makes her go still, a question that forces her to thought instead of guiding her to it. The tired nuzzle is now an awkward position for her head, an awkwardness he can feel against his shoulder. He can feel her almost speak, the movement of her jaw clear against his skin even through cloth. Her hand falls from his shoulder but he catches it, helps their fingers twine.
He squeezes tight and she squeezes tighter.
“S’pose.... S’pose I’ll be me and you’ll be you,” she answers.
“We’ll be us,” he says. Asks. Corrects.
It’s one of the three.
Whichever one it is, she nods.
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: He wants to say he’s overreacting. He knows he’s overreacting. But he knows why he is, even if he’s hardly about to say it, hardly about to admit it, even to himself. And with that sort of a reason for reacting, it’s more like plain reacting, isn’t it?
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The Determined
The Unaware
The Celebrant
The Nurse
The Visitor
The Illusion
He knows it’s a dream.
He knows it’s a dream, but dreams have power. Dreams are power, depending on who you ask. On whenwhere you go. He knows it’s a dream.
Because the girl’s across his lap, sleeping.
Because Fred’s behind him, alive.
He always did used to be surrounded by women.
"I think it's cute," Fred says, looking over his shoulder at the girl in his arms. Her hand strokes his back and her blood drips down his skin and into the couch. "The way she holds onto you, I mean. Shame you'll ruin her."
"No," he says, shaking his head. The couch turns red beneath his thighs.
"Then let her go."
"No," he says again and the cushion is stained beneath them both.
He turns his head to find Fred is gone, her breath still cool against the back of his neck.
It’s more or less the worst way to wake up in the morning.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
But it does get him thinking.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
He gets more time for thinking when lunch rolls around, when what should be lunch rolls around.
“¿Donde está tu chica?” Sanchez asks him, locking up one of the doors before tossing over the keys.
He catches them one-handed, metal jabbing at skin. “She’s just late.” The garage door clanks down, the lock sliding into place with a satisfying noise, one of the first satisfying things in his day so far.
The garage owner walks over to him as he finishes locking up, takes his keys back. “That makes a change.”
“If she’s making a bother, I could-”
Sanchez waves his hands in negation. “A pretty face in my garage? It’s been years since I had such fortune.”
“Your wife popped ‘round last week,” he reminds the other man, more than a touch dryly.
“Years,” Sanchez repeats. “And besides, they got on well.”
“She does with most,” he agrees and it’s only when Sanchez taps him on the shoulder that he realizes he’s staring down the street.
Sanchez doesn’t say anything, not right away. He just looks at him, considers him, determines whether to butt in or keep out.
The decision Sanchez makes is one he’s not half grateful for.
The Spaniard simply shakes his head, simply sighs and tells him, “She’s probably chatting at a newsstand, tu Rosita.”
He nods, pulls his mouth into a smile. “Yeah.” There’s a pause before he adds - a pause where he knows he’s letting on more than he should, where he’s feeling more than he should - before he adds, “See you after lunch.”
The other man takes the hint well, leaves with short parting words and a small backwards wave.
And so he stands there.
And so he waits.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He hates waiting.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The metal door of the garage begins to burn beneath his back, warming from the sun, but it’s only beginning, that heat. It’s uneven metal, dinged up, and the door sways a bit from his weight, rattling while it’s at it. Foot traffic’s dying down along the sidewalk as siesta continues, as people get home and stay there, or get to wherever they’re going if not home.
His feet begin to hurt from standing still.
He’s standing in direct sunlight, knows he should move, get somewhere shady. The sunburn remains an irritant across his face and he can feel his sweat as it moves across his skin. He checks his watch, more than impatient, more than a touch irritated.
He knows the impatience will vanish once the waiting’s resolved, knows the irritation will evaporate the moment he sees her, but knowing what will happen doesn’t make the present any better. Makes it even worse, sometimes. Where is that girl?
When his stomach starts rumbling at him, it occurs to him to call.
He looks less like an overgrown loiterer once he’s standing there with a mobile pressed to his ear and he makes that into a small improvement on the situation by force of will. The mobile rings, keeps on ringing, and he crosses his feet at the ankle as he leans, still waiting.
She picks up.
“Where-”
“I’ve got it!” The only way to describe her voice is a squeal, a giddy, girlish squeal that takes him entirely by surprise. “I haven’t got it in my hands, but Tonya - from the bar on San Juan? You met her, the one whose dad has an antique shop? Tonya heard from this man, yeah? Tourist bloke, but a collector. He’d done some shopping around on Saturday, got to talking with Tonya at the shop this morning and she asked him about the design and he’d seen one like it- he’s seen it.”
“I-”
“He wasn’t sure what shop it had been at - he’d been at a couple - but most hadn’t been open on San Juan, so we’ve been making all these calls to the shops to figure out what one it was and now I think we’ve got it. We’re goin’ right now.”
She goes on to give him the address, but he’s stopped listening. All this, what she’s going on about, it’s not important.
“Rose,” he says, interrupting, “I’ll meet you at the usual bench for lunch.”
“Don’t know if I can,” she answers, rushes that out so she can get back to her topic of choice. She still sounds half-breathless, still so very excited. It’s clearly heard above the sounds of the crowds she must be moving through. “Oh my god, this is brilliant. It’s fantastic - go on, say it: it’s fantastic!”
He rolls his eyes, doesn’t hold back on the sarcasm. “Fantastic,” he gives her.
“Everything’s gonna be all right,” she gushes, not catching his tone or maybe not able to make it out, walking through the streets. He wants it to be because she can’t make it out - otherwise, she’s blatantly ignoring him. “Oh my god, just one more month and we’re gone-”
He hangs up.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He shuts his phone off for good measure.
.-.-.-.-.-.
So that’s all well and good, then, he thinks to himself, griping far more than he wants to be. The stone bench he sits on isn’t theirs, but he doesn’t want it to be. If he’d wanted to sit there, he would have gone there. But he didn’t want the market there, didn’t want to weave between stalls with a hand unheld.
Doesn’t help that it’s a feeling he’s going to have to get used to anyway. He just doesn’t want to get used to it already, not now with her still in the city. In the city for one month more. Just one more month.
He’s been kicking himself since he heard those words out of her mouth, been resisting the urge to hit himself in the head for letting her in so far, for bloody believing her in all of this. How blind did he have to be? That watch going missing was important enough to her that she didn’t bother to pop ‘round for almost a week, not even asking for help. Not even noticing he’d been sent to hospital.
And all the concern over him after - how much for her dead captain? How much for her quarantined doctor? Both of them in hospital at once, only one of them she can contact, so what does she do? Bothers him about his age, about his life expectancy, shoves all her fears of another man’s mortality onto him, makes him deal with it because she can’t.
She needs him because he’s solid, because he looks stable enough to lean on, and that should be enough, that should be something he can cope with but it’s not and he hates it and he sounds like a child inside his own head. He feels like he’s been whining and stupid when he was told no from the start, when he should understand already what’s going on around him.
She’s alone. She’s stuck. She’s grieving.
And he’s here.
And yes, it’s more than that - it has to be more than that, has to be, can’t not be more than that - but that’s the basis, that’s the foundation. That’s what she wants from him.
What really burns is how he understands that, how he can’t quite seem to find a way to blame her for it, not completely. Because he knows what she’s been through and he knows how young she is - oh, is he aware of how young she is - and it’s too much for her. It’s too much for most anyone, far more than he’d ever want her to have to live with. Death and separation and loneliness crammed into two decades of living; there’s not enough time in that life for pain to diffuse into.
He wants to say he’s overreacting. He knows he’s overreacting. But he knows why he is, even if he’s hardly about to say it, hardly about to admit it, even to himself. And with that sort of a reason for reacting, it’s more like plain reacting, isn’t it?
If this had happened a month ago - if he’d realized it a month ago; it had been happening a month ago, it’d been happening for two months already - if he’d realized it a month ago, he would’ve just let go. He would have backed off and been relieved and just let her go because it’s not him she’s clinging onto.
Hindsight does amazing things to conversations, twists them around. So does thinking on your own, stewing on your own, and he tries to keep a balance, tries to stay sane if he can’t be calm. It doesn’t go so well, goes far less well when he thinks of Saturday, thinks of San Juan and her coddling him, her hovering over him and asking him that.
“If you were the doctor,” she’d said. If he were the doctor, would he forgive her? If her lost, sick, soon-to-be-terribly-angry man were him instead, would he not be terribly angry? Would he tell her some little hypothetical thing to make her feel better about losing government secrets in the form of a pocket watch? Would he mind pretending for a moment to be the man she wanted him to be?
No wonder she hadn’t let him kiss her, after.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Looking back, he can’t remember if he ate lunch.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The afternoon is a slow one, but his hands have never been faster. His body moves with a clarity of purpose that his mind takes shelter in, that his mind merges into. His movements are hard, precise. No sloppy caress of the parts, no savouring check of work already known to be well done.
With Sanchez holed up in his office and Pedro blasting his ears off with oversized headphones, he hasn’t got any reason to pay attention to his surroundings, hasn’t got any reason to glance up towards the doors. There are people walking by, but they’re only people. They’re no one he knows.
He patches up a coolant leak, then tinkers with the coolant temperature sensors, checks the thermistor. He takes screwdriver and pliers to the air filter, removes and replaces it. Done with the car, he looks at the old filter for a while before he dumps it, looks at all the clogging grit that had been killing the mileage. Smells weird.
It’s not called for, but he wants to slide beneath, wants to check out the underbelly with grease on his hands and oil dripping down. It’s not called for, but he wants to, and he tells himself tomorrow, tells himself soon. It’s not a car he wants, either.
It’s the road.
And wind.
And his leather jacket.
His legs feel like they’re shaking from standing still, shaking with stillness and then smooth from motion. His arm raises, his knuckles rap against a plywood door, and he’s speaking, and the door’s open, and Sanchez is speaking too. Because the car’s fine, all checked out, and there’s nothing else at the mo’, not really, Pedro’s got it handled, and- yes. He’d love to leave early.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He sprints the way back to his flat just because he can.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s missed this. The chill of it, the chill and the force of the wind against leather. He goes from overheating in his jacket to being almost cool, feels his world increase in speed and decrease in temperature and it’s one of those little, tiny things he never knew he loved until he lost it. Lost it and found it again.
Barcelona behind him, he takes off to Girona, takes some back roads for a bit but rejoins the main way for convenience’s sake. With over seventy kilometres his exit, he’s got time to think about these things, about the things he hasn’t been doing. He hasn’t ridden since before his time in hospital. And why not? Because of the search for that watch of hers, that’s why.
He sounds bitter in his own head. He is bitter.
He’s bitter and he’s dwelling on it and he’s going around in metaphorical circles while he continues in a literal straight line. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t like the feeling that he should try and figure it out.
Because he’s running away.
Because he’s getting some perspective.
Because he’s showing her that she’s not the only one who can leave.
He gives himself a mental shake, revs the engine to give himself something to hear. And it’s a good thing to hear, a soothing thing. The shake beneath his hands and feet and legs, the wind strong enough to lean into, wind strong enough to be a support; it’s such a good thing.
Battered blue and rumbling engines never felt so much like home.
.-.-.-.-.-.
On foot, it takes almost half an hour of wandering until he forgets to forget her.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Back to a stone wall, he can see the Pyrenees between the short buildings, likes the juxtaposition. Manmade and the mountains, the close and the far; stone both. He can see them, far off and topped with snow. Brownish rock sticking up through that white, sticking up through snow just within sight of his eyes, and yet he stands here sweating through his shirt.
His jacket, folded over his arm, is a weight almost excessively warm. That’s the problem with traveling by bike: the leather jacket is only good for the motion of it, never the stopping.
It’s not a jacket that belongs on a man who’s only standing still. Not in this heat. Trying to defy that little rule of reason and logic has already stuck him in the hospital. Well, more or less.
He thinks about the hospital and then he thinks about her and really, when did that start to happen, all his thoughts on this impossible, irritating loop? It’s hardly the first time this has happened to him, hardly the first time he’s felt like this and acted like this, hardly the first time, hardly that: it’s so removed from the first time that he knows exactly how it all will end.
He shakes his head, tries and fails to clear it.
It’s impossible to clear his head when he can wander through the town and reach for her absent hand, can keep thinking she’s there. He looks to the Pyrenees and thinks of the story behind the name, thinks of a blond little tourist talking about Greek myths. Thinks of her doctor reading to her the same way he reads to her.
Thinks of the look of her, somehow finding a way to lie cradled against his side, comfortable where there shouldn’t be any comfort to be found. Just resting there, just breathing with her hair against his arm and her cheek to his shoulder and her chest rising and falling so slow and so steady that she must be asleep, must be and yet isn’t.
And her protest, those half muffled sounds of displeasure when he tries to move, when she doesn’t quite fit beneath his arm or against his side. The way she sits up again when he comes back from the loo, giving him space for him to make a gap for her to fill. That look she gives him then, that look she gives him all the time. When they’re walking with her in the lead; when she’s been on the opposite side of a stall for all of a minute; whenever he’s the second one to their bench, she gives him that look.
Like she’s amazed he hasn’t vanished.
It’s too obvious to think about, too painfully true.
Because he’s not a replacement.
He’s just an idiot.
.-.-.-.-.-.
If he can be allowed the simile, kick-starting his bike is like kick-starting the world. He goes from numb and stupid to rattled and alive in the time it takes for the motor to revive. The ride back to Barcelona is over an hour, likely more with traffic.
It’s an hour more for her to wonder where he’s gone off to, for her to console herself over the loss of him with the regaining of the watch. He doesn’t even have a proper reason for being gone.
“I got jealous” isn’t a proper reason.
.-.-.-.-.-.
By the time he gets back, his stomach is killing him. He doesn’t remember lunch and he can’t recall breakfast and he definitely knows that he rode right through dinner. By the time he parks his bike in its spot outside the apartment building, he’s feeling more than a little dizzy. Depending on how he feels after getting something to eat, he might be able to blame his entire fit on crankiness from low blood sugar.
He yanks off his helmet, shucks his jacket, and carries the both of them up the stairs rather than wear them. He gets more looks than he’s used to, feels strange about it, isn’t sure if it’s not just him being out of breath. He’s been making a mess out of his own mind all day; now, it’s finally turning physical.
Or maybe it’s the lack of food or drink, he reminds himself, forcing his mind away from the morbid as he climbs up the last of his three flights of stairs. He can’t seem to stop thinking like that. Really, he can’t seem to stop....
It’s so abrupt, the sight of her, that he actually does stop thinking.
Her back to his door, she sits on the worn carpet with her mobile in both hands, sits with her head bowed and hair veiling her face. She doesn’t look up as he approaches and he has to wonder how long she’s been sitting there, to get used to footsteps walking by.
It’s when he stops that she looks up. And it’s that look again, the one he’s not imagining, or misremembering. It’s that look, a gaze that needs his to match it.
He needs to hold her in reply, but his hands are already full.
She stands up, pressing one hand back against the door for balance, and it makes her lean away from him, just a little. She tucks her phone into her pocket, tucks her hair behind her ear. It scares him a little, how much he can’t read her.
“Lleida or Girona?” she asks.
“Girona,” he says, surprised she remembered what he told her yesterday, surprised she had paid so close attention to that rejected invitation.
“Oh,” she says and nods a little, her face pretending to smile. “How was it? Nice?”
“Rose,” he says and her face stops pretending. “You didn’t get all the way up here to ask how Girona was.” Sneak in, more like. She probably followed someone up - she’s been here enough to be a familiar face.
She bites her lip. Shakes her head. Her eyes press shut as she does.
“Hold this, would you?” he tells her rather than asks, setting his helmet in her hands so he can get his keys. And then, because she seems to need it, he unfolds his jacket from over his arm, drapes it around her shoulders. It hangs heavy on her, but she seems to lighten.
He gets the door open, shoos her inside. Once over the threshold, she visibly relaxes. When he closes the door and throws the lock back on, she looks almost secure, might feel almost safe. She hands him back the helmet but keeps the jacket on, pulls it closed around her like a cloak or a blanket. She’s only got a tank-top on underneath, might actually need the additional warmth, might want it.
“What?” she asks him, confused, and that’s when he realizes he’s smiling.
He shakes his head at her, gesturing her to the couch. “Just you and that jacket.”
She sits herself down, shrugs beneath too-large shoulders as he sits down on the coffee table. “Leather fetish.”
His mind goes in some very interesting directions before he decides she’s joking, before she sticks her tongue out at him at the look on his face.
He rolls his eyes and she smiles and then that smile fades.
He’s pretty sure he knows what that means. “So about that watch.” And then he adds, before she can ask, before she wonder at his lack of explanation: “Phone died mid-call - never did hear how that worked out.”
“They sold it,” she says, confirming what he already knows and accepting his falsehood wholesale. “On Saturday.” She gives a sigh more frustrated than sad or tired, pulls the jacket tight around her as she looks away. “Sold in the early afternoon, paid for in cash. No name, no way of gettin’ one.”
He’d take her hand, but she’s all wrapped up in leather. “What about a description?”
“Maybe early twenties, brown hair, English tourist,” she answers. “With a granddad who collects pocket watches, apparently.”
He can feel his eyebrows rising. “Where’d that last bit come from?”
She shrugs a little. “Helpful bloke at the shop. The owner called him in ‘cause he’s friends with Tonya’s dad - the owner is, not the bloke. The bloke said-”
He shakes his head, holds up his hand. “Walk me through this from the start. Chronological would be a help.”
“Right,” she says, sort of breathes the word, has to think. “Well, this morning. Tonya heard from a collector that he’d seen a hunter-case watch like the doctor’s. Geometrical shapes on the lid, lack of ticking noises, probably crown-wind, all that. No idea if it’s crown-set or pin-set or whatever the other option is, but it’s not really a watch, y’know, so I wish people would just stop asking how you set it, ‘cause I have no idea. It’s not the most distinguishing feature.”
“Rose,” he prompts.
“Right, sorry.” She lets out another breath, makes herself slow down. “Right. Too much in my head about watches sometimes now, sorry. The collector told Tonya about the watch at the other shop, yeah? Said it’d been there Saturday morning. Said it’d stood out to him some way he couldn’t quite pin down but he hadn’t gotten it ‘cause it was broken. And, I mean, you’d think, if even a man who really likes pocket watches won’t buy it, it’s safe, right?”
He nods, has to fight to stay where he is, has to fight to sit across from her instead of sitting next to her, instead of pulling her against him and getting completely sidetracked. Instead of doing exactly what she doesn’t need him to do. Not right now, anyway.
“But it got sold,” she continues. “Couple of hours later, even. The bloke at the shop, Jaime? Said it was probably a bit before two. The bloke who bought it seemed to be in a rush, Jaime said,” she adds, tacks that on there as if it couldn’t possibly mean the tourist had a bus to catch, as if the new owner of that watch might not have had a two-day head start to no-one-knew-where.
“That grandfather bit,” he starts to say, that piece of information sticking in his head for a reason he can’t quite pin down. He should be asking after who got the watch there in the first place, asking about why cash instead of a card, but his mind stuck there first.
She looks down, is clearly hugging herself beneath the layer of leather. “He was in a rush to get his granddad a souvenir before he left. He was with a friend - Jaime overhead ‘em talking.”
“He wanted to get it before he left Barcelona? For the day or...?”
She shrugs a little and watching the jacket move on her keeps him calm. “Dunno,” she says, and the small break in her voice moves him from table to couch, moves him and fills his arms.
“You’re sure it’s the right watch?” he asks, his chin atop a blond head, his chin atop brunette roots. He can’t help but feel it when she nods.
“I drew them a picture.”
She says it with such certainty that it’s almost childlike, that he can’t prevent the small noise he makes in reply.
“No, really,” she says. “It’s a distinctive design.”
He hums a noncommittal sound, taking her word for it. Thinks it’s a little strange that through all the searching through Els Encants, he’s only ever heard the thing described as an unopenable watch that he wasn’t to try to open. She’s a strange one, his girl.
“You a good artist?” he thinks to ask, thinks to ask it in the way she needs asking.
She swats him, fights against a smile. He can’t see it or hear it, but he knows it’s there, knows the shift in her as she unwinds into his side, just a little bit more and a little more than that. He knows what the world feels like through leather; knowing what she feels like through it isn’t a challenge.
“Good enough,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They sit there for a moment longer, breathing and thinking. He holds her a bit tighter. She doesn’t complain.
“You put in a request to UNIT yet?” he asks, and it’s hard not to notice the way she goes stiff, even beneath the jacket. “Sounds like they could be some help,” he adds, still trying to be helpful, now just a little... not suspicious, but certainly something.
“It’s... not really,” she answers. He’s not sure what she’s admitting to.
“You have told them about their watch bein’ missin’?” he checks.
“’Course I did,” she tells him, tells him quick. With her back against his chest, he can’t see enough of her expression to dissect the tone. “UNIT’s kinda busy right now, though.”
“’Course.”
Another moment of them thinking, just trying to work it through.
“Security camera in the shop?” he asks, ignoring his stomach as it decides to rumble. Never did eat that dinner. “Can’t UNIT get into the CCTV?”
“They’ve already taped over Saturday’s tape in the shop,” she answers. “No robbery or anything, so no reason not to.”
“But the CCTV? Something outside the shop maybe?”
She shakes her head, hair tickling his throat. “It’s on a side street. Dunno if there’s a camera there.”
“Hardly would hurt to check at this point,” he reminds her.
It’s her turn then to make a noncommittal noise. She twists in his arms, reaches for him, and then it’s soft skin beneath his hands instead of battered leather. “Wish I could’ve gone with you,” she says and he knows it’s only because she needs a change of topic, he knows that. But she gets her arm behind his back, gets her arm almost around his waist against the couch as she fits beneath his arm; her other hand rises to his far shoulder and with her cheek against the close one, she’s practically speaking against his throat.
“Next time,” he offers her, his hand on her arm across his chest, his hand on her elbow and far from still. His thumb strokes and her diaphragm responds, as if his touch were within flesh and between bone instead of atop it. The unsteady flow of her breath is keenly felt against his throat, impossible to ignore. “We can go all the way up to the Pyrenees, have a snowball fight.”
She laughs a little, a large and a small puff of breath, the one following the other, both tickling. “I’d like that.”
“Friday,” he tells her. “Could leave then, at least.” And then, needing to but not wanting to ask it: “You going to be busy over the watch still?”
“I think, by then, I’m gonna need another break,” she tells him, confides in him. She says it like she’s scared he won’t approve, like he’ll think she’s running away.
As if he’d mind.
His thumb strokes into her skin, brushes over the tiny hairs of her arm. “Could go the whole weekend,” he says, like he’s only just thought of it. “Ride up on Friday, wander around until we get back. Get lost a bit.”
She squeezes him, hugs him tight. “God, yes. I’d love that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” And she rests her forehead against his pulse.
It’s perfect, and so he can’t help but ruin it. “Unless something about your watch pops up.”
He expects her to go still, but she doesn’t. She sinks into him instead, doesn’t so much actively press against him as fall into him; it feels a bit like gravity, the way she lets the world hold her against him.
“I wish...” she says, is about to say. She laughs a little, but it’s not the sound he loves. “I wish too much, don’t I?”
“Just keep on bein’ careful about it,” he advises, has to advise. It’s one of those things, by this point, one of their things.
“I guess I’m just.... I’m sorry, okay?”
Trying to look at her means trying to pull back and she lets him do neither, holds on like she thinks the movement indicates rejection.
“What for?” And why’s she the one apologizing when he’s the one who ran off today? The urge to confess his hang-up rises and he presses it down.
She shrugs a little, the movement made into him, but the gesture of uncertainty doesn’t match what’s in her mind. “You’re just tryin’ t’ be you and sometimes I can’t be me anymore. Too much stuff in the way. Makes me miss, well.”
“Not having stuff in the way?” he offers.
“Yeah,” she answers, nuzzles closer like she’s tired and it makes him feel wide awake.
He shouldn’t ask it, wants to ask it. “And what happens when there’s nothing in the way?”
That’s the question that makes her go still, a question that forces her to thought instead of guiding her to it. The tired nuzzle is now an awkward position for her head, an awkwardness he can feel against his shoulder. He can feel her almost speak, the movement of her jaw clear against his skin even through cloth. Her hand falls from his shoulder but he catches it, helps their fingers twine.
He squeezes tight and she squeezes tighter.
“S’pose.... S’pose I’ll be me and you’ll be you,” she answers.
“We’ll be us,” he says. Asks. Corrects.
It’s one of the three.
Whichever one it is, she nods.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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