Fic: In Human Hands (17/26)
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: “Ready for me to be a lunatic?”
“I got on this bike, didn’t I?”
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
The Distraction
The Guest
The Companion
He packs before he leaves for work, throwing a couple pairs of pants and a t-shirt or two into a sloppy, tiny pile on his bed. Stuff he’ll stick in his saddlebag tonight- no, this afternoon.
He can’t remember ever waiting for a Friday the way he’s waited for this one. The world used to jump and stumble around him and now it’s slower than ever before, but it’s finally here. His feet feel light and his body is ready to move.
It’s fantastic.
It’s completely fantastic.
The word fits in his head today, clicks in a way it hasn’t done recently. It makes him grin, keeps him grinning as he heads out the door, the girl still fast asleep on his couch.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The final details are hammered out over lunch. It’s strange, planning ahead, but he has priorities.
“What do you want to see?” he asks her, arms folded on the small table, the surface not quite painfully hot beneath his skin. The table is just barely large enough for his arms and the plates - it’s not large enough for her arms too, or her hand. The humidity would make touching too sticky anyway, so it’s not that bad. “Caves, waterfalls, what?”
“Something incredible,” she answers, the response immediate, and he gestures pointedly at himself.
It makes her laugh and that makes him grin.
“Besides you,” she adds, one finger paused in tracing the lip of her water glass. She bumps his knee with her own. “Back at Parc Güell, you said snow.”
“You want snow?”
She pauses, her leg stilling against his, and then nods. “Yeah. Should still be some up there, even this time of year, right?”
“Getting to it, though. That’s a bit of a hike.”
“Bike up as far as we can, then walk?”
He considers it. “Best bet for that is probably in the middle of the mountain range.” Up in Girona, he could see the snow, just a touch of it, but getting to it without climbing an entire mountain.... It’s unlikely.
“So, still Lleida?”
“Huesca, probably,” he answers, consulting his mental map. “Maybe Parque Nacional Ordesa. Monte Perdido might do.”
“Okay.”
Lunch leads into a walk to the library, leads into hands held and little giggles from tongue-touched lips. On an abrupt whim, he pulls her up the stairs, runs her up the stairs despite the humidity. His steps swallow the wide stairs two at a time and she holds fast to his hand, laughing as she runs.
Inside the air conditioned building, they take a minute to catch their breath but it’s not from the running. They’re about to laugh and they need to be quiet and looking at each other only makes it worse. Letting go of her won’t help, so he keeps holding on.
“C’mon,” he says, his voice somewhere around the proper volume.
Once they get on a computer, it’s quickly - eagerly - decided. A good thing, considering how he’s about to be late getting back to work.
“I’ll book a hotel,” she tells him when he regains awareness of time. “Something in one of the towns that’s on the bus route, hopefully. I know you’d rather stumble into it, but, well, four-hour ride, yeah? Might not be much left to stumble into.”
“Fine.” It’s a piece of sense he has to give in to, even if he doesn’t like it. “But nothing....” Cloying. Suffocating. A word along those lines. He couldn’t stay still in a place like that, let alone sleep.
He gestures a little with his hand, tries to use his expression to get it across even when he should be heading back to the garage, heading back right now. But he needs her to understand what he doesn’t want; what he, quite frankly, couldn’t withstand. Not even with her.
“Nothing domestic,” she assures him, rolling her eyes a little. “We’re having a weekend adventure, not stayin’ at a B&B.” She looks up at him as she says it. Sitting at the computer, her head and shoulders turned, she looks up at him, so matter-of-fact and it shouldn’t be so important, shouldn’t mean much of anything at all, but it does.
This girl. This fantastic girl.
This fantastic girl that he....
Well. Of course he does.
“What?” she asks, confused by his staring.
“Nothing,” he says. Puts his hand on the back of the chair to better bend down. Bends down to better kiss her cheek. She’s warm and soft and surprised and he lets his eyes adore her as he pulls back. “Hasta luego.”
“Someone’s gone native.” Her cheeks match her name in a beautiful cliché.
“S’pose I have.” He starts to move away, but he’s walking backwards and not very quickly. “Finish packing before I get home, all right?”
“Already did.”
“For cold?”
“Got my jacket for the ride. Should be okay.”
He shrugs at her and she shakes her head at him.
“On my head, I know.”
“Yeah,” he says and there should be more to say but he’d be early for saying and late for work. He tries to pretend he cares about both.
She gives him a little wave as he leaves and no, there’s really only one that he cares about.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Sorry,” he says when he gets back to the garage. It’s the very first thing out of his mouth so maybe he won’t have to repeat it.
“No you’re not,” Sanchez tells him bluntly, almost cheerfully. “No one is ever sorry for being delayed by a beautiful woman.” He pauses, scratching at his stubble. “And yes: you are that obvious.”
He grins back, can’t help it. “We’re going on a trip.”
“Just make sure mi Rosita bonita gets her better-than-a-boyfriend back by lunes, bright and early.”
Half of his mind tries to form a sentence, tries to say that he’ll be back by Monday with time to spare. The other half is caught up and stumbling over something else entirely.
“Her what?” he asks, suddenly struck dumb. What about that doctor of hers? He can’t come back, not yet. There’s still a month left. He still has a month. He has all of July and that doesn’t start until tomorrow.
Sanchez looks back at him, confused at his reaction. “What she told me yesterday. You’re not her boyfriend: you’re ‘better than that’.” He shakes his head, not unamused. “Whatever you’re doing to that girl, she likes it.”
She won’t let me kiss her is the unspeakable reply that sticks in his mind. “I’m just that good,” he answers instead, tries for a smile when he can’t quite laugh at himself.
Sanchez laughs for him, slaps him on the back. “She only wants you for the motorcycle and you know it.”
Somehow, his mouth keeps smiling.
.-.-.-.-.-.
What’s in her head?
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Insanity isn’t catching,” Fred used to tell him. “Not as long as you don’t listen to it.”
He tries to keep that in mind as he walks back from the garage that afternoon, that almost-night. There’s a good, strong breeze here, enough to fight down the humidity. He looks up at the scraped sky, a long glimpse of clouds present between the buildings lining the street.
It’s not going to rain this time. There’ll be no stop beneath an overpass to make her pause, to bring her to talk. There’s an explanation here that he’ll either love or hate with no room in between.
She’s moved on or he’s a replacement.
She’s his or he’s nothing.
He hates how melodramatic that sounds. He hates how much this one little human girl can jerk him around without trying.
He needs to move, needs more than walking, and so he runs, simply breaks into a trot and keeps speeding up. It’s too crowded to go as fast as he wants, the sidewalk too stuffed full of humanity for space to be made for him. It forces him to jog rather than truly run.
Even with his path impeded, he gets back to the flat quickly, too quickly. Why was this a good idea?
It’s not a good idea, but he keeps on running up the stairs, swinging himself around the corners with a hand on the railing, apologizing to those who are technically his neighbors. Reaching his floor, his legs carry him rapidly to the door with strides that are just barely a walk. The door is locked and he unlocks it, finding the girl there. He spares a brief thought to register that she keeps his flat locked when he’s out before his brain goes back to the important things.
She’s leaning over the coffee table, barely sitting on the edge of the couch. The saddlebags for his bike are on the table along with a small mess of clothes and she’s packing them, all quick movement.
“Rose,” he says.
“We’ve got a double in Hotel La Pasada in Broto,” she tells him in a quick efficient tone, not looking up even when he closes the door. She folds his t-shirt with precise, practiced movements before setting it in the saddlebag. “That’s on me with you being transportation. Anyway, Broto’s on the bus route for the park, but we’d have to leave early to do that - six thirty in the morning, I think.” His other t-shirt goes in. “I printed out a route to get there, but it’s pretty simple.” She taps a piece of paper on the table. “Take the highway all the way up and eventually you find it.” She starts on her things, having apparently already packed his pants with her own underwear. “Grabbed some takeaway twenty minutes ago, too. It’s on the counter: spicy paella, sound good? So we eat, then we go.” Another t-shirt, another crisp fold. “I think you’re gonna like the hotel - they’ve got this, this adrenaline rush section, yeah? Horses, rafting, potholing, lots of things. Could do that Sunday, maybe?”
Only then does she actually look up at him. Whatever she sees in his face immediately cuts her momentum.
“What’s wrong?” She stands up to ask it, ready to move.
He stays in front of the closed door. “What did you tell Sanchez?”
“What?”
“Yesterday,” he says, all the clarification he cares to give.
For a second, her expression remains clueless before her eyes widen and her mouth opens, resembling the sound she makes. “Oh. Oh, that.” Her gaze darts down and away as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “I think he got it wrong.”
“Got what wrong, Rose?”
“I didn’t say we were a couple,” she tells him, quick about it, like he needs reassuring and this is somehow the way to go about it.
“You said I was better than a boyfriend.” He expects her to shake her head and deny it. He fully expects it and then she goes off to be contrary.
“Well, you are,” she says simply, bluntly. Waves her hand at him when she sees him misunderstand. How that sentence could mean anything other than the obvious remains a mystery to him. “I mean,” she says. “What I mean is- It’s complicated.”
He feels his eyebrows rise of their own volition.
She takes a breath. Starts over. “I’m not good with boyfriends. ‘M really not. So this is better than that.”
“You’re against dating?”
She bites her lip. Ducks her head so slightly that he might only imagine it. She sits down on the couch and pats it beside her. “It’s hard to explain this without coming across as, I dunno, something I don’t want to come across as.”
“I already know you’re crazy,” he replies, sitting down after so slight a hesitation that he can hope she’ll ignore it. He pushes her folded blanket and his borrowed pillow to the side. “So. How wonderful am I?”
She shoves his shoulder and he grins.
“You’re fantastic,” she answers. “But that’s not the point.”
“No?”
“Point is, either boyfriend I had, one of us was horrible.” Her gaze tries to shy off to the side, but she won’t let it. “With my mate Mickey, that was me.” She says it like it needs saying. “He was okay living the way we were and I just- I just got bored.”
So she ran. He can see it in her eyes, knows what it feels like to wear that expression, knows how long it takes for that guilt to set in and how much longer still for it to let go.
“What about the other one?”
She laughs a little and it’s not a happy laugh. “That story starts with me dropping out of school and it doesn’t much improve after that.”
“So you calling anyone better than a boyfriend is putting them over a ridiculously low bar,” he concludes, still unsure of how to react. Him and that doctor of hers both pass; have they got an even footing now?
Again, she laughs a little, but this time it sounds like her. “Sort of, yeah.”
“That’s not so bad then.”
“No?”
“Nah.” And then, because it’s close at hand, he smacks her with his stolen pillow.
Why that turns out to be such a wonderful solution, he’ll never know.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They eat.
They grin.
They go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Arms covered in a light blue jacket hold tight around his waist as they lean into the turn, as they flow with it, as he feels the stifling heat of heavy leather become a protective blanket against wind. Enveloped but not smothered, he laughs, hears the warmth of laughter behind him.
The intercom between the helmets works. They’ll have to be careful getting down from the bike, linked by wire as they are, but he likes it and she’s declared to love it.
“Ready for the highway?” he asks, making the engine rev for a piece of punctuation.
She laughs louder, hugs him tighter, and leather heat turns to wind chill. The first insect casualty of the trip hits the top of his visor, a small splat, and he does a bit of looking as they merge into commuters’ traffic. For some reason, that’s the detail he’d forgotten to take into account, the detail of work and human life and the patterns those two things form.
Still. There’s enough space between the cars for him.
“Ready for me to be a lunatic?”
“I got on this bike, didn’t I?”
His young girl holds tight and his old girl roars, sensation and vibration and sound wrapped fantastically together. The old girl weaves where she can, the young leaning as hard as he needs her to. There’s no hesitation in the body behind him, no hesitation or doubt. It feels like leaping over that bonfire and seeing flame beneath his feet and light in her face; it feels like that moment, only a week ago, and he pushes skill and engine and luck and an old, inorganic love to feel that moment again, to reach to touch what ought to be so easily touched.
Sometimes he’s thwarted and sometimes he’s not quite so stupid as to dare, but the entire way, she moves her body with his, never flinching as their elbows and knees nearly touch metal.
She shouts in his ear when they finally, finally break away from the commuters, when they outdistance them. Those cars are going home and they’re going someplace entirely different and he loves that, loves it completely how they don’t have to stop. They will, of course they will - but they don’t have to. There’s a hotel in Broto waiting for them, but they don’t have to go. He doesn’t have to do anything.
Except find her snow.
Tomorrow, he already knows, he’s going to find her snow.
And that’s just because he wants to.
“I could live like this,” he confides at a half-shout, mindful of her ear, always mindful of her.
Her arms relaxed around him, her hands hiding in his jacket pockets from the wind, she laughs. Accuses: “You already do.”
“Do I now?”
“I was under that impression, yeah.” The tone of her voice makes it all too easy to imagine her expression. The pull of her lips and her eyes, so bright despite their colour. “So glad I’m coming with you, this time.”
He lifts his visor to feel the wind hard on his face, to let out the fogging breaths he keeps breathing. The world becomes infinitely louder. “So am I,” he says, and lets the wind drive away from her ears what he can’t keep out of his voice.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Want to see Lleida?” he asks an hour and a half of chat and silence later. “The city, not the province. You’re already seeing that one.”
“You want to see it?”
“Wouldn’t say no.”
“Yeah, all right.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s been here before, but he doesn’t know when. He tries to puzzle it out for a little while, but then she starts asking questions, starts assuming he knows all the answers with the sincere faith that comes of trusting his absolute brilliance.
He’s never been able to resist that.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It takes him a few minutes to realize it when it happens.
The feeling he gets surprises him.
“Rose,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“We’re not in Catalunya anymore.” It’s his first time away since he arrived. Hers too, unless he’s mistaken. Unless she’s gone somewhere without him.
There’s a small pause before she asks, likely peering into the headlight-lit world, “Where are we now?”
“Aragón,” he says, hoping that she, like him, can refrain from a Lord of the Rings reference. “Huesca, to be exact.”
“Huh,” she says. A moment later, he can just barely hear her repeating the words to herself, pressing them into her mind. It ought to make him smile, but it still feels odd, leaving. “We’re staying in Huesca, right?”
“We’re visiting Huesca,” he feels the need to correct.
“Yeah,” she says, and he knows that in some strange way, she’s agreeing to this irrational little piece of him. “Then back to the- Barcelona.”
“What was that?”
“Tried to say ‘back to the flat’ and ‘back to Barcelona’ at the same time,” she explains, her voice quick. “Didn’t work.”
“Back to la gran encisera,” he agrees.
“I’ve heard that before. The big what?”
“Grand enchantress. Or great, more or less.”
“Grammar lessons at a hundred kilometres an hour?”
“Hundred and thirty, actually.” He likes the speed limits here, doesn’t break them too badly.
She settles against his back, pressing against him there as the wind presses against his front. It feels like settling in the way that windblown dust settles, in the way that gravity gathers up pieces in the air and brings them back down for a moment’s rest. He nearly closes his eyes.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The real moment of rest comes in Mipanas, his jacket pulled off and her jacket peeled off and the helmets set on the handlebars. The tank needs petrol and limbs need stretching. The loo of the gas station needs cleaning, but he needs a piss and a dump more. She doesn’t complain either, doesn’t mention that at all.
“The air smells weird,” she says to him outside, keeping close in the semi-lit darkness around the pump. She doesn’t look nervous in this little town, merely stands closer than an arm’s length out of forming habit. It’s been almost three hours since she last had to let go of him. Five minutes of separation and now she’s standing so close.
He’s smiling a little, he realizes, feeling it more than doing it. Maybe it’s amusement at her comment and maybe it’s a growing sort of hope; he’ll never need to say which.
“The air smells clean,” he corrects, looking over at the gauge, peering at the price with a sort of detached interest. He paid inside while she was going, isn’t quite sure if it was enough or too much. “That, and Embase de El Grado is freshwater - you’re not smelling any salt.”
“Embase?”
He points in the opposite direction of the way they came. “The river we’ve been riding along? Comes from here.”
Looking out into the barely lit streets - it’s getting late to be awake, up here - she fiddles with her hair a little, trying to pull it back into something like order. It makes him run a hand over the top of his own head. His hair fits through the spaces between his fingers. It feels like a haircut he might have had once before, a long time ago.
Maybe he’ll keep it long and maybe he won’t. It feels like an important, unimportant choice, one of those choices, but he still doesn’t much care.
He cares a little bit more when she catches him at it, drops his hand away. Her expression is strange in the half-light, the colour of her skin at once faded and tinged by the harsh shards of light from above. Wind blows off of water they can’t see, brings that freshwater scent and flutters her hair against the blue of her open jacket, against the shadow-grey cloth of her top. Her earrings are gone, removed for the sake of the helmet, and their empty spaces still hang beside her neck, barely seen and sorely felt.
If he’d had an excuse, he would have called her beautiful.
The tank fills up a little less than he’d thought but not much less. He puts the nozzle away, puts the cap back on. “One more hour,” he says, turning back on the link between their helmets before handing hers back to her.
She puts it on, connecting them as he does the same. “Right,” she says, behind him and beside his ear. She touches the leather covering his back and this time, he lets his eyes fall shut.
Climbing onto the bike is a careful affair, joined as they are, but it’s a fine inconvenience, as inconveniences go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The road winds in the mountainous dark and they fall silent together. The world is wind and engines and a single headlight reaching into shadow. The world is steep rock and swaying wood and a road just good enough to be a road.
It’s the dark, he knows, making them feel this way, but still.
But still.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They pass by towns and know them by their lights, small and limited and showing signs of sleep. He’s not sure how he knows Broto when he sees it, only knows that yes, this is where they stop. The altitude clogged his ears kilometers back, set him to working his jaw against the sensation.
He parks the bike where he’s almost certain he ought to park and they climb off, shaky and tired. She carries the helmets when the saddlebags go into his hands. It takes a minute for the rumble to fall from his ears, for him to realize that’s a river he hears.
They head on in and head on up, a tired and bored man waiting at the counter and helpful despite his wait.
She’s yawning a bit, shuffling a little, and he shifts to let her rest against him as the lift rises. It’s not far, but she still leans close, as if having missed him.
“I get first shower,” he tells her, her hair tickling his lips.
“I get sleep,” she answers, meaning it, and he laughs. She hums a little, leans a little more. “God, you’re comfy.”
“Oi,” he protests, but quietly. He hears the helmets hit the wall behind him, knock against it. “Gotta buy me a few more drinks than that before you can feel me up.”
She giggles in that tired way that makes giggling doubly silly. The lift dings and he shoos her out, wondering if the idea’s stuck or not.
Not too much later, he doesn’t quite remember getting into the room, only has a vague recollection of watching her read room numbers, of opening a door and shooing her through that one too. He knows he put the bags down and he knows he took his jacket off by how light his shoulders feel.
He shrugs to himself, somewhat hazy for a minute, and resumes getting ready for his shower by actually shutting the bathroom door. The water is good when it hits him and he stands there for a time, watching the drench and the drip. A month ago, he brought her to Tarragona. A month, and he’d thought she was stupid for coming with him.
When he comes out, towelling off his head, he wants to have something to say to her. He doesn’t and it doesn’t matter: she’s already tucked herself into bed. She’s grabbed the one by the windows, by the wall made of windows. His jacket isn’t on the other bed anymore - he remembers where he put it now, remembers he’d thought the bed too short. Now it’s set around the back of a chair with a small, lined basket next to it, meant for rubbish. There are bits of bugs in it, all plucked off his jacket.
He looks over the jacket, looks over at her. Finds her looking back.
“You really do have a leather fetish,” he remarks, an automatic little thing as he tosses his towel back into the bathroom.
She props herself up on an elbow, grins at him with a tired grin. “For that jacket? Yeah.”
“Thanks,” he says.
She shrugs. “’Night,” she says, and lays her head back on her pillow.
“Good night, Rose.”
He pauses before he does it, truly hesitates. It’s feeling his own hesitation that pushes him past it, that makes him go to her. He brushes back her hair, yellow strands and soft skin so good against his palm. Unwilling to risk the night with more, he presses a quiet and gentle kiss to her brow.
She holds still to let him, keeps still even as he sits down on the edge of her bed. He risks a little more, stroking her hair with loving fingers for the first time, for the second time, for as long as it takes for her to sigh into sleep.
He stands, careful not to shift her. It takes all of a breath to shuck his jeans and t-shirt and climb into the bed opposite, a bed that doesn’t, as expected, quite fit his legs. Already apologizing to his back, he curls up facing the windows.
Falling asleep is quick and soft and disturbed only by the sounds of his dreams.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“You’ve forgotten me,” Fred tells him, sitting down on the chair holding his jacket.
“No I haven’t.”
“You have,” she says before he speaks, cutting his words from time. “You need to remember.”
“I’ve been busy,” he tells her, sitting up. The sheet falls away, leaving his chest cold. “I’m sorry, but-”
“No, she’s not the problem,” Fred tells him, tucking her hair behind her shoulder. “Personally, I love Rose.”
The girl stirs in her bed, the sheets a noose around her neck as he asks, “You do?”
“Of course I do,” Fred tells him impatiently, pointedly rolling her eyes in endearing mockery of him. “I am a manifestation of your subconscious, after all.”
The girl smiles in her sleep, her sleep in his sleep, her dream beside his, and the sheets tangle in her fading warmth.
“Remember me,” Fred reminds him, leaning forward to kiss him goodbye, to kiss him awake with a mouth of char and coal.
He jerks his head back to the point where it hurts a little, to the point where his back hurts a little. That’s when he remembers where he is, where and who with.
Or not with.
She’s not in her bed.
He sits up, hearts stumbling as he stares at the rumpled, twisted sheets. “Rose?” he calls quietly to that hotel bed before a sound from the bathroom catches his ear. “Rose?” he calls toward the door, more loudly this time.
He hears a flush and the tap running and out she comes, wiping her hands on her pajama bottoms, her hair a mess. Her mouth opens to ask a question that doesn’t seem to need asking, not by the look on her face. He has no idea what his own expression has given away.
“Still having nightmares?” she asks, even without the need to, even though he can’t remember when he first told her about his dreams.
“Yeah,” he says. And then he adds, because it’s true, “Everyone was dead.” His everyone was dead.
She shifts just a little, a change of posture that opens her up, that makes her body match her face and eyes. Should he only nod, she’ll come to him. Hold him. Shush him like a child that needs its fears shushed.
Even on the off-chance it’s what he needs, it’s not at all what he wants.
“Just a dream,” he says, trying to reassure her.
“Yeah,” she says, almost as if she’s the one trying to convince him.
There’s a pause between them as he remembers her captain and is sorry he’d said anything. “You okay?” he asks, just to check.
“Still need a shower,” she says, shrugging.
“Mind letting me use the loo first?” he asks, swinging his legs out of the bed, and he can see her entire body hesitate. “What? Your shower that urgent?”
“You got pants on under that sheet?”
He looks down at himself, all chest and legs and the one sheet he’d used still across his lap. He laughs. “I might do, yeah. Am I offending your tender sensibilities?” he teases, teasing because no sane person would flirt so soon after that little exchange. He thinks he’s sane.
For today, at least.
“Nah - just burning my eyes,” she answers. “C’mon, hurry up. Can’t believe you slept that much.”
They banter all the way through the morning, pausing briefly for good, solid food before climbing on the bus. It’s not too long of a ride to El Parque Nacional Ordesa - when they get there, the day is still just beginning.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He has mountains, his jacket, and her hand in his.
It’s a beautiful day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They buy a backpack there, fill it with water and food and the layers they aren’t yet wearing. People look at them as if they’re idiots, but that’s fine by him.
Judging by her grin, it’s fine by her too.
They work out a route based on their insanity - no gear, no overnight stay, but snow. There has to be snow.
He explains what they want to the dubious park ranger, has to keep himself from slipping into Catalan when he doesn’t quite like a Spanish turn of phrase. His girl keeps with the bag, strikes up a limping conversation with a hiker. Her Spanish isn’t close to good enough and his English is broken, but they keep on talking.
Finally, he gets a reasonable route worked out, finds their best bet, and it’s time to say goodbye to her new friend. She laughs and waves and the hiker smiles back, waves back and they move on. Before he can reach for her, she takes his hand.
Up they go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She is far more athletic than he’s been giving her credit for.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Half the world falls away to leave a windblown, beautifully broken remainder. A white strip of faraway clouds serves as a horizon above blue-tinged mountains, the texture of the air between here and there turning into colour, a faded azure row. The mountains are worn and broken and staggering in their immensity and it’s been far, far too long since he’s done this.
The rock is brown and grey and black and unending as they rise above the tree line. Vegetation falls away from the path as they climb, proving that even plants are afraid of heights. The path narrows and widens, mostly narrows as it turns back on itself, as it keeps on rising. When the path makes them release each other, he makes certain that she goes first, makes sure he can spot her.
“You just want to stare at my bum,” she accuses and when he doesn’t contradict, it only makes her laugh.
When the path widens up once more, she takes his hand back, walking beside him, and he pretends to lean back for a look. Duly swatted, duly grinning, he starts talking, starts telling stories. Some are true and history and some are false and history and some are, as always, myth.
“Did you get to Pyrene yet?” he asks. “Part of the Heracles myth, somewhere.”
She shakes her head, tucking her hair behind her ear only for the wind to blow it back out towards the sky. “No, but I bet it ends in these mountains getting named for... her?”
He nods. “Couple of versions of Pyrene, but then, there always are.”
“What’s the real one?” she asks, as if he could possibly know that.
He shrugs. “There is none.”
“But there had to be an original story, yeah?” she reasons. “Or some event that started it off.”
“So?”
“So,” she says, like it should be obvious, “there was an original story once.”
“Sorry, do you speak ancient Greek?” He releases her hand to let her through a small gap, but she doesn’t let go, merely turns sideways as she goes through, still holding onto his fingers. “There’s a story in the way stories separate from themselves, when you think about. More interested in that, me.”
“So what are the stories?” she asks, glancing back over her shoulder rather than look where she’s going.
“Well,” he says, “in one, Pyrene was a nymph raped by a drunk Heracles. Next morning, she wakes up pregnant, stabs the man while he’s still sleeping it off, and runs away. Her dad didn’t know where she was, but it seemed safe to assume that if you attack Heracles, you wind up dead. So dad built her a tomb. He was a king, so he could build big.”
“And that’s this mountain?”
“Yep.”
“Rape mountain?”
“Monte Perdido, actually, the one we’re on. Lost, not rape.”
“But rape mountain range?” She looks increasingly disappointed rather than amused and it makes him quick to correct.
“That’s just one version of the story.”
“What’s another?”
He shrugs and it’s not a natural movement. “That they were lovers.”
She perks up at that, once again intrigued. “Yeah?” The wind plays with her hair, throwing it across her face and toward his. She tries to untangle her hair from her earrings and ultimately, they pause to let her take them off.
“Pyrene and Heracles,” he adds, watching her until she gives him her hand back. Then they walk. “Those two.”
“But the mountains are still her tomb?” Her thumb moves against the back of his hand, once, twice. Holds still when he looks directly at her.
“As the story goes, she still got pregnant,” he replies. “Greek hero sort of thing to do, that. But for some reason or another - probably Hera making trouble - Pyrene gave birth to a serpent. She was so scared that she ran into the forest, got lost and died there. Or she was bitten by the snake and died of that out in the woods.”
“Killed by her own kid?”
“Her own snake. A kid’s a goat.”
She swats him. “That’s still horrible.”
“What, the pun or the story?”
“Both,” she says, shrugging a little, and the motion carries down into his hand.
If he was another man, he’d call his laugh a scoff. “Welcome to Greek mythology.”
“So what about the tomb?” she asks, pulling at his hand intentionally this time. They might be walking up into the sky, but it’s still him she’s looking at, still him she’s holding onto.
“Heracles built it,” he answers. “Tore up the rocks and made her a wall from the Bay of Biscay to the Gulf of Lion.”
She mulls that over for a few steps, for a small climb more. The wind blows through them and she shivers, stopping only when he pulls at her hand. He shrugs off the backpack, dropping it to the rock, and pulls out her jacket. Pulls out his own.
She smiles at him as he puts the jacket on, as he shoulders the bag once more. Doesn’t offer to carry the bag, but she does smile. Finding his riding gauntlets in his pocket, he hands them to her; his pockets must be warmer than hers and they’ve nothing else like gloves between them.
“What kind of nymph was she?” his girl asks once they get back to climbing, one hand on the rock wall beside her, one held out for balance instead of for him. It’s a tricky bit and he makes sure they’re both past before he answers.
“Not sure, really. Could’ve been an Oread, what with the mountain.”
“So a mountain nymph?”
He shrugs, the bag rising and falling against his jacket against his back. This part of the conversation, he’s having with the back of her head. “Dunno. I know the name Pyrene means-”
“Snow.”
“Nope, fire.”
“No,” she says, turning back to face him, to reach for him, her smile wide and bright. “Snow.” She points, looking to the small patch of white before looking back to him, looking back at him with hopeful eyes. “Can we get to that?”
He grins.
.-.-.-.-.-.
A snowball fight in the Spanish summer.
She doesn’t just make him do the impossible. She makes him love it, too.
.-.-.-.-.-.
After, his hands burn from the cold and his hearts pound into his aching legs. The wind blows a hard chill against his body, even in the small shelter the rock at his back provides. It whips away the bits of white and whisks away the melted drops from his jacket, from his skin. The world drops away not too far in front of them, revealing an infinity of air. She shivers against his side, just a little, but when they look at each other, it’s perfect, completely so.
He picks up a small cluster of snow despite the protest of his skin. Where it melts along his palm, the wind cools him even faster. He passes the water from one hand to the other, just to feel it, then wipes his wet hands on his jeans.
She watches him as he does, studies him in windblown silence. Her hair clings to his jacket where it’s wet, her head not quite resting on his shoulder, merely tilted over it.
When they decide to move, to leave, to find somewhere more suitable to eat lunch, it’s by unspoken mutual decision. He stands and she stands and they walk to where they climb down, him first and her after. That’s the way of it.
She’s about to pick up the bag when he stops her, when he has to stop her. To thank her, to tell her not to bother, to do something besides what he actually does. He reaches out. He cups her cheek. He cups her cheek and, though the gesture isn’t new between them, she shivers. Jerks away only to lean back into the touch.
“Your hand,” she says. “’S cold.”
“Sorry,” he returns softly, and she shakes her head, sends his fingers into her hair as she wets her lips with a flick of the tongue. For once, there’s nothing at all playful in that glimpse of pink. Her eyes are closed, soft and gentle, and he neither wants nor dares to let go.
“It’s good,” she assures him in a murmur. She opens her eyes, opens her dark, dark eyes and stares into him. Looks down only to flush at the sight of his mouth. He’s casting a shadow on her face, but it’s still so clearly seen. “’S nice.”
Still buried in his riding gauntlets, her skin disguised, her hands find his wrists. She holds his hand where it is, brings the second to join the first, to mirror it. His hands fall slightly, stroke down slightly, the feel of her pulse strong and true beneath his palms.
She closes her eyes into his cold touch, her chin rising as if baring her neck, as if offering her mouth. Her grip on his wrists tightens.
“Yeah?” he asks, the word already against her lips.
Her answer is a sigh like a curse and her arms are around his neck, her lips pressing hard against his. Soft in texture and hard in intent and he shakes beneath his skin. Something rumbles inside of him, something shakes like thunder so very far away, and then it’s gone; then it’s here.
She pulls him closer, her arms begging around his neck, and his hands find her waist as they’ve never found it before, sliding down the perfect blue of her jacket. His fingers press and she gasps, a sound he feels rather than hears. Their lips separate with a wet sound but her mouth is still open, open enough that he has no choice but to take advantage.
Her mouth is wet and intrinsically playful, instinctually teasing and he presses forward for more, to find more, to better hold the woman clutching at his jacket. A gust blows at his back and he catches them against the wall, cradles her head against the rough rock fast enough to keep her whole, fast enough to scrape his hand.
She leans back, welcoming his stagger, and their mouths stop moving against each other, simply hold where they are, close and pressing. Her covered hands brush against the sides of his head; he helps her remove the layer, tucks the gauntlets halfway into his pocket before her hands find the handles of his ears.
It’s the best scuffle he’s ever had, all pulling and tugging and hot human mouths. He can taste his testosterone on her tongue, can feel each of her breaths in the swell of her chest against his. She fits against him, warm and curved and his. It’s life and heat and inevitability but mostly, mostly it’s the chill on the heat, it’s the wind to hold against like a storm yet to come. He catches them against the rock again as their feet shift, as her feet slip, and he cradles her head against the mountain, her sweet golden head safe in the curve of his hand.
The movement pulls their mouths apart, pulls them apart to laugh into each other, the sound breathy and insubstantial. Her hands cling to his lapels and roam across the leather by turns. His hand stays trapped between soft strands and the scrape of rock, stays trapped where he doesn’t care to pull away.
Her lips catch at his when he tries to take them, once and again, turning it hard and fast, too fast but just hard enough. They kiss the way they are, all unbalanced desperation, and he can feel the way her fingernails would dig into his back, he can taste the sexsweat of her neck before she perspires, can taste it with his mouth still on hers, he can do these things, really, he can.
They break apart panting and dizzy. He tries to breathe, tries not to kiss her; they both try and they both fail. It feels like falling. It is falling, the way they lean into each other.
He gathers her up from the rock, gathers her in, and she slips under his jacket. She sets her hands over his hearts, tucks her head against his neck. She must hear his breath, must feel the pounding in his veins.
“Rose,” he half-says, half-asks. His throat is rough, his tongue paradoxically dry.
She shakes her head. What against, he’ll never know. It’s not directed at him; so her hands tell him, slipping around his back, staying beneath leather to touch sweaty cotton.
“Rose Tyler,” he says, because somehow, he should.
She looks up at him, pulls back to look up at him, and for one mad moment, there’s a complete lack of recognition in her eyes. There’s a question in her eyes meant for a stranger, a three-worded question he can’t understand with the scent of her still suffusing his head, the taste of her still in his mouth.
Who are you?
It’s a look he must be misinterpreting, has to be, but it’s a look that doesn’t fade. Her hands slip from his sides as if trying to let go, as if mercifully failing to fall. But her hands do slip and they do fall. Away from him. They fall.
He catches them. Holds tight.
He’s long past the point where he could let her go.
“Don’t run,” he tells her, his voice so rough. “Not without me. Don’t run.” It’s all he can think to say, all he can say without thinking, his words too short and coarse to be pleas.
“’M scared,” she says. What the wind leaves of her voice is so small, almost too small to be hers.
“What could you be afraid of?” Impossibly, he laughs as he asks it. For all he already knows the various answers to the question, it’s still something to be asked incredulously, still something that shouldn’t have an answer any smaller than life or death.
She glares up at him, hair blowing across the angry set of her mouth. “If you don’t-” She stops, pulls one hand away to tuck her hair back. Dead serious, she warns him, “If you don’t feel this too, I am so gonna-”
He kisses her.
With her unready for it, the kiss is a mess of bumped noses and half-missed lips and it takes a while for her unheld hand to find his shoulder, takes until he presses his brow against hers. “Rose Tyler,” he says yet again. It’s a time for names.
“So gonna smack you,” she tells him, eyes crinkled. The old warning completed or a new one made: it doesn’t matter. “I’m gonna smack you so hard.”
“Worth it,” he says.
“Keep saying that,” she asks him, begs it so simply.
“Your wish is my command,” he promises her. “Just be-”
“I’m not, though,” she interrupts to admit. “Never have been.”
“I don’t care,” he says, and right then, he means it. If he’d been careful, he wouldn’t have wished for her either. Doesn’t matter.
“Here an’ now?” she asks. Offers it like a nameless and uncertain thing.
“I can do that.” He can do anything.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Her hair keeps blowing, so very long in all this wind, and it brushes his face, keeps brushing his face. “That all right?” he asks, tucking it back behind her ear for her.
She closes her eyes against the touch of his hand and even if she hesitates, she doesn’t lean away. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
He pulls away to grab the backpack. Slings it over his shoulder under her half certain gaze. It takes a moment, but her smile does turn true.
“C’mon,” he says.
Hand in hand, they walk down their mountain.
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “Ready for me to be a lunatic?”
“I got on this bike, didn’t I?”
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
The Distraction
The Guest
The Companion
He packs before he leaves for work, throwing a couple pairs of pants and a t-shirt or two into a sloppy, tiny pile on his bed. Stuff he’ll stick in his saddlebag tonight- no, this afternoon.
He can’t remember ever waiting for a Friday the way he’s waited for this one. The world used to jump and stumble around him and now it’s slower than ever before, but it’s finally here. His feet feel light and his body is ready to move.
It’s fantastic.
It’s completely fantastic.
The word fits in his head today, clicks in a way it hasn’t done recently. It makes him grin, keeps him grinning as he heads out the door, the girl still fast asleep on his couch.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The final details are hammered out over lunch. It’s strange, planning ahead, but he has priorities.
“What do you want to see?” he asks her, arms folded on the small table, the surface not quite painfully hot beneath his skin. The table is just barely large enough for his arms and the plates - it’s not large enough for her arms too, or her hand. The humidity would make touching too sticky anyway, so it’s not that bad. “Caves, waterfalls, what?”
“Something incredible,” she answers, the response immediate, and he gestures pointedly at himself.
It makes her laugh and that makes him grin.
“Besides you,” she adds, one finger paused in tracing the lip of her water glass. She bumps his knee with her own. “Back at Parc Güell, you said snow.”
“You want snow?”
She pauses, her leg stilling against his, and then nods. “Yeah. Should still be some up there, even this time of year, right?”
“Getting to it, though. That’s a bit of a hike.”
“Bike up as far as we can, then walk?”
He considers it. “Best bet for that is probably in the middle of the mountain range.” Up in Girona, he could see the snow, just a touch of it, but getting to it without climbing an entire mountain.... It’s unlikely.
“So, still Lleida?”
“Huesca, probably,” he answers, consulting his mental map. “Maybe Parque Nacional Ordesa. Monte Perdido might do.”
“Okay.”
Lunch leads into a walk to the library, leads into hands held and little giggles from tongue-touched lips. On an abrupt whim, he pulls her up the stairs, runs her up the stairs despite the humidity. His steps swallow the wide stairs two at a time and she holds fast to his hand, laughing as she runs.
Inside the air conditioned building, they take a minute to catch their breath but it’s not from the running. They’re about to laugh and they need to be quiet and looking at each other only makes it worse. Letting go of her won’t help, so he keeps holding on.
“C’mon,” he says, his voice somewhere around the proper volume.
Once they get on a computer, it’s quickly - eagerly - decided. A good thing, considering how he’s about to be late getting back to work.
“I’ll book a hotel,” she tells him when he regains awareness of time. “Something in one of the towns that’s on the bus route, hopefully. I know you’d rather stumble into it, but, well, four-hour ride, yeah? Might not be much left to stumble into.”
“Fine.” It’s a piece of sense he has to give in to, even if he doesn’t like it. “But nothing....” Cloying. Suffocating. A word along those lines. He couldn’t stay still in a place like that, let alone sleep.
He gestures a little with his hand, tries to use his expression to get it across even when he should be heading back to the garage, heading back right now. But he needs her to understand what he doesn’t want; what he, quite frankly, couldn’t withstand. Not even with her.
“Nothing domestic,” she assures him, rolling her eyes a little. “We’re having a weekend adventure, not stayin’ at a B&B.” She looks up at him as she says it. Sitting at the computer, her head and shoulders turned, she looks up at him, so matter-of-fact and it shouldn’t be so important, shouldn’t mean much of anything at all, but it does.
This girl. This fantastic girl.
This fantastic girl that he....
Well. Of course he does.
“What?” she asks, confused by his staring.
“Nothing,” he says. Puts his hand on the back of the chair to better bend down. Bends down to better kiss her cheek. She’s warm and soft and surprised and he lets his eyes adore her as he pulls back. “Hasta luego.”
“Someone’s gone native.” Her cheeks match her name in a beautiful cliché.
“S’pose I have.” He starts to move away, but he’s walking backwards and not very quickly. “Finish packing before I get home, all right?”
“Already did.”
“For cold?”
“Got my jacket for the ride. Should be okay.”
He shrugs at her and she shakes her head at him.
“On my head, I know.”
“Yeah,” he says and there should be more to say but he’d be early for saying and late for work. He tries to pretend he cares about both.
She gives him a little wave as he leaves and no, there’s really only one that he cares about.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Sorry,” he says when he gets back to the garage. It’s the very first thing out of his mouth so maybe he won’t have to repeat it.
“No you’re not,” Sanchez tells him bluntly, almost cheerfully. “No one is ever sorry for being delayed by a beautiful woman.” He pauses, scratching at his stubble. “And yes: you are that obvious.”
He grins back, can’t help it. “We’re going on a trip.”
“Just make sure mi Rosita bonita gets her better-than-a-boyfriend back by lunes, bright and early.”
Half of his mind tries to form a sentence, tries to say that he’ll be back by Monday with time to spare. The other half is caught up and stumbling over something else entirely.
“Her what?” he asks, suddenly struck dumb. What about that doctor of hers? He can’t come back, not yet. There’s still a month left. He still has a month. He has all of July and that doesn’t start until tomorrow.
Sanchez looks back at him, confused at his reaction. “What she told me yesterday. You’re not her boyfriend: you’re ‘better than that’.” He shakes his head, not unamused. “Whatever you’re doing to that girl, she likes it.”
She won’t let me kiss her is the unspeakable reply that sticks in his mind. “I’m just that good,” he answers instead, tries for a smile when he can’t quite laugh at himself.
Sanchez laughs for him, slaps him on the back. “She only wants you for the motorcycle and you know it.”
Somehow, his mouth keeps smiling.
.-.-.-.-.-.
What’s in her head?
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Insanity isn’t catching,” Fred used to tell him. “Not as long as you don’t listen to it.”
He tries to keep that in mind as he walks back from the garage that afternoon, that almost-night. There’s a good, strong breeze here, enough to fight down the humidity. He looks up at the scraped sky, a long glimpse of clouds present between the buildings lining the street.
It’s not going to rain this time. There’ll be no stop beneath an overpass to make her pause, to bring her to talk. There’s an explanation here that he’ll either love or hate with no room in between.
She’s moved on or he’s a replacement.
She’s his or he’s nothing.
He hates how melodramatic that sounds. He hates how much this one little human girl can jerk him around without trying.
He needs to move, needs more than walking, and so he runs, simply breaks into a trot and keeps speeding up. It’s too crowded to go as fast as he wants, the sidewalk too stuffed full of humanity for space to be made for him. It forces him to jog rather than truly run.
Even with his path impeded, he gets back to the flat quickly, too quickly. Why was this a good idea?
It’s not a good idea, but he keeps on running up the stairs, swinging himself around the corners with a hand on the railing, apologizing to those who are technically his neighbors. Reaching his floor, his legs carry him rapidly to the door with strides that are just barely a walk. The door is locked and he unlocks it, finding the girl there. He spares a brief thought to register that she keeps his flat locked when he’s out before his brain goes back to the important things.
She’s leaning over the coffee table, barely sitting on the edge of the couch. The saddlebags for his bike are on the table along with a small mess of clothes and she’s packing them, all quick movement.
“Rose,” he says.
“We’ve got a double in Hotel La Pasada in Broto,” she tells him in a quick efficient tone, not looking up even when he closes the door. She folds his t-shirt with precise, practiced movements before setting it in the saddlebag. “That’s on me with you being transportation. Anyway, Broto’s on the bus route for the park, but we’d have to leave early to do that - six thirty in the morning, I think.” His other t-shirt goes in. “I printed out a route to get there, but it’s pretty simple.” She taps a piece of paper on the table. “Take the highway all the way up and eventually you find it.” She starts on her things, having apparently already packed his pants with her own underwear. “Grabbed some takeaway twenty minutes ago, too. It’s on the counter: spicy paella, sound good? So we eat, then we go.” Another t-shirt, another crisp fold. “I think you’re gonna like the hotel - they’ve got this, this adrenaline rush section, yeah? Horses, rafting, potholing, lots of things. Could do that Sunday, maybe?”
Only then does she actually look up at him. Whatever she sees in his face immediately cuts her momentum.
“What’s wrong?” She stands up to ask it, ready to move.
He stays in front of the closed door. “What did you tell Sanchez?”
“What?”
“Yesterday,” he says, all the clarification he cares to give.
For a second, her expression remains clueless before her eyes widen and her mouth opens, resembling the sound she makes. “Oh. Oh, that.” Her gaze darts down and away as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “I think he got it wrong.”
“Got what wrong, Rose?”
“I didn’t say we were a couple,” she tells him, quick about it, like he needs reassuring and this is somehow the way to go about it.
“You said I was better than a boyfriend.” He expects her to shake her head and deny it. He fully expects it and then she goes off to be contrary.
“Well, you are,” she says simply, bluntly. Waves her hand at him when she sees him misunderstand. How that sentence could mean anything other than the obvious remains a mystery to him. “I mean,” she says. “What I mean is- It’s complicated.”
He feels his eyebrows rise of their own volition.
She takes a breath. Starts over. “I’m not good with boyfriends. ‘M really not. So this is better than that.”
“You’re against dating?”
She bites her lip. Ducks her head so slightly that he might only imagine it. She sits down on the couch and pats it beside her. “It’s hard to explain this without coming across as, I dunno, something I don’t want to come across as.”
“I already know you’re crazy,” he replies, sitting down after so slight a hesitation that he can hope she’ll ignore it. He pushes her folded blanket and his borrowed pillow to the side. “So. How wonderful am I?”
She shoves his shoulder and he grins.
“You’re fantastic,” she answers. “But that’s not the point.”
“No?”
“Point is, either boyfriend I had, one of us was horrible.” Her gaze tries to shy off to the side, but she won’t let it. “With my mate Mickey, that was me.” She says it like it needs saying. “He was okay living the way we were and I just- I just got bored.”
So she ran. He can see it in her eyes, knows what it feels like to wear that expression, knows how long it takes for that guilt to set in and how much longer still for it to let go.
“What about the other one?”
She laughs a little and it’s not a happy laugh. “That story starts with me dropping out of school and it doesn’t much improve after that.”
“So you calling anyone better than a boyfriend is putting them over a ridiculously low bar,” he concludes, still unsure of how to react. Him and that doctor of hers both pass; have they got an even footing now?
Again, she laughs a little, but this time it sounds like her. “Sort of, yeah.”
“That’s not so bad then.”
“No?”
“Nah.” And then, because it’s close at hand, he smacks her with his stolen pillow.
Why that turns out to be such a wonderful solution, he’ll never know.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They eat.
They grin.
They go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Arms covered in a light blue jacket hold tight around his waist as they lean into the turn, as they flow with it, as he feels the stifling heat of heavy leather become a protective blanket against wind. Enveloped but not smothered, he laughs, hears the warmth of laughter behind him.
The intercom between the helmets works. They’ll have to be careful getting down from the bike, linked by wire as they are, but he likes it and she’s declared to love it.
“Ready for the highway?” he asks, making the engine rev for a piece of punctuation.
She laughs louder, hugs him tighter, and leather heat turns to wind chill. The first insect casualty of the trip hits the top of his visor, a small splat, and he does a bit of looking as they merge into commuters’ traffic. For some reason, that’s the detail he’d forgotten to take into account, the detail of work and human life and the patterns those two things form.
Still. There’s enough space between the cars for him.
“Ready for me to be a lunatic?”
“I got on this bike, didn’t I?”
His young girl holds tight and his old girl roars, sensation and vibration and sound wrapped fantastically together. The old girl weaves where she can, the young leaning as hard as he needs her to. There’s no hesitation in the body behind him, no hesitation or doubt. It feels like leaping over that bonfire and seeing flame beneath his feet and light in her face; it feels like that moment, only a week ago, and he pushes skill and engine and luck and an old, inorganic love to feel that moment again, to reach to touch what ought to be so easily touched.
Sometimes he’s thwarted and sometimes he’s not quite so stupid as to dare, but the entire way, she moves her body with his, never flinching as their elbows and knees nearly touch metal.
She shouts in his ear when they finally, finally break away from the commuters, when they outdistance them. Those cars are going home and they’re going someplace entirely different and he loves that, loves it completely how they don’t have to stop. They will, of course they will - but they don’t have to. There’s a hotel in Broto waiting for them, but they don’t have to go. He doesn’t have to do anything.
Except find her snow.
Tomorrow, he already knows, he’s going to find her snow.
And that’s just because he wants to.
“I could live like this,” he confides at a half-shout, mindful of her ear, always mindful of her.
Her arms relaxed around him, her hands hiding in his jacket pockets from the wind, she laughs. Accuses: “You already do.”
“Do I now?”
“I was under that impression, yeah.” The tone of her voice makes it all too easy to imagine her expression. The pull of her lips and her eyes, so bright despite their colour. “So glad I’m coming with you, this time.”
He lifts his visor to feel the wind hard on his face, to let out the fogging breaths he keeps breathing. The world becomes infinitely louder. “So am I,” he says, and lets the wind drive away from her ears what he can’t keep out of his voice.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Want to see Lleida?” he asks an hour and a half of chat and silence later. “The city, not the province. You’re already seeing that one.”
“You want to see it?”
“Wouldn’t say no.”
“Yeah, all right.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s been here before, but he doesn’t know when. He tries to puzzle it out for a little while, but then she starts asking questions, starts assuming he knows all the answers with the sincere faith that comes of trusting his absolute brilliance.
He’s never been able to resist that.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It takes him a few minutes to realize it when it happens.
The feeling he gets surprises him.
“Rose,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“We’re not in Catalunya anymore.” It’s his first time away since he arrived. Hers too, unless he’s mistaken. Unless she’s gone somewhere without him.
There’s a small pause before she asks, likely peering into the headlight-lit world, “Where are we now?”
“Aragón,” he says, hoping that she, like him, can refrain from a Lord of the Rings reference. “Huesca, to be exact.”
“Huh,” she says. A moment later, he can just barely hear her repeating the words to herself, pressing them into her mind. It ought to make him smile, but it still feels odd, leaving. “We’re staying in Huesca, right?”
“We’re visiting Huesca,” he feels the need to correct.
“Yeah,” she says, and he knows that in some strange way, she’s agreeing to this irrational little piece of him. “Then back to the- Barcelona.”
“What was that?”
“Tried to say ‘back to the flat’ and ‘back to Barcelona’ at the same time,” she explains, her voice quick. “Didn’t work.”
“Back to la gran encisera,” he agrees.
“I’ve heard that before. The big what?”
“Grand enchantress. Or great, more or less.”
“Grammar lessons at a hundred kilometres an hour?”
“Hundred and thirty, actually.” He likes the speed limits here, doesn’t break them too badly.
She settles against his back, pressing against him there as the wind presses against his front. It feels like settling in the way that windblown dust settles, in the way that gravity gathers up pieces in the air and brings them back down for a moment’s rest. He nearly closes his eyes.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The real moment of rest comes in Mipanas, his jacket pulled off and her jacket peeled off and the helmets set on the handlebars. The tank needs petrol and limbs need stretching. The loo of the gas station needs cleaning, but he needs a piss and a dump more. She doesn’t complain either, doesn’t mention that at all.
“The air smells weird,” she says to him outside, keeping close in the semi-lit darkness around the pump. She doesn’t look nervous in this little town, merely stands closer than an arm’s length out of forming habit. It’s been almost three hours since she last had to let go of him. Five minutes of separation and now she’s standing so close.
He’s smiling a little, he realizes, feeling it more than doing it. Maybe it’s amusement at her comment and maybe it’s a growing sort of hope; he’ll never need to say which.
“The air smells clean,” he corrects, looking over at the gauge, peering at the price with a sort of detached interest. He paid inside while she was going, isn’t quite sure if it was enough or too much. “That, and Embase de El Grado is freshwater - you’re not smelling any salt.”
“Embase?”
He points in the opposite direction of the way they came. “The river we’ve been riding along? Comes from here.”
Looking out into the barely lit streets - it’s getting late to be awake, up here - she fiddles with her hair a little, trying to pull it back into something like order. It makes him run a hand over the top of his own head. His hair fits through the spaces between his fingers. It feels like a haircut he might have had once before, a long time ago.
Maybe he’ll keep it long and maybe he won’t. It feels like an important, unimportant choice, one of those choices, but he still doesn’t much care.
He cares a little bit more when she catches him at it, drops his hand away. Her expression is strange in the half-light, the colour of her skin at once faded and tinged by the harsh shards of light from above. Wind blows off of water they can’t see, brings that freshwater scent and flutters her hair against the blue of her open jacket, against the shadow-grey cloth of her top. Her earrings are gone, removed for the sake of the helmet, and their empty spaces still hang beside her neck, barely seen and sorely felt.
If he’d had an excuse, he would have called her beautiful.
The tank fills up a little less than he’d thought but not much less. He puts the nozzle away, puts the cap back on. “One more hour,” he says, turning back on the link between their helmets before handing hers back to her.
She puts it on, connecting them as he does the same. “Right,” she says, behind him and beside his ear. She touches the leather covering his back and this time, he lets his eyes fall shut.
Climbing onto the bike is a careful affair, joined as they are, but it’s a fine inconvenience, as inconveniences go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The road winds in the mountainous dark and they fall silent together. The world is wind and engines and a single headlight reaching into shadow. The world is steep rock and swaying wood and a road just good enough to be a road.
It’s the dark, he knows, making them feel this way, but still.
But still.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They pass by towns and know them by their lights, small and limited and showing signs of sleep. He’s not sure how he knows Broto when he sees it, only knows that yes, this is where they stop. The altitude clogged his ears kilometers back, set him to working his jaw against the sensation.
He parks the bike where he’s almost certain he ought to park and they climb off, shaky and tired. She carries the helmets when the saddlebags go into his hands. It takes a minute for the rumble to fall from his ears, for him to realize that’s a river he hears.
They head on in and head on up, a tired and bored man waiting at the counter and helpful despite his wait.
She’s yawning a bit, shuffling a little, and he shifts to let her rest against him as the lift rises. It’s not far, but she still leans close, as if having missed him.
“I get first shower,” he tells her, her hair tickling his lips.
“I get sleep,” she answers, meaning it, and he laughs. She hums a little, leans a little more. “God, you’re comfy.”
“Oi,” he protests, but quietly. He hears the helmets hit the wall behind him, knock against it. “Gotta buy me a few more drinks than that before you can feel me up.”
She giggles in that tired way that makes giggling doubly silly. The lift dings and he shoos her out, wondering if the idea’s stuck or not.
Not too much later, he doesn’t quite remember getting into the room, only has a vague recollection of watching her read room numbers, of opening a door and shooing her through that one too. He knows he put the bags down and he knows he took his jacket off by how light his shoulders feel.
He shrugs to himself, somewhat hazy for a minute, and resumes getting ready for his shower by actually shutting the bathroom door. The water is good when it hits him and he stands there for a time, watching the drench and the drip. A month ago, he brought her to Tarragona. A month, and he’d thought she was stupid for coming with him.
When he comes out, towelling off his head, he wants to have something to say to her. He doesn’t and it doesn’t matter: she’s already tucked herself into bed. She’s grabbed the one by the windows, by the wall made of windows. His jacket isn’t on the other bed anymore - he remembers where he put it now, remembers he’d thought the bed too short. Now it’s set around the back of a chair with a small, lined basket next to it, meant for rubbish. There are bits of bugs in it, all plucked off his jacket.
He looks over the jacket, looks over at her. Finds her looking back.
“You really do have a leather fetish,” he remarks, an automatic little thing as he tosses his towel back into the bathroom.
She props herself up on an elbow, grins at him with a tired grin. “For that jacket? Yeah.”
“Thanks,” he says.
She shrugs. “’Night,” she says, and lays her head back on her pillow.
“Good night, Rose.”
He pauses before he does it, truly hesitates. It’s feeling his own hesitation that pushes him past it, that makes him go to her. He brushes back her hair, yellow strands and soft skin so good against his palm. Unwilling to risk the night with more, he presses a quiet and gentle kiss to her brow.
She holds still to let him, keeps still even as he sits down on the edge of her bed. He risks a little more, stroking her hair with loving fingers for the first time, for the second time, for as long as it takes for her to sigh into sleep.
He stands, careful not to shift her. It takes all of a breath to shuck his jeans and t-shirt and climb into the bed opposite, a bed that doesn’t, as expected, quite fit his legs. Already apologizing to his back, he curls up facing the windows.
Falling asleep is quick and soft and disturbed only by the sounds of his dreams.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“You’ve forgotten me,” Fred tells him, sitting down on the chair holding his jacket.
“No I haven’t.”
“You have,” she says before he speaks, cutting his words from time. “You need to remember.”
“I’ve been busy,” he tells her, sitting up. The sheet falls away, leaving his chest cold. “I’m sorry, but-”
“No, she’s not the problem,” Fred tells him, tucking her hair behind her shoulder. “Personally, I love Rose.”
The girl stirs in her bed, the sheets a noose around her neck as he asks, “You do?”
“Of course I do,” Fred tells him impatiently, pointedly rolling her eyes in endearing mockery of him. “I am a manifestation of your subconscious, after all.”
The girl smiles in her sleep, her sleep in his sleep, her dream beside his, and the sheets tangle in her fading warmth.
“Remember me,” Fred reminds him, leaning forward to kiss him goodbye, to kiss him awake with a mouth of char and coal.
He jerks his head back to the point where it hurts a little, to the point where his back hurts a little. That’s when he remembers where he is, where and who with.
Or not with.
She’s not in her bed.
He sits up, hearts stumbling as he stares at the rumpled, twisted sheets. “Rose?” he calls quietly to that hotel bed before a sound from the bathroom catches his ear. “Rose?” he calls toward the door, more loudly this time.
He hears a flush and the tap running and out she comes, wiping her hands on her pajama bottoms, her hair a mess. Her mouth opens to ask a question that doesn’t seem to need asking, not by the look on her face. He has no idea what his own expression has given away.
“Still having nightmares?” she asks, even without the need to, even though he can’t remember when he first told her about his dreams.
“Yeah,” he says. And then he adds, because it’s true, “Everyone was dead.” His everyone was dead.
She shifts just a little, a change of posture that opens her up, that makes her body match her face and eyes. Should he only nod, she’ll come to him. Hold him. Shush him like a child that needs its fears shushed.
Even on the off-chance it’s what he needs, it’s not at all what he wants.
“Just a dream,” he says, trying to reassure her.
“Yeah,” she says, almost as if she’s the one trying to convince him.
There’s a pause between them as he remembers her captain and is sorry he’d said anything. “You okay?” he asks, just to check.
“Still need a shower,” she says, shrugging.
“Mind letting me use the loo first?” he asks, swinging his legs out of the bed, and he can see her entire body hesitate. “What? Your shower that urgent?”
“You got pants on under that sheet?”
He looks down at himself, all chest and legs and the one sheet he’d used still across his lap. He laughs. “I might do, yeah. Am I offending your tender sensibilities?” he teases, teasing because no sane person would flirt so soon after that little exchange. He thinks he’s sane.
For today, at least.
“Nah - just burning my eyes,” she answers. “C’mon, hurry up. Can’t believe you slept that much.”
They banter all the way through the morning, pausing briefly for good, solid food before climbing on the bus. It’s not too long of a ride to El Parque Nacional Ordesa - when they get there, the day is still just beginning.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He has mountains, his jacket, and her hand in his.
It’s a beautiful day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They buy a backpack there, fill it with water and food and the layers they aren’t yet wearing. People look at them as if they’re idiots, but that’s fine by him.
Judging by her grin, it’s fine by her too.
They work out a route based on their insanity - no gear, no overnight stay, but snow. There has to be snow.
He explains what they want to the dubious park ranger, has to keep himself from slipping into Catalan when he doesn’t quite like a Spanish turn of phrase. His girl keeps with the bag, strikes up a limping conversation with a hiker. Her Spanish isn’t close to good enough and his English is broken, but they keep on talking.
Finally, he gets a reasonable route worked out, finds their best bet, and it’s time to say goodbye to her new friend. She laughs and waves and the hiker smiles back, waves back and they move on. Before he can reach for her, she takes his hand.
Up they go.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She is far more athletic than he’s been giving her credit for.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Half the world falls away to leave a windblown, beautifully broken remainder. A white strip of faraway clouds serves as a horizon above blue-tinged mountains, the texture of the air between here and there turning into colour, a faded azure row. The mountains are worn and broken and staggering in their immensity and it’s been far, far too long since he’s done this.
The rock is brown and grey and black and unending as they rise above the tree line. Vegetation falls away from the path as they climb, proving that even plants are afraid of heights. The path narrows and widens, mostly narrows as it turns back on itself, as it keeps on rising. When the path makes them release each other, he makes certain that she goes first, makes sure he can spot her.
“You just want to stare at my bum,” she accuses and when he doesn’t contradict, it only makes her laugh.
When the path widens up once more, she takes his hand back, walking beside him, and he pretends to lean back for a look. Duly swatted, duly grinning, he starts talking, starts telling stories. Some are true and history and some are false and history and some are, as always, myth.
“Did you get to Pyrene yet?” he asks. “Part of the Heracles myth, somewhere.”
She shakes her head, tucking her hair behind her ear only for the wind to blow it back out towards the sky. “No, but I bet it ends in these mountains getting named for... her?”
He nods. “Couple of versions of Pyrene, but then, there always are.”
“What’s the real one?” she asks, as if he could possibly know that.
He shrugs. “There is none.”
“But there had to be an original story, yeah?” she reasons. “Or some event that started it off.”
“So?”
“So,” she says, like it should be obvious, “there was an original story once.”
“Sorry, do you speak ancient Greek?” He releases her hand to let her through a small gap, but she doesn’t let go, merely turns sideways as she goes through, still holding onto his fingers. “There’s a story in the way stories separate from themselves, when you think about. More interested in that, me.”
“So what are the stories?” she asks, glancing back over her shoulder rather than look where she’s going.
“Well,” he says, “in one, Pyrene was a nymph raped by a drunk Heracles. Next morning, she wakes up pregnant, stabs the man while he’s still sleeping it off, and runs away. Her dad didn’t know where she was, but it seemed safe to assume that if you attack Heracles, you wind up dead. So dad built her a tomb. He was a king, so he could build big.”
“And that’s this mountain?”
“Yep.”
“Rape mountain?”
“Monte Perdido, actually, the one we’re on. Lost, not rape.”
“But rape mountain range?” She looks increasingly disappointed rather than amused and it makes him quick to correct.
“That’s just one version of the story.”
“What’s another?”
He shrugs and it’s not a natural movement. “That they were lovers.”
She perks up at that, once again intrigued. “Yeah?” The wind plays with her hair, throwing it across her face and toward his. She tries to untangle her hair from her earrings and ultimately, they pause to let her take them off.
“Pyrene and Heracles,” he adds, watching her until she gives him her hand back. Then they walk. “Those two.”
“But the mountains are still her tomb?” Her thumb moves against the back of his hand, once, twice. Holds still when he looks directly at her.
“As the story goes, she still got pregnant,” he replies. “Greek hero sort of thing to do, that. But for some reason or another - probably Hera making trouble - Pyrene gave birth to a serpent. She was so scared that she ran into the forest, got lost and died there. Or she was bitten by the snake and died of that out in the woods.”
“Killed by her own kid?”
“Her own snake. A kid’s a goat.”
She swats him. “That’s still horrible.”
“What, the pun or the story?”
“Both,” she says, shrugging a little, and the motion carries down into his hand.
If he was another man, he’d call his laugh a scoff. “Welcome to Greek mythology.”
“So what about the tomb?” she asks, pulling at his hand intentionally this time. They might be walking up into the sky, but it’s still him she’s looking at, still him she’s holding onto.
“Heracles built it,” he answers. “Tore up the rocks and made her a wall from the Bay of Biscay to the Gulf of Lion.”
She mulls that over for a few steps, for a small climb more. The wind blows through them and she shivers, stopping only when he pulls at her hand. He shrugs off the backpack, dropping it to the rock, and pulls out her jacket. Pulls out his own.
She smiles at him as he puts the jacket on, as he shoulders the bag once more. Doesn’t offer to carry the bag, but she does smile. Finding his riding gauntlets in his pocket, he hands them to her; his pockets must be warmer than hers and they’ve nothing else like gloves between them.
“What kind of nymph was she?” his girl asks once they get back to climbing, one hand on the rock wall beside her, one held out for balance instead of for him. It’s a tricky bit and he makes sure they’re both past before he answers.
“Not sure, really. Could’ve been an Oread, what with the mountain.”
“So a mountain nymph?”
He shrugs, the bag rising and falling against his jacket against his back. This part of the conversation, he’s having with the back of her head. “Dunno. I know the name Pyrene means-”
“Snow.”
“Nope, fire.”
“No,” she says, turning back to face him, to reach for him, her smile wide and bright. “Snow.” She points, looking to the small patch of white before looking back to him, looking back at him with hopeful eyes. “Can we get to that?”
He grins.
.-.-.-.-.-.
A snowball fight in the Spanish summer.
She doesn’t just make him do the impossible. She makes him love it, too.
.-.-.-.-.-.
After, his hands burn from the cold and his hearts pound into his aching legs. The wind blows a hard chill against his body, even in the small shelter the rock at his back provides. It whips away the bits of white and whisks away the melted drops from his jacket, from his skin. The world drops away not too far in front of them, revealing an infinity of air. She shivers against his side, just a little, but when they look at each other, it’s perfect, completely so.
He picks up a small cluster of snow despite the protest of his skin. Where it melts along his palm, the wind cools him even faster. He passes the water from one hand to the other, just to feel it, then wipes his wet hands on his jeans.
She watches him as he does, studies him in windblown silence. Her hair clings to his jacket where it’s wet, her head not quite resting on his shoulder, merely tilted over it.
When they decide to move, to leave, to find somewhere more suitable to eat lunch, it’s by unspoken mutual decision. He stands and she stands and they walk to where they climb down, him first and her after. That’s the way of it.
She’s about to pick up the bag when he stops her, when he has to stop her. To thank her, to tell her not to bother, to do something besides what he actually does. He reaches out. He cups her cheek. He cups her cheek and, though the gesture isn’t new between them, she shivers. Jerks away only to lean back into the touch.
“Your hand,” she says. “’S cold.”
“Sorry,” he returns softly, and she shakes her head, sends his fingers into her hair as she wets her lips with a flick of the tongue. For once, there’s nothing at all playful in that glimpse of pink. Her eyes are closed, soft and gentle, and he neither wants nor dares to let go.
“It’s good,” she assures him in a murmur. She opens her eyes, opens her dark, dark eyes and stares into him. Looks down only to flush at the sight of his mouth. He’s casting a shadow on her face, but it’s still so clearly seen. “’S nice.”
Still buried in his riding gauntlets, her skin disguised, her hands find his wrists. She holds his hand where it is, brings the second to join the first, to mirror it. His hands fall slightly, stroke down slightly, the feel of her pulse strong and true beneath his palms.
She closes her eyes into his cold touch, her chin rising as if baring her neck, as if offering her mouth. Her grip on his wrists tightens.
“Yeah?” he asks, the word already against her lips.
Her answer is a sigh like a curse and her arms are around his neck, her lips pressing hard against his. Soft in texture and hard in intent and he shakes beneath his skin. Something rumbles inside of him, something shakes like thunder so very far away, and then it’s gone; then it’s here.
She pulls him closer, her arms begging around his neck, and his hands find her waist as they’ve never found it before, sliding down the perfect blue of her jacket. His fingers press and she gasps, a sound he feels rather than hears. Their lips separate with a wet sound but her mouth is still open, open enough that he has no choice but to take advantage.
Her mouth is wet and intrinsically playful, instinctually teasing and he presses forward for more, to find more, to better hold the woman clutching at his jacket. A gust blows at his back and he catches them against the wall, cradles her head against the rough rock fast enough to keep her whole, fast enough to scrape his hand.
She leans back, welcoming his stagger, and their mouths stop moving against each other, simply hold where they are, close and pressing. Her covered hands brush against the sides of his head; he helps her remove the layer, tucks the gauntlets halfway into his pocket before her hands find the handles of his ears.
It’s the best scuffle he’s ever had, all pulling and tugging and hot human mouths. He can taste his testosterone on her tongue, can feel each of her breaths in the swell of her chest against his. She fits against him, warm and curved and his. It’s life and heat and inevitability but mostly, mostly it’s the chill on the heat, it’s the wind to hold against like a storm yet to come. He catches them against the rock again as their feet shift, as her feet slip, and he cradles her head against the mountain, her sweet golden head safe in the curve of his hand.
The movement pulls their mouths apart, pulls them apart to laugh into each other, the sound breathy and insubstantial. Her hands cling to his lapels and roam across the leather by turns. His hand stays trapped between soft strands and the scrape of rock, stays trapped where he doesn’t care to pull away.
Her lips catch at his when he tries to take them, once and again, turning it hard and fast, too fast but just hard enough. They kiss the way they are, all unbalanced desperation, and he can feel the way her fingernails would dig into his back, he can taste the sexsweat of her neck before she perspires, can taste it with his mouth still on hers, he can do these things, really, he can.
They break apart panting and dizzy. He tries to breathe, tries not to kiss her; they both try and they both fail. It feels like falling. It is falling, the way they lean into each other.
He gathers her up from the rock, gathers her in, and she slips under his jacket. She sets her hands over his hearts, tucks her head against his neck. She must hear his breath, must feel the pounding in his veins.
“Rose,” he half-says, half-asks. His throat is rough, his tongue paradoxically dry.
She shakes her head. What against, he’ll never know. It’s not directed at him; so her hands tell him, slipping around his back, staying beneath leather to touch sweaty cotton.
“Rose Tyler,” he says, because somehow, he should.
She looks up at him, pulls back to look up at him, and for one mad moment, there’s a complete lack of recognition in her eyes. There’s a question in her eyes meant for a stranger, a three-worded question he can’t understand with the scent of her still suffusing his head, the taste of her still in his mouth.
Who are you?
It’s a look he must be misinterpreting, has to be, but it’s a look that doesn’t fade. Her hands slip from his sides as if trying to let go, as if mercifully failing to fall. But her hands do slip and they do fall. Away from him. They fall.
He catches them. Holds tight.
He’s long past the point where he could let her go.
“Don’t run,” he tells her, his voice so rough. “Not without me. Don’t run.” It’s all he can think to say, all he can say without thinking, his words too short and coarse to be pleas.
“’M scared,” she says. What the wind leaves of her voice is so small, almost too small to be hers.
“What could you be afraid of?” Impossibly, he laughs as he asks it. For all he already knows the various answers to the question, it’s still something to be asked incredulously, still something that shouldn’t have an answer any smaller than life or death.
She glares up at him, hair blowing across the angry set of her mouth. “If you don’t-” She stops, pulls one hand away to tuck her hair back. Dead serious, she warns him, “If you don’t feel this too, I am so gonna-”
He kisses her.
With her unready for it, the kiss is a mess of bumped noses and half-missed lips and it takes a while for her unheld hand to find his shoulder, takes until he presses his brow against hers. “Rose Tyler,” he says yet again. It’s a time for names.
“So gonna smack you,” she tells him, eyes crinkled. The old warning completed or a new one made: it doesn’t matter. “I’m gonna smack you so hard.”
“Worth it,” he says.
“Keep saying that,” she asks him, begs it so simply.
“Your wish is my command,” he promises her. “Just be-”
“I’m not, though,” she interrupts to admit. “Never have been.”
“I don’t care,” he says, and right then, he means it. If he’d been careful, he wouldn’t have wished for her either. Doesn’t matter.
“Here an’ now?” she asks. Offers it like a nameless and uncertain thing.
“I can do that.” He can do anything.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Her hair keeps blowing, so very long in all this wind, and it brushes his face, keeps brushing his face. “That all right?” he asks, tucking it back behind her ear for her.
She closes her eyes against the touch of his hand and even if she hesitates, she doesn’t lean away. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
He pulls away to grab the backpack. Slings it over his shoulder under her half certain gaze. It takes a moment, but her smile does turn true.
“C’mon,” he says.
Hand in hand, they walk down their mountain.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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