Fic: In Human Hands (18/26)
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: Forget about things getting out of hand: they’ve already gotten there.
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
The Confidante
She leans against his side on the bus ride back to Broto, tries to. It’s bumpy and jolting and he laughs when she cracks her chin on his shoulder.
“Not funny.”
“You didn’t see the look on your face.”
The sound of the bus is far too loud to support conversation, the suspension too poor for them to rest comfortably against one another. That’s all right. More like a proper adventure this way. It makes up for staying in a hotel, almost.
Eventually, a thought occurs to him. Discomfits him. “Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“You think that doctor of yours’ll mind buying us this little vacation?”
She shakes her head, the reply immediate. Her arms are around the backpack she’d bought earlier, again with someone else’s money.
“How come?”
“He hadn’t touched the account in at least a decade,” she tells him, which still isn’t exactly an explanation. “He sorta handed me the card an’ told me to have three fantastic months. Said it might help my mum stop nagging.” She takes a sideways glance at him. Elbows him a little. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You didn’t see the look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The one insulting my mum.”
“Ah, that one.”
She elbows him as the bus hits a bump and oh yes, elbows are hard.
“Oi!”
.-.-.-.-.-.
Dinner is small and simple in a restaurant that acknowledges tourists without giving in to them. He talks about architecture as she eats off his plate.
Their hands don’t reach for each other, but when, veiled by the tablecloth, her knee bumps against his, neither of them moves away.
He pays for the meal.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Walking along the river, staring down into dark water, they stall. The lights from the hotel shine on behind him. A harbour light’s guidance or a lighthouse’s warning, one or the other and so they stall.
Maybe she’s thinking about it too or maybe it’s just him. If it’s just him, well. He’s getting a little resigned to being a dirty old man by this point. She’s okay with it, though, the evidence seems to indicate.
“Hey,” she says and her hand slips into his. “Getting cold out here.”
“Wind off the water,” he says absently, his mind not on his words. “The sun going down doesn’t help either.”
“How fast are we goin’ around it?”
“Sixty-seven thousand miles an hour.”
Her grip on his hand tightens. “Okay,” she says.
“Right.”
The water below rushes on.
“Look, I-”
“Rose-”
“I would, really. I really would, I just- I can’t right now.”
“Can’t what?”
She gives a pointed glance at his crotch and despite himself, he laughs. Once he starts, though, he makes himself keep going.
“S’pose I’d be just as bad as a boyfriend then.”
“That’s not it,” she tells him, her cheeks clearly red even in the near-dark. “I mean, I want to. I do. I just... can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he asks and the look on her face tells him she’s taken it the wrong way. How she drops his hand proves she’s taken it the wrong way. “Not like that,” he corrects, waving his suddenly free hand dismissively, the other one shoved into a pocket. “‘Can’t’ is an entirely different condition than ‘won’t’. I’ve met people who couldn’t but would’ve and could’ve but wouldn’t. Which one are you?”
“Won’t but would’ve.” Though only vaguely seen, her smile still looks pained. Rueful - that’s the word.
He fights the urge to sigh, fights the urge to walk away from the final result of all her teasing. Ultimately, he doesn’t turn away. He can’t help the sigh. “Better than can’t but could’ve once, I s’pose.” It’s a weak joke, but it’s all he’s got.
“Is that okay?”
“If you think I’m only here for a shag-”
“I don’t.”
“Good.” He tucks both his hands into his pockets, presses his hands into his pockets. It pulls his jacket against his back, puts him more firmly inside of it somehow. “If I was, I would’ve brought condoms.”
“I’m the one who packed your stuff.”
“I didn’t say it would’ve been subtle.”
She laughs. Swats his arm.
He matches her grin.
They stand there for a while longer, two lunatics in the night, mad and loving it. There’s so much he’s not going to say.
She says some of it instead.
“I guess, um. Y’know, we could always still....” She tucks her hair behind her ear, reaches across her face to do it. The wind’s always blowing it about.
“Yeah?”
“Like up there,” she says.
“Would that be okay?” He still has no idea where her limit is.
“Would it?” she asks right back, honestly concerned, and he has to laugh.
“You think I’m gonna say no?”
He’s never seen her look more taken aback. “What, really?”
He shrugs at her, hands deep in pockets that ought to be deeper. In a sudden, inexplicable stroke of longing, he misses his old jacket. Much better pockets, practically limitless.
“What about,” she says and her arms are tight around herself, a tiny attempt to hold out the chill. “What about Fred?”
He bristles at the oncoming domesticity. “What about her?”
“I mean, is it okay? Is it... I dunno....”
“Over?” he supplies for her. If he has any say at all in the word choice, he’s going to be that vague.
“Yeah.”
“Very.”
“You sure?” she asks and this time when he has to laugh, it’s not a reaction from amusement.
“Yeah,” he says, and it makes him feel just a little bit bitter. “I’m sure.”
“Oh.” At least she knows when she’s gone too far.
He makes a show of folding his arms and looking down into the water. “Yeah.”
They just stand there for a time, not looking at each other. A single car drives by behind them, all noise and hard lights in the dark. It’s hot in his jacket, but it’d be too cold by a touch if he took it off. It makes him fidget.
“Well,” she says. “Good thing we weren’t planning on shagging tonight.”
His face cracks into something like a smile. “Too domestic.”
“Too awkward,” she agrees.
“Wouldn’t make for the best first time, that.” The second it’s out of his mouth, he knows they’re back to awkwardness. Then again, it’s possible they never left it.
She handles it well, her fingers combing out the ends of her hair. “Best not, then.”
They go back to being quiet, listening to water and insects and the tiny volume of a town so very far away from Barcelona. He shucks his jacket. Holds it in one hand, feeling the weight of it.
“Do I get to know why not?” he asks.
Head bowed, she keeps on playing with her hair. “’Cos... I dunno, it’s just- It’s not right.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not that, you git.” It’s not said harshly, but for once, insults aren’t endearments.
“I’m old enough to be your dad and that’s not where this gets wrong?”
“Nah,” she says and her voice breaks a little even as she tries for a joke. “That’s just sorta kinky.”
For some reason, it’s a train of thought he can follow instantly. It shouldn’t make sense, but it does. It couldn’t not. “You’re thinking about the captain.”
“S’ been two months,” she admits. Stops tugging at her hair to wrap her arms around herself once more. “I just- I miss him, okay?”
“You fancied him.”
She shakes her head at him, but it still means yes. Her eyes are so bad at lying. “Everybody fancied Jack. He was....”
“Jack?” he supplies, that being the obvious answer.
“I was going to go with ‘gorgeous,’ but that works too.” She shivers a little as the wind picks up, and he drapes his jacket around her in one smooth motion, cloaking her in it. “...Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
“That a yeah, he’s gorgeous or a yeah, you’re welcome?” she asks. She doesn’t seem to realize her tenses and he’s not about to point that little detail out to her.
He asks it just to ask it, trying for less death and more humour. “And if I said the former?”
She shrugs, pulling the jacket closed around her. It makes her look small and vulnerable and his. “Jack once told me somethin’ like... Like, ‘it doesn’t matter who else is on their to-do list as long as your name is circled on it.’ Something like that.”
“What, instead of checked off?”
Another shrug there. It’s possible she’s just enjoying the way the motion makes the shoulders of the jacket lift. “It sounded better when he was the one sayin’ it. ‘Course, most things did. Jack could hit on a street sign.”
“And yet why he would want to will forever remain a mystery,” he concluded. “Must’ve been something to watch, though.”
A small laugh leaves her and she looks better for it. “God, you’ve got no idea. Wish you could’ve seen him.”
“What did that doctor of yours think?”
She blinks up at him. “Sorry?”
“It was the three of you off and about, wasn’t it?” It’s such a patchwork story he has of her life that he’s forced to question her instead of remind her.
“Oh. Yeah. We’d gotten a little separated then. Captain Jack and I were tryin’ to get directions back to him an’ Jack got a little bored, I think.”
Up go his eyebrows. “A little?”
“To be fair,” she replies, grinning the way she should always be, “it was a very attractive street sign.”
“Still,” he says, leaning in a little, getting closer in the near-dark, “sounds like a case of bad priorities.” He reaches forward to brush a bit of dirt off the shoulder of the jacket.
Her tongue comes out to tease as she shifts beneath the touch. “Oh, I dunno. We found our way back because of it.” Swallowed up by his jacket, her hands take a moment to emerge from the sleeves. Her palms find his sides soon enough.
“Nothin’ wrong with bein’ a bit lost,” he tells her.
“No?”
“Nah.”
“You, ah....” Her eyes close as his thumb finds her ear.
“What?”
Shifting forward, her foot bumps against his. “Wanna get lost tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he says and sinks his fingers into her hair.
Her hands tighten on his t-shirt, pull it over his skin, and he can feel everything through cotton, feel the tension in each finger and the way that tension fades once she no longer needs to pull him to her, once he’s already there.
It’s slower this time, slower and gentle because it can be. It’s almost soft and it’s very quiet, the noises they make half-drowned out beneath the sound of water. They’re good noises, wet little noises, and he very much approves, shows her how much.
She sinks against him, the leather of his jacket shielding her body from his hands, a threat barely there. She’s soft and warm beneath thick leather but he can’t quite touch, can’t quite know. Her lips are just as soft and just as warm and until the moment her kisses become hard and hot, until that moment, it’s almost more tender than he’ll ever be ready for. It’s like kissing heartsbreak and loving the taste. She’s gentle and tender and the way her hands touch his face, stroke his stubble, the way her fingers stroke cheek and jaw and ear, the way she does that, it makes him feel cradled somehow, makes him feel ensconced and entwined in something, something amazing and fantastic that could never trap, only keep, and there shouldn’t be a difference there, there’s never been a difference there except there is, now there is, when she touches his face like that, when she touches him like she’s confused about which half of this pair is precious and somehow, absurdly, remarkably, thinks that it’s him.
And then she grabs him by the ears and thoroughly, thoroughly snogs him.
They scuffle with it, bending their bodies to fit their mouths together, shuffling their feet to keep close, fighting to keep close when they don’t quite fit standing like this. She’d be perfect on his lap. He kisses her hard at the thought, kisses her hard until she just goes soft and there is nothing more beautiful than a woman he’s just kissed into contented submission. Especially when it’s her. Her eyes are half lost in the dark of the night, lost but for their shine. Clinging to him, she breathes in little burbling giggles. What a sound.
“Feelin’ dizzy?” he can’t help but ask. His jacket on her has fallen open in the front, lets their bodies press together the way they want to, or close enough to it. Her arms loosely around his neck, she stays where she is, makes no move to stop leaning against him.
In fact, she ducks her head down, tucks it against his shoulder. A nip to his collarbone makes him gasp, makes him tighten his arms around her further. Her reply is a smug noise and even he has to admit that it’s well deserved. “Only ‘cause you were cutting off my air.”
He laughs a bit and she giggles some more and it’s all very good, fantastic in the extreme. He holds and she leans and it all smells like water and mountains and leather and her. It tastes a bit like that too, but mostly like only one of that four.
They relax into each other, just breathing, just that. His legs finally remind him how they hurt from today’s walking, a satisfying ache creeping through his body. She sighs a little, nuzzling closer.
It feels so very much like peace.
And then it occurs to him: “...Did we just have a snog after talking about your dead captain?” Forget about things getting out of hand: they’ve already gotten there.
There’s a small pause, a silence from beside his neck as she stops breathing.
“Pretty much,” she answers after her pause, stretching the first word out. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure Jack would’ve approved. Bein’ kinda a pick-up line, I mean. Or, well, anything that gets followed by snogging.”
“Still.”
“Yeah.”
They pull apart, almost do. Their hands keep finding each other. They step apart only to step back into each other and he kisses the part of her hair before laying his cheek there.
She sighs a warm breath though his t-shirt and into his skin. “This isn’t going to end well.”
“Did that just occur to you?” He likes the way it feels to move his jaw in this position, likes the way her hair tries to distract him.
“Nah.”
“Good - didn’t think you were that thick.” It sits between them for a moment, somehow fits between them where they’d tried to press out all the remaining space. “In a month-”
“I’m sorry.”
“Apologize for things when they’re your fault.” Even if he tried, it’s not a statement he could snap right now. His brain’s all dopamine and norepinephrine and he can feel the oxytocin starting to set in around the edges, seeping in around where the serotonin ought to be; irritation seems to be chemically impossible at the moment. Why his body seems bent on drugging itself, he’ll never know.
“I can feel sorry without it bein’ my fault.”
“It’s why you’d want to that’s got me puzzled,” he confesses.
She giggles a bit more, then stills again. She stills in a tense way, her grip on him tightening in a way that’s not exactly subtle.
“What?”
“You know,” she tells him and that’s not nearly enough to make him think that he does.
He pulls back to look at her. “I know a lot of things, me.”
“What with you being brilliant and all.”
“Exactly,” he says. Kisses her again, but on the forehead.
She shakes a little and in that jacket, it can’t be from cold. Even if she pulls it shut around her like that, it’s not because of tonight’s still light chill, not when pulling it shut pulls her away.
“What?” he asks once more. “’Cos I obviously don’t know.”
She shakes her head and even in the near-dark, he can see her hair against his jacket, all false gold against battered black. It takes impossible restraint not to kiss her again then and there, never mind what she can’t seem to say.
“The second I say it, this is going to get too domestic for you,” she explains. “So ‘m not goin’ to.”
He smiles a little at that. He actually smiles. “Maybe it’s something I wouldn’t mind hearing.” Maybe it’s something he wouldn’t mind saying back. Not that much, anyway. Not after a day like this. Tomorrow might be pushing it, though.
“You’d mind,” she says, far too serious after all their play.
All right. So it’s not that.
“So we’ll stop here and go to bed happy, then?” he asks. “Beds, I mean.”
“You don’t mind?”
He shrugs a little, scratches at his neck. “How domestic is it?”
She considers and then, playful, pretends to keep on considering. “I think it would give you hives.”
They pause together and look at his hand, already scratching at what had been an idle, passing itch. They chuckle a little, hers more of a nervous giggle. “Right then,” he says, dropping his hand. “Best stop before I go into anaphylactic shock.”
She fits their fingers together, presses their palms. The cuff of the jacket hits against his wrists a little, the sleeve pushed up a touch to let her hand out. “Can’t have that.”
“Wouldn’t care to.”
They head back to the light of the hotel, making the last climb of their long day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s closer and he’s further and farther and pressed, pressed, shoved down, held down until it’s time, always until it’s time. It is always time, the wrong meaning of time, puns in English, bad puns in English, English, England bad puns in England pressed down until it’s time but why why does that happen
What’s happening?
I don’t know, someone says.
What? someone asks.
Make it stop.
Who is this? Who are these?
Blue eyes are young against silver, a boy holding time, a boy staring into a gap that’s bigger on the inside, a boy about to run. Needs to run.
What is this?
It’s close, close, far but closer, almost there, almost. Right direction, almost. Point the hour at sixty-seven thousand miles, bisect the angle and go the far way, go that way and go the opposite
What did you say?
I didn’t say anything.
it’s all thoughts in heads, too many heads, so many minds, too big for one mind and filling all of them, all of them at once
Who is this?
I’m me.
I’m me too.
then who’s dreaming? Someone must be dreaming. There’s sleep and dreams and that’s the way it works, that’s the way it presses down on him, keeps him down there until the time and that’s all right, that has to be all right, down is fine, it’s over that’s wrong.
Let me come back, he commandbegorders.
And that’s when the fear hits.
.-.-.-.-.-.
His body wants to shake. He doesn’t think it does. Doesn’t think it shakes. Knows it wants to.
Adrenaline, he thinks and the word sticks in his head.
He’s wide, wide awake.
It’s the adrenaline.
He breathes out a long breath, a long shuddering breath that takes the shake out of him. He’s curled on his side, cramped in the small bed. He blames the dreams on that tonight. Stranger than usual and there must be a reason for it. So he blames the bed, blames being curled up on his side with his back to the window of the far wall, with his back to the entire room. He’s hurting and exposed.
He rolls onto his back, stretching out. Feels himself pained and aching. He gasps with it. His back stiff, his legs half dead and, just to top it off, his right arm still asleep, he tries to will the sensations away. He curses with sounds rather than words, swears in syllables that defy translation and slowly, the world tightens back around a hotel in Broto, Spain.
The sound of something shifting finally breaks through his haze and he turns his head, looks towards the window and the small lump of a silhouette there. The lump moves.
He grunts at it.
“What is it?” she whispers.
“You-” He has to stop, has to try again. His throat is too dry on the first attempt. “You had to pick a hotel with tiny beds.” He tries to stretch out some more.
There’s silence from the other bed. No sound of her settling back down or getting on up. She’s just there, propped up on one arm.
“What?” he asks, his voice still half stuck in a whisper.
He sees her stuck-up bedhair flop around as she shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“You were having another nightmare.”
He lies more resolutely on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Pulls his feet up and over the bedspread lumped down there. His legs keep going even after the mattress stops, just a little, just enough to be uncomfortable. He lies there in his underwear, staring at the ceiling.
When he doesn’t hear her move, doesn’t hear her stop watching him, he asks, “So?”
She doesn’t ask him if he wants to talk. She doesn’t even ask if he’s okay. And that’s good. It’s like she’s got a little guide of how to navigate his currents, of how not to annoy him. Hers is a direct question, no preliminaries required. “What was it?”
“Talk and confusion,” he answers.
“Talkin’ with who?”
He shrugs, his shoulders rubbing against the sheets. “I dunno. Couldn’t see him. Might’ve been a them, I dunno. Male, though.” Male and younger. Much younger. Or maybe that had been him. It’s all blurred together.
“Was he behind you?”
“He was in some direction. I just couldn’t see,” he says, recalling a little more of what his sleeping mind had put itself through. “It was all sorta thought and talkin’ and I didn’t have eyes to open, I think.” He shifts a bit more on the bed. Arches his back for a mo’, just trying to get the kink out. Whatever groaning noises he makes because of the motion, she doesn’t comment on them. “What did you dream about?”
If it’s only one way, it’s confiding. If it’s both ways, it’s just telling stories.
“What? Oh.” There’s a smile in her voice as she continues. “We were back on the mountain, I think. Except, well, except it was made of all these weird boulders. Like gumdrops, maybe.”
“What flavour?”
He hears her flop onto her back, the sheets rustling. “Dunno - they wanted to eat us, not the other way around. Judging by the colour, though, swirls of grape and pumpkin.”
“And I’m the one who had a nightmare?” He has to laugh at that.
She laughs too. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“You’re a strange one, Rose Tyler.” And that’s a fact.
“Just means I’m not boring.”
“S’pose it does.”
They lie there in the dark a bit longer before he has to move. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, reaches for the blankets he’s shoved to the foot of it. Yanks them off and drops them between the beds.
“What’re you...?”
“Bed’s too small,” he tells her again, dropping his pillows down to join the bunch. “This’ll hardly be the most uncomfortable floor I’ve ever slept on.”
She makes a noise of agreement and then, sitting up, offers him her bedspread. The cloth is stiff rather than soft, but it’ll do.
“Thanks.”
He settles in. Lies down.
Finds he can’t quite shut up.
“I thought about England,” he says.
Looking up between the beds, his slice of the ceiling has been vastly reduced. It diminishes further as a blond head pokes itself over the edge of the bed. “As in, ‘lie back and’?”
He chuckles. “No.” And he sobers. “No. Not like that. You know, I haven’t thought about it in ages. It’s not home - hasn’t been since, since I dunno. The only person who’s called me British in ages is Sanchez and that’s only to poke fun at my accent.”
She says nothing and the faint starlight through the windows can’t even attempt to touch her face at this angle.
“Lancashire.” He can’t remember the last time he said the word. “Manchester, specifically.”
“What?”
“Where I used to be from, I think.” It’s not much of a from in his mind, just a place somewhere. Just that. “But it doesn’t feel like it. I was there, but I didn’t much live there, if you follow.”
“...Yeah,” she says slowly. “I think I do.”
Again, a liar. Doesn’t matter, though.
He shifts a bit on the blankets, feels the hardwood flooring beneath his back. “It’s San Francisco. Where I was last from.”
“You mean you lived there?” It’s such a strange tone of voice she uses.
“Not the first time I’ve mentioned it,” he feels the need to point out.
“In Parc Güell, yeah, but that was different. You said....” She trails off, remembering. “It was six years ago and all filled up. Like London and Paris.”
“Good memory,” he says and adds nothing.
“You said you were a different man, back then.”
“And maybe I was,” he replies, a little prickly at her tone. There’s no reason for her to sound so strangely sad over it. “Makes sense that I was. Six years ago, you weren’t even a woman yet.”
“I was closer than you’d think.”
His laugh is more of a breath, a quiet “heh.”
“I was.” Not a protest but a statement. Maybe it’s true after all.
He looks up at her in the dark.
She looks down at him, edges a bit closer to the side of the bed. It sounds like cloth against cloth against skin and the occasional protest of springs.
She hangs her hand down and he lifts his hand to take it. His grip is loose, barely a grip at all. It’s more of a way of feeling, really.
Her fingers let him trace them, curve around his touch before flexing under it. Her hand is warm and soft and small and he can’t stop playing with it as he speaks. He props his elbow up with a pillow so he doesn’t have to strain for it, so he can keep going as long as she lets him.
“The fog was incredible,” he says. “It hits you, Rose. Just comes up and races past you and all the light inside bounces off it. The sky would turn red with taillights, some nights. Throw in a sunset and it went all orange, like fall leaves. The trees didn’t, though. Those went silver with it. Just the leaves. They’d get damp and the light would hit. All silver.”
Her hand responds to his touch, not to his words. There’s a tension to her, an intent sort of listening, but her skin wants his enough to make her relax. He can feel it, the relaxed outer layer and the tensed center. He can feel it and recognise it and he lightens his touch, slowly tempting each digit with a slow fingertip.
“It could be like living in a snowglobe with all that fog. Like you were looking up at the sky through frosted glass. The sunlight goes soft from it, but it muffles the sound too. Like all the guitars in the world have to be acoustic or something because electric is too loud. Disorderly. Something like that.”
Her fingers curve around his, tighten around his. Her touch tells him not to tease, tells him he can’t. With her grip, with the tension of it, he has no choice but to be serious.
“It was like another world,” he says, his voice fallen fully back into a whisper. “Oh, Rose. I wish you could’ve seen it.”
Her hand squeezes his. Holds on so very tightly. Her silhouette has lowered, her cheek pressing against the bed.
“I didn’t even like it that much. Not really. I was always leaving or tryin’ to. That’s what the bike was good for. Still good for it, I s’pose.”
She keeps quiet, keeps on holding his hand. His fingers are starting to ache with the force he’s using, the force she’s using right back. He still can’t seem to let go.
He sighs. “Dunno why I keep nattering on about it. That’s time long past, that is.”
“Was Fred there?” his girl asks, her first words in so very long. It takes that, takes her speaking for him to realize how very quiet she’d been. Her voice sounds muffled, sounds strange.
He makes a noise. It’s meant to be a yeah but comes out with a bit of something else, something more.
There’s a shifting sort of sound. The girl’s nodding, her head moving against the sheet. The grip of her hand is impossibly tight.
“I should stop talking,” he says. “Not sure why I keep talking.”
“S’ the Sleepover Effect,” she tells him, voice still strange, still off but trying not to be.
“What’s that?” Her grip on his hand has loosened, but he’s not ready to let go, not just yet.
“It’s something you find out about when you’re thirteen and a girl, sleeping in the same room with a bunch of people. You can’t just let it go quiet, so you talk too much.”
He scoffs and the scoffing helps. Not much, not enough, but a little. “You calling me a teenaged girl?”
“Nah - just saying girls learn faster.”
Another moment of pause and she pulls her hand back entirely, rolls out of sight. It’s abrupt and oddly hasty and he suddenly feels the extent of his almost-nudity. He’s cold and mostly naked and those two have nothing to do with each other. He pulls a sheet over himself, does his best to get comfortable in his makeshift nest. It’s not much of a solution, but it’s the closest he has to one.
After he’s done making all that quiet noise, there’s still no more sound from her bed.
“Rose?”
“Nope,” she says, her voice still indescribably wrong, still thick and scratchy in a way he can’t help but recognise. “You’ve gotta shut up now.”
He’s already said too much, so it should be easy to do. And he’s tired, so he should be able to sleep. It shouldn’t be that hard, but of course it is. He stays awake, waiting for the sounds that’ll prove him right in his worry.
By the time he falls asleep, he still hasn’t heard her cry.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Despite newer, pleasanter dreams - or maybe because of them - things feel more off in the morning. It’s just the initial impression he gets, seeing her curled up on her bed with her back to him.
He gets up. Uses the loo. Comes back from his morning routine to find her awake.
They make little noises at each other, one noise apiece, and she goes off to the loo, staggering just slightly with sleep.
Determining which of his t-shirts is cleaner is done by a sniff test. The one he wore on the ride up is the least rank, so he pulls on that one. He lies down on his lump of blankets, folds his arms beneath his head and stares up at the ceiling. She takes a long time to shower. A long time to use the hairdryer, too.
He lets his mind go as he waits, just lets it roam around.
Eventually, a foot nudges at his and he opens eyes he’d forgotten he’d closed.
“Hey,” she says.
“Morning,” he answers.
“You comfortable down there?”
“You’d be surprised.”
She hangs back until he pats the space beside him. Then she lies down, her stomach to the floor. “I guess it’s all right,” she says, her gaze meandering across his face. She frowns a little.
Up go his eyebrows. “You sure about that?”
“You look weird with this much stubble,” she explains, still with that little frown.
He rubs at his own cheek. “It’s only two days’ worth.”
“S’pose.” She shifts, props herself on one arm. Touches his face like he’s something she’s allowed to inspect. That he happens to be is a detail better ignored. “Just, I dunno. Something I’m not used to on you.”
“Not something you’re gonna have to get used to,” he replies and the movement of speech stops her fingertip near his mouth.
“...Right,” she says after a pause.
They look at each other, close and almost comfortable on the floor. If he were a braver man, he’d do something to that finger of hers; it’s close enough to his mouth to be easily caught. But he’s not a braver man, just a coward, each and every time. They lie there, just looking, their bodies so close.
“We gonna snog again?” he finally asks.
She blinks. He always finds it strange, the way she accepts the unexpected without pause but doesn’t quite know how to accept the obvious. She drops her hand from his face, leaves it on his shoulder. “You brush your teeth yet?”
“Might’ve done, yeah.” His hand goes to her back, to her shoulder as they shift onto their sides. Heads tilt and noses feint forward until they work out the angle between them. He finds her lips, strokes them open with his tongue. Inside, she’s wet and soft and hot and disconcertingly minty, the taste almost harsh. Her tongue tries to play with his for a small moment, their mouths pausing against each other. He explores her and tastes her, and at the touch of his hand on the curve of her back, she gasps the air from his mouth.
He presses forward and she rolls back, his chest pressing down on hers. The heat of her is incredible. Half on top of her, he feels half burnt, like it’s some sort of compromise. It’s lovely and that’s not a word he often uses. It fits, though.
When she sucks on his tongue, there are a few more words that fit, words far less polite but no less enthusiastic.
He groans into her and she drapes her arms around his neck, not seeming to mind the noise. She’s yet to release his tongue, yet to release any of him. His arms are a bit trapped under her and he struggles to pull one hand free, trying to touch. The motion hits his head against the bed frame and he groans for a different reason.
She releases him then, blinks up at him. She takes in the sight of his hand at his head and the metal frame of the bed by his ear.
And then she laughs her stupid little head off.
“Not funny,” he protests, rolling off her. She holds on, ends up laughing on top of him, laughing into his chest.
“Yeah it is.”
He watches the top of her head with the most annoyed expression he can muster, waiting for the pain in his head to fade. He pulls a pillow over to himself so he doesn’t have to strain his neck in his ire. After a bit, she stops laughing but keeps on resting there.
Good enough.
“So,” he says once he’s sure the unwarranted merriment has stopped. “Time for an adventure?”
She props herself up, her arms on either side of him, and she smiles so wide. Kisses him once more for good measure. “Thought you’d never ask.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: Forget about things getting out of hand: they’ve already gotten there.
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
The Confidante
She leans against his side on the bus ride back to Broto, tries to. It’s bumpy and jolting and he laughs when she cracks her chin on his shoulder.
“Not funny.”
“You didn’t see the look on your face.”
The sound of the bus is far too loud to support conversation, the suspension too poor for them to rest comfortably against one another. That’s all right. More like a proper adventure this way. It makes up for staying in a hotel, almost.
Eventually, a thought occurs to him. Discomfits him. “Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“You think that doctor of yours’ll mind buying us this little vacation?”
She shakes her head, the reply immediate. Her arms are around the backpack she’d bought earlier, again with someone else’s money.
“How come?”
“He hadn’t touched the account in at least a decade,” she tells him, which still isn’t exactly an explanation. “He sorta handed me the card an’ told me to have three fantastic months. Said it might help my mum stop nagging.” She takes a sideways glance at him. Elbows him a little. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You didn’t see the look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The one insulting my mum.”
“Ah, that one.”
She elbows him as the bus hits a bump and oh yes, elbows are hard.
“Oi!”
.-.-.-.-.-.
Dinner is small and simple in a restaurant that acknowledges tourists without giving in to them. He talks about architecture as she eats off his plate.
Their hands don’t reach for each other, but when, veiled by the tablecloth, her knee bumps against his, neither of them moves away.
He pays for the meal.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Walking along the river, staring down into dark water, they stall. The lights from the hotel shine on behind him. A harbour light’s guidance or a lighthouse’s warning, one or the other and so they stall.
Maybe she’s thinking about it too or maybe it’s just him. If it’s just him, well. He’s getting a little resigned to being a dirty old man by this point. She’s okay with it, though, the evidence seems to indicate.
“Hey,” she says and her hand slips into his. “Getting cold out here.”
“Wind off the water,” he says absently, his mind not on his words. “The sun going down doesn’t help either.”
“How fast are we goin’ around it?”
“Sixty-seven thousand miles an hour.”
Her grip on his hand tightens. “Okay,” she says.
“Right.”
The water below rushes on.
“Look, I-”
“Rose-”
“I would, really. I really would, I just- I can’t right now.”
“Can’t what?”
She gives a pointed glance at his crotch and despite himself, he laughs. Once he starts, though, he makes himself keep going.
“S’pose I’d be just as bad as a boyfriend then.”
“That’s not it,” she tells him, her cheeks clearly red even in the near-dark. “I mean, I want to. I do. I just... can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he asks and the look on her face tells him she’s taken it the wrong way. How she drops his hand proves she’s taken it the wrong way. “Not like that,” he corrects, waving his suddenly free hand dismissively, the other one shoved into a pocket. “‘Can’t’ is an entirely different condition than ‘won’t’. I’ve met people who couldn’t but would’ve and could’ve but wouldn’t. Which one are you?”
“Won’t but would’ve.” Though only vaguely seen, her smile still looks pained. Rueful - that’s the word.
He fights the urge to sigh, fights the urge to walk away from the final result of all her teasing. Ultimately, he doesn’t turn away. He can’t help the sigh. “Better than can’t but could’ve once, I s’pose.” It’s a weak joke, but it’s all he’s got.
“Is that okay?”
“If you think I’m only here for a shag-”
“I don’t.”
“Good.” He tucks both his hands into his pockets, presses his hands into his pockets. It pulls his jacket against his back, puts him more firmly inside of it somehow. “If I was, I would’ve brought condoms.”
“I’m the one who packed your stuff.”
“I didn’t say it would’ve been subtle.”
She laughs. Swats his arm.
He matches her grin.
They stand there for a while longer, two lunatics in the night, mad and loving it. There’s so much he’s not going to say.
She says some of it instead.
“I guess, um. Y’know, we could always still....” She tucks her hair behind her ear, reaches across her face to do it. The wind’s always blowing it about.
“Yeah?”
“Like up there,” she says.
“Would that be okay?” He still has no idea where her limit is.
“Would it?” she asks right back, honestly concerned, and he has to laugh.
“You think I’m gonna say no?”
He’s never seen her look more taken aback. “What, really?”
He shrugs at her, hands deep in pockets that ought to be deeper. In a sudden, inexplicable stroke of longing, he misses his old jacket. Much better pockets, practically limitless.
“What about,” she says and her arms are tight around herself, a tiny attempt to hold out the chill. “What about Fred?”
He bristles at the oncoming domesticity. “What about her?”
“I mean, is it okay? Is it... I dunno....”
“Over?” he supplies for her. If he has any say at all in the word choice, he’s going to be that vague.
“Yeah.”
“Very.”
“You sure?” she asks and this time when he has to laugh, it’s not a reaction from amusement.
“Yeah,” he says, and it makes him feel just a little bit bitter. “I’m sure.”
“Oh.” At least she knows when she’s gone too far.
He makes a show of folding his arms and looking down into the water. “Yeah.”
They just stand there for a time, not looking at each other. A single car drives by behind them, all noise and hard lights in the dark. It’s hot in his jacket, but it’d be too cold by a touch if he took it off. It makes him fidget.
“Well,” she says. “Good thing we weren’t planning on shagging tonight.”
His face cracks into something like a smile. “Too domestic.”
“Too awkward,” she agrees.
“Wouldn’t make for the best first time, that.” The second it’s out of his mouth, he knows they’re back to awkwardness. Then again, it’s possible they never left it.
She handles it well, her fingers combing out the ends of her hair. “Best not, then.”
They go back to being quiet, listening to water and insects and the tiny volume of a town so very far away from Barcelona. He shucks his jacket. Holds it in one hand, feeling the weight of it.
“Do I get to know why not?” he asks.
Head bowed, she keeps on playing with her hair. “’Cos... I dunno, it’s just- It’s not right.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not that, you git.” It’s not said harshly, but for once, insults aren’t endearments.
“I’m old enough to be your dad and that’s not where this gets wrong?”
“Nah,” she says and her voice breaks a little even as she tries for a joke. “That’s just sorta kinky.”
For some reason, it’s a train of thought he can follow instantly. It shouldn’t make sense, but it does. It couldn’t not. “You’re thinking about the captain.”
“S’ been two months,” she admits. Stops tugging at her hair to wrap her arms around herself once more. “I just- I miss him, okay?”
“You fancied him.”
She shakes her head at him, but it still means yes. Her eyes are so bad at lying. “Everybody fancied Jack. He was....”
“Jack?” he supplies, that being the obvious answer.
“I was going to go with ‘gorgeous,’ but that works too.” She shivers a little as the wind picks up, and he drapes his jacket around her in one smooth motion, cloaking her in it. “...Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
“That a yeah, he’s gorgeous or a yeah, you’re welcome?” she asks. She doesn’t seem to realize her tenses and he’s not about to point that little detail out to her.
He asks it just to ask it, trying for less death and more humour. “And if I said the former?”
She shrugs, pulling the jacket closed around her. It makes her look small and vulnerable and his. “Jack once told me somethin’ like... Like, ‘it doesn’t matter who else is on their to-do list as long as your name is circled on it.’ Something like that.”
“What, instead of checked off?”
Another shrug there. It’s possible she’s just enjoying the way the motion makes the shoulders of the jacket lift. “It sounded better when he was the one sayin’ it. ‘Course, most things did. Jack could hit on a street sign.”
“And yet why he would want to will forever remain a mystery,” he concluded. “Must’ve been something to watch, though.”
A small laugh leaves her and she looks better for it. “God, you’ve got no idea. Wish you could’ve seen him.”
“What did that doctor of yours think?”
She blinks up at him. “Sorry?”
“It was the three of you off and about, wasn’t it?” It’s such a patchwork story he has of her life that he’s forced to question her instead of remind her.
“Oh. Yeah. We’d gotten a little separated then. Captain Jack and I were tryin’ to get directions back to him an’ Jack got a little bored, I think.”
Up go his eyebrows. “A little?”
“To be fair,” she replies, grinning the way she should always be, “it was a very attractive street sign.”
“Still,” he says, leaning in a little, getting closer in the near-dark, “sounds like a case of bad priorities.” He reaches forward to brush a bit of dirt off the shoulder of the jacket.
Her tongue comes out to tease as she shifts beneath the touch. “Oh, I dunno. We found our way back because of it.” Swallowed up by his jacket, her hands take a moment to emerge from the sleeves. Her palms find his sides soon enough.
“Nothin’ wrong with bein’ a bit lost,” he tells her.
“No?”
“Nah.”
“You, ah....” Her eyes close as his thumb finds her ear.
“What?”
Shifting forward, her foot bumps against his. “Wanna get lost tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he says and sinks his fingers into her hair.
Her hands tighten on his t-shirt, pull it over his skin, and he can feel everything through cotton, feel the tension in each finger and the way that tension fades once she no longer needs to pull him to her, once he’s already there.
It’s slower this time, slower and gentle because it can be. It’s almost soft and it’s very quiet, the noises they make half-drowned out beneath the sound of water. They’re good noises, wet little noises, and he very much approves, shows her how much.
She sinks against him, the leather of his jacket shielding her body from his hands, a threat barely there. She’s soft and warm beneath thick leather but he can’t quite touch, can’t quite know. Her lips are just as soft and just as warm and until the moment her kisses become hard and hot, until that moment, it’s almost more tender than he’ll ever be ready for. It’s like kissing heartsbreak and loving the taste. She’s gentle and tender and the way her hands touch his face, stroke his stubble, the way her fingers stroke cheek and jaw and ear, the way she does that, it makes him feel cradled somehow, makes him feel ensconced and entwined in something, something amazing and fantastic that could never trap, only keep, and there shouldn’t be a difference there, there’s never been a difference there except there is, now there is, when she touches his face like that, when she touches him like she’s confused about which half of this pair is precious and somehow, absurdly, remarkably, thinks that it’s him.
And then she grabs him by the ears and thoroughly, thoroughly snogs him.
They scuffle with it, bending their bodies to fit their mouths together, shuffling their feet to keep close, fighting to keep close when they don’t quite fit standing like this. She’d be perfect on his lap. He kisses her hard at the thought, kisses her hard until she just goes soft and there is nothing more beautiful than a woman he’s just kissed into contented submission. Especially when it’s her. Her eyes are half lost in the dark of the night, lost but for their shine. Clinging to him, she breathes in little burbling giggles. What a sound.
“Feelin’ dizzy?” he can’t help but ask. His jacket on her has fallen open in the front, lets their bodies press together the way they want to, or close enough to it. Her arms loosely around his neck, she stays where she is, makes no move to stop leaning against him.
In fact, she ducks her head down, tucks it against his shoulder. A nip to his collarbone makes him gasp, makes him tighten his arms around her further. Her reply is a smug noise and even he has to admit that it’s well deserved. “Only ‘cause you were cutting off my air.”
He laughs a bit and she giggles some more and it’s all very good, fantastic in the extreme. He holds and she leans and it all smells like water and mountains and leather and her. It tastes a bit like that too, but mostly like only one of that four.
They relax into each other, just breathing, just that. His legs finally remind him how they hurt from today’s walking, a satisfying ache creeping through his body. She sighs a little, nuzzling closer.
It feels so very much like peace.
And then it occurs to him: “...Did we just have a snog after talking about your dead captain?” Forget about things getting out of hand: they’ve already gotten there.
There’s a small pause, a silence from beside his neck as she stops breathing.
“Pretty much,” she answers after her pause, stretching the first word out. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure Jack would’ve approved. Bein’ kinda a pick-up line, I mean. Or, well, anything that gets followed by snogging.”
“Still.”
“Yeah.”
They pull apart, almost do. Their hands keep finding each other. They step apart only to step back into each other and he kisses the part of her hair before laying his cheek there.
She sighs a warm breath though his t-shirt and into his skin. “This isn’t going to end well.”
“Did that just occur to you?” He likes the way it feels to move his jaw in this position, likes the way her hair tries to distract him.
“Nah.”
“Good - didn’t think you were that thick.” It sits between them for a moment, somehow fits between them where they’d tried to press out all the remaining space. “In a month-”
“I’m sorry.”
“Apologize for things when they’re your fault.” Even if he tried, it’s not a statement he could snap right now. His brain’s all dopamine and norepinephrine and he can feel the oxytocin starting to set in around the edges, seeping in around where the serotonin ought to be; irritation seems to be chemically impossible at the moment. Why his body seems bent on drugging itself, he’ll never know.
“I can feel sorry without it bein’ my fault.”
“It’s why you’d want to that’s got me puzzled,” he confesses.
She giggles a bit more, then stills again. She stills in a tense way, her grip on him tightening in a way that’s not exactly subtle.
“What?”
“You know,” she tells him and that’s not nearly enough to make him think that he does.
He pulls back to look at her. “I know a lot of things, me.”
“What with you being brilliant and all.”
“Exactly,” he says. Kisses her again, but on the forehead.
She shakes a little and in that jacket, it can’t be from cold. Even if she pulls it shut around her like that, it’s not because of tonight’s still light chill, not when pulling it shut pulls her away.
“What?” he asks once more. “’Cos I obviously don’t know.”
She shakes her head and even in the near-dark, he can see her hair against his jacket, all false gold against battered black. It takes impossible restraint not to kiss her again then and there, never mind what she can’t seem to say.
“The second I say it, this is going to get too domestic for you,” she explains. “So ‘m not goin’ to.”
He smiles a little at that. He actually smiles. “Maybe it’s something I wouldn’t mind hearing.” Maybe it’s something he wouldn’t mind saying back. Not that much, anyway. Not after a day like this. Tomorrow might be pushing it, though.
“You’d mind,” she says, far too serious after all their play.
All right. So it’s not that.
“So we’ll stop here and go to bed happy, then?” he asks. “Beds, I mean.”
“You don’t mind?”
He shrugs a little, scratches at his neck. “How domestic is it?”
She considers and then, playful, pretends to keep on considering. “I think it would give you hives.”
They pause together and look at his hand, already scratching at what had been an idle, passing itch. They chuckle a little, hers more of a nervous giggle. “Right then,” he says, dropping his hand. “Best stop before I go into anaphylactic shock.”
She fits their fingers together, presses their palms. The cuff of the jacket hits against his wrists a little, the sleeve pushed up a touch to let her hand out. “Can’t have that.”
“Wouldn’t care to.”
They head back to the light of the hotel, making the last climb of their long day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s closer and he’s further and farther and pressed, pressed, shoved down, held down until it’s time, always until it’s time. It is always time, the wrong meaning of time, puns in English, bad puns in English, English, England bad puns in England pressed down until it’s time but why why does that happen
What’s happening?
I don’t know, someone says.
What? someone asks.
Make it stop.
Who is this? Who are these?
Blue eyes are young against silver, a boy holding time, a boy staring into a gap that’s bigger on the inside, a boy about to run. Needs to run.
What is this?
It’s close, close, far but closer, almost there, almost. Right direction, almost. Point the hour at sixty-seven thousand miles, bisect the angle and go the far way, go that way and go the opposite
What did you say?
I didn’t say anything.
it’s all thoughts in heads, too many heads, so many minds, too big for one mind and filling all of them, all of them at once
Who is this?
I’m me.
I’m me too.
then who’s dreaming? Someone must be dreaming. There’s sleep and dreams and that’s the way it works, that’s the way it presses down on him, keeps him down there until the time and that’s all right, that has to be all right, down is fine, it’s over that’s wrong.
Let me come back, he commandbegorders.
And that’s when the fear hits.
.-.-.-.-.-.
His body wants to shake. He doesn’t think it does. Doesn’t think it shakes. Knows it wants to.
Adrenaline, he thinks and the word sticks in his head.
He’s wide, wide awake.
It’s the adrenaline.
He breathes out a long breath, a long shuddering breath that takes the shake out of him. He’s curled on his side, cramped in the small bed. He blames the dreams on that tonight. Stranger than usual and there must be a reason for it. So he blames the bed, blames being curled up on his side with his back to the window of the far wall, with his back to the entire room. He’s hurting and exposed.
He rolls onto his back, stretching out. Feels himself pained and aching. He gasps with it. His back stiff, his legs half dead and, just to top it off, his right arm still asleep, he tries to will the sensations away. He curses with sounds rather than words, swears in syllables that defy translation and slowly, the world tightens back around a hotel in Broto, Spain.
The sound of something shifting finally breaks through his haze and he turns his head, looks towards the window and the small lump of a silhouette there. The lump moves.
He grunts at it.
“What is it?” she whispers.
“You-” He has to stop, has to try again. His throat is too dry on the first attempt. “You had to pick a hotel with tiny beds.” He tries to stretch out some more.
There’s silence from the other bed. No sound of her settling back down or getting on up. She’s just there, propped up on one arm.
“What?” he asks, his voice still half stuck in a whisper.
He sees her stuck-up bedhair flop around as she shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“You were having another nightmare.”
He lies more resolutely on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Pulls his feet up and over the bedspread lumped down there. His legs keep going even after the mattress stops, just a little, just enough to be uncomfortable. He lies there in his underwear, staring at the ceiling.
When he doesn’t hear her move, doesn’t hear her stop watching him, he asks, “So?”
She doesn’t ask him if he wants to talk. She doesn’t even ask if he’s okay. And that’s good. It’s like she’s got a little guide of how to navigate his currents, of how not to annoy him. Hers is a direct question, no preliminaries required. “What was it?”
“Talk and confusion,” he answers.
“Talkin’ with who?”
He shrugs, his shoulders rubbing against the sheets. “I dunno. Couldn’t see him. Might’ve been a them, I dunno. Male, though.” Male and younger. Much younger. Or maybe that had been him. It’s all blurred together.
“Was he behind you?”
“He was in some direction. I just couldn’t see,” he says, recalling a little more of what his sleeping mind had put itself through. “It was all sorta thought and talkin’ and I didn’t have eyes to open, I think.” He shifts a bit more on the bed. Arches his back for a mo’, just trying to get the kink out. Whatever groaning noises he makes because of the motion, she doesn’t comment on them. “What did you dream about?”
If it’s only one way, it’s confiding. If it’s both ways, it’s just telling stories.
“What? Oh.” There’s a smile in her voice as she continues. “We were back on the mountain, I think. Except, well, except it was made of all these weird boulders. Like gumdrops, maybe.”
“What flavour?”
He hears her flop onto her back, the sheets rustling. “Dunno - they wanted to eat us, not the other way around. Judging by the colour, though, swirls of grape and pumpkin.”
“And I’m the one who had a nightmare?” He has to laugh at that.
She laughs too. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“You’re a strange one, Rose Tyler.” And that’s a fact.
“Just means I’m not boring.”
“S’pose it does.”
They lie there in the dark a bit longer before he has to move. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, reaches for the blankets he’s shoved to the foot of it. Yanks them off and drops them between the beds.
“What’re you...?”
“Bed’s too small,” he tells her again, dropping his pillows down to join the bunch. “This’ll hardly be the most uncomfortable floor I’ve ever slept on.”
She makes a noise of agreement and then, sitting up, offers him her bedspread. The cloth is stiff rather than soft, but it’ll do.
“Thanks.”
He settles in. Lies down.
Finds he can’t quite shut up.
“I thought about England,” he says.
Looking up between the beds, his slice of the ceiling has been vastly reduced. It diminishes further as a blond head pokes itself over the edge of the bed. “As in, ‘lie back and’?”
He chuckles. “No.” And he sobers. “No. Not like that. You know, I haven’t thought about it in ages. It’s not home - hasn’t been since, since I dunno. The only person who’s called me British in ages is Sanchez and that’s only to poke fun at my accent.”
She says nothing and the faint starlight through the windows can’t even attempt to touch her face at this angle.
“Lancashire.” He can’t remember the last time he said the word. “Manchester, specifically.”
“What?”
“Where I used to be from, I think.” It’s not much of a from in his mind, just a place somewhere. Just that. “But it doesn’t feel like it. I was there, but I didn’t much live there, if you follow.”
“...Yeah,” she says slowly. “I think I do.”
Again, a liar. Doesn’t matter, though.
He shifts a bit on the blankets, feels the hardwood flooring beneath his back. “It’s San Francisco. Where I was last from.”
“You mean you lived there?” It’s such a strange tone of voice she uses.
“Not the first time I’ve mentioned it,” he feels the need to point out.
“In Parc Güell, yeah, but that was different. You said....” She trails off, remembering. “It was six years ago and all filled up. Like London and Paris.”
“Good memory,” he says and adds nothing.
“You said you were a different man, back then.”
“And maybe I was,” he replies, a little prickly at her tone. There’s no reason for her to sound so strangely sad over it. “Makes sense that I was. Six years ago, you weren’t even a woman yet.”
“I was closer than you’d think.”
His laugh is more of a breath, a quiet “heh.”
“I was.” Not a protest but a statement. Maybe it’s true after all.
He looks up at her in the dark.
She looks down at him, edges a bit closer to the side of the bed. It sounds like cloth against cloth against skin and the occasional protest of springs.
She hangs her hand down and he lifts his hand to take it. His grip is loose, barely a grip at all. It’s more of a way of feeling, really.
Her fingers let him trace them, curve around his touch before flexing under it. Her hand is warm and soft and small and he can’t stop playing with it as he speaks. He props his elbow up with a pillow so he doesn’t have to strain for it, so he can keep going as long as she lets him.
“The fog was incredible,” he says. “It hits you, Rose. Just comes up and races past you and all the light inside bounces off it. The sky would turn red with taillights, some nights. Throw in a sunset and it went all orange, like fall leaves. The trees didn’t, though. Those went silver with it. Just the leaves. They’d get damp and the light would hit. All silver.”
Her hand responds to his touch, not to his words. There’s a tension to her, an intent sort of listening, but her skin wants his enough to make her relax. He can feel it, the relaxed outer layer and the tensed center. He can feel it and recognise it and he lightens his touch, slowly tempting each digit with a slow fingertip.
“It could be like living in a snowglobe with all that fog. Like you were looking up at the sky through frosted glass. The sunlight goes soft from it, but it muffles the sound too. Like all the guitars in the world have to be acoustic or something because electric is too loud. Disorderly. Something like that.”
Her fingers curve around his, tighten around his. Her touch tells him not to tease, tells him he can’t. With her grip, with the tension of it, he has no choice but to be serious.
“It was like another world,” he says, his voice fallen fully back into a whisper. “Oh, Rose. I wish you could’ve seen it.”
Her hand squeezes his. Holds on so very tightly. Her silhouette has lowered, her cheek pressing against the bed.
“I didn’t even like it that much. Not really. I was always leaving or tryin’ to. That’s what the bike was good for. Still good for it, I s’pose.”
She keeps quiet, keeps on holding his hand. His fingers are starting to ache with the force he’s using, the force she’s using right back. He still can’t seem to let go.
He sighs. “Dunno why I keep nattering on about it. That’s time long past, that is.”
“Was Fred there?” his girl asks, her first words in so very long. It takes that, takes her speaking for him to realize how very quiet she’d been. Her voice sounds muffled, sounds strange.
He makes a noise. It’s meant to be a yeah but comes out with a bit of something else, something more.
There’s a shifting sort of sound. The girl’s nodding, her head moving against the sheet. The grip of her hand is impossibly tight.
“I should stop talking,” he says. “Not sure why I keep talking.”
“S’ the Sleepover Effect,” she tells him, voice still strange, still off but trying not to be.
“What’s that?” Her grip on his hand has loosened, but he’s not ready to let go, not just yet.
“It’s something you find out about when you’re thirteen and a girl, sleeping in the same room with a bunch of people. You can’t just let it go quiet, so you talk too much.”
He scoffs and the scoffing helps. Not much, not enough, but a little. “You calling me a teenaged girl?”
“Nah - just saying girls learn faster.”
Another moment of pause and she pulls her hand back entirely, rolls out of sight. It’s abrupt and oddly hasty and he suddenly feels the extent of his almost-nudity. He’s cold and mostly naked and those two have nothing to do with each other. He pulls a sheet over himself, does his best to get comfortable in his makeshift nest. It’s not much of a solution, but it’s the closest he has to one.
After he’s done making all that quiet noise, there’s still no more sound from her bed.
“Rose?”
“Nope,” she says, her voice still indescribably wrong, still thick and scratchy in a way he can’t help but recognise. “You’ve gotta shut up now.”
He’s already said too much, so it should be easy to do. And he’s tired, so he should be able to sleep. It shouldn’t be that hard, but of course it is. He stays awake, waiting for the sounds that’ll prove him right in his worry.
By the time he falls asleep, he still hasn’t heard her cry.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Despite newer, pleasanter dreams - or maybe because of them - things feel more off in the morning. It’s just the initial impression he gets, seeing her curled up on her bed with her back to him.
He gets up. Uses the loo. Comes back from his morning routine to find her awake.
They make little noises at each other, one noise apiece, and she goes off to the loo, staggering just slightly with sleep.
Determining which of his t-shirts is cleaner is done by a sniff test. The one he wore on the ride up is the least rank, so he pulls on that one. He lies down on his lump of blankets, folds his arms beneath his head and stares up at the ceiling. She takes a long time to shower. A long time to use the hairdryer, too.
He lets his mind go as he waits, just lets it roam around.
Eventually, a foot nudges at his and he opens eyes he’d forgotten he’d closed.
“Hey,” she says.
“Morning,” he answers.
“You comfortable down there?”
“You’d be surprised.”
She hangs back until he pats the space beside him. Then she lies down, her stomach to the floor. “I guess it’s all right,” she says, her gaze meandering across his face. She frowns a little.
Up go his eyebrows. “You sure about that?”
“You look weird with this much stubble,” she explains, still with that little frown.
He rubs at his own cheek. “It’s only two days’ worth.”
“S’pose.” She shifts, props herself on one arm. Touches his face like he’s something she’s allowed to inspect. That he happens to be is a detail better ignored. “Just, I dunno. Something I’m not used to on you.”
“Not something you’re gonna have to get used to,” he replies and the movement of speech stops her fingertip near his mouth.
“...Right,” she says after a pause.
They look at each other, close and almost comfortable on the floor. If he were a braver man, he’d do something to that finger of hers; it’s close enough to his mouth to be easily caught. But he’s not a braver man, just a coward, each and every time. They lie there, just looking, their bodies so close.
“We gonna snog again?” he finally asks.
She blinks. He always finds it strange, the way she accepts the unexpected without pause but doesn’t quite know how to accept the obvious. She drops her hand from his face, leaves it on his shoulder. “You brush your teeth yet?”
“Might’ve done, yeah.” His hand goes to her back, to her shoulder as they shift onto their sides. Heads tilt and noses feint forward until they work out the angle between them. He finds her lips, strokes them open with his tongue. Inside, she’s wet and soft and hot and disconcertingly minty, the taste almost harsh. Her tongue tries to play with his for a small moment, their mouths pausing against each other. He explores her and tastes her, and at the touch of his hand on the curve of her back, she gasps the air from his mouth.
He presses forward and she rolls back, his chest pressing down on hers. The heat of her is incredible. Half on top of her, he feels half burnt, like it’s some sort of compromise. It’s lovely and that’s not a word he often uses. It fits, though.
When she sucks on his tongue, there are a few more words that fit, words far less polite but no less enthusiastic.
He groans into her and she drapes her arms around his neck, not seeming to mind the noise. She’s yet to release his tongue, yet to release any of him. His arms are a bit trapped under her and he struggles to pull one hand free, trying to touch. The motion hits his head against the bed frame and he groans for a different reason.
She releases him then, blinks up at him. She takes in the sight of his hand at his head and the metal frame of the bed by his ear.
And then she laughs her stupid little head off.
“Not funny,” he protests, rolling off her. She holds on, ends up laughing on top of him, laughing into his chest.
“Yeah it is.”
He watches the top of her head with the most annoyed expression he can muster, waiting for the pain in his head to fade. He pulls a pillow over to himself so he doesn’t have to strain his neck in his ire. After a bit, she stops laughing but keeps on resting there.
Good enough.
“So,” he says once he’s sure the unwarranted merriment has stopped. “Time for an adventure?”
She props herself up, her arms on either side of him, and she smiles so wide. Kisses him once more for good measure. “Thought you’d never ask.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->