Fic: In Human Hands (7/?)
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: “It’s not a watch,” she argues. “It’s him. It’s him and I lost it.”
A/N: I'm off to college this weekend, so this might be the last update for a while. I'll try not to keep you guys waiting too long and, with any luck, I might finally get that creative writing class.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
He doesn’t remember the ride to the hospital.
He does, however, hear about it in agonizing detail.
Sanchez chews him out for a while, once it’s clear - passably close to clear, at least - that there hasn’t been any pesky brain damage. “Haven’t you heard of water?” the Spaniard demands. “A liquid. You drink it. More than once a week, you drink it.”
He makes some sort of reply, picking idly at the tape holding the IV to his arm. He doesn’t look at the needle, stuck within his arm. He feels awkward and out of place, feels like this can’t be him. He doesn’t do this, doesn’t get sick, doesn’t collapse from heat.
Most especially, he doesn’t sit around in hospital in little hospital gowns. He wants his jumper back, now. Not to mention his jeans.
“You are either sour or passing out. However, if we find you a balance between the two,” Sanchez adds, “I would like to keep you on. It would help if you were conscious for it.”
He gripes a bit, but it all seems to dribble out, all of his hard words a soft mush. Sarcasm is taken as light-hearted joking. Lighter-hearted, perhaps.
Sanchez leans down, looks him in the eyes with a thick hand on his shoulder. “Señor, I have met no other man like you. None close. Eres un bobo loco, pero...” The older man shrugs, removes his hand, the friendly gesture evidently over. “Do you remember what you were doing to that car, before you collapsed?”
“I was fixing it,” he says thickly.
“Fixing it?” Sanchez echoes. “Fixing it? You rebuilt the entire engine!”
He would have thought that was obvious. “Does it work now?”
The man blinks at him. “¿Repite?”
“I said, does it work now?” He rolls his eyes as he says it and Sanchez doesn’t take the nonverbal sarcasm well.
“Smith.”
He bites back an impatient sigh. “Look, I’m dehydrated and irritable. I’m sor- What?”
Sanchez is staring at him in a way that can’t be good.
“What?” he asks again, his mind feeling blank.
“What language is that?”
It’s asked of him slowly and although he understands the words, he doesn’t understand the question.
“Spanish,” he answers in that language and Sanchez shakes his head. “English, Spanish, Catalan; that’s my list.”
“Sounded like Japanese, maybe,” the other man informs him.
“Took a class once,” his mouth says without him, the words leaving him before they can be judged true or false.
“What happened to the three language list?”
“Fluent language list,” he corrects. “Not fluent in Japanese,” he adds, taking extra care not to use the language. He doesn’t think he was speaking Japanese anyway, not really.
Maybe it’s the brain damage talking, he thinks before he can stop himself. He doesn’t know yet, doesn’t have anything besides a quickly uttered “it’s unlikely” in regards to the heat damaging his mind. It’s going to drive him up the wall, and soon.
Sanchez’s eyebrows attempt to rise off of his face.
“Anyway,” he says, trying to turn the topic back to one close to normal. “What about the engine?”
Sanchez shakes his head at him for a moment before pausing, before thinking. “Have you ever considered customizing?”
He’s considered building entire engines in his spare time, but he doesn’t say that. He shakes his head instead.
“You could do what you’ve been doing, but it would pay more.”
“You mean you could charge more,” he surmises.
“Ah, my ill and tired friend,” Sanchez corrects, “it would pay more.”
He chuckles and the pair nearly laughs, nearly.
They chat until the Spaniard is too bored to stay. Sanchez squeezes his shoulder, gives him a few words of less-than-helpful advice. He very almost leaves.
“I nearly forgot,” he says, interrupting his own exit. “What do I tell Rose when she asks where you are?”
That she’s supposed to be here, with him. That if no one else ever is, she should be at his side, should be there to laugh at him and make him laugh at himself and make this tiring ordeal go by a little faster.
“Tell her not to worry,” he decides.
“But also where you are,” Sanchez assumes.
“I don’t know where I am.”
The words keep spilling out of him today, all these words he doesn’t mean to say.
“El Hospital de Nens de Barcelona,” Sanchez answers simply. “Room... whatever room number is on the little plaque outside the door.”
“Might want to remember that,” he replies.
“Mm.” Sanchez smiles. “Now. No more stupidity from you. You will sleep for a few days and when I see you again, there will be nothing in your head but engines, engines, engines.” He pauses. “I don’t suppose you have a brother I could replace you with.”
He shakes his head. “Not anymore.”
Sanchez sighs at him. “My friend, you need fewer dead people in your life. And stop picking at that!”
Rolling his eyes, he leaves the IV tape alone. “Yes, mum.”
“Is she dead too?” Sanchez asks, refreshingly blunt. There’s no tiptoeing, no condolences, only simple questions.
“A bit, yeah,” he replies.
“In that case,” the other man decides, “you cannot tell me of your father - I would have to cry and I have a headache from you already.”
“Don’t get dehydrated,” he advises oh-so-helpfully.
Sanchez waves his hand at him before commenting somewhat wryly, “I can see why you like that girl of yours: she might outlive you.”
He gives the bag of IV fluid a very pointed glance. “Going at this rate...”
They laugh and the man not trapped in a bed leaves, abandoning the other to his boring fate.
And it is a very boring fate.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He tries to sleep, but all his dreams are the same. He dreams for hours and wakes a minute later and it’s not worth it, never worth it.
His eyes close as he breathes out, as he tries to ignore the needle in his arm anchoring him to this bed. He breathes out and he can’t breathe in. He can’t, not quite, not like-
He gasps in, shaking. There’s something wrong with him. There’s something very wrong with him. He feels cramped and contained and he can’t entirely blame it on sitting still.
Feels like there’s a vise around him, a hard pressure, squeezing, pressing, not letting him breathe. And it hurts.
Still dehydrated, he tells himself, still tired. Bed rest and fluids, see if the symptoms persist.
He’s not entirely sure why he’s thinking like a doctor, but he finds it unreasonably funny when he does.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She’s coming to see him. To find him.
He knows she is.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s given a tray of something he’d rather not eat, chews between answering questions. There are some issues with his paperwork, that long-standing problem of his.
“Travel around a lot,” he explains. “Stuff gets left behind in places. I can fill in the missing bits.”
He gets forms and a pen to go with his meal. He wonders whose bright idea it was to put the IV in his right arm as he gingerly applies said pen to said forms.
Name: John Smith. 43 years old; born February 16th, 1963. Height: 1.87 m. Weight: don’t own a scale.
That last bit doesn’t actually fit in the space provided, but he’s bored. The forms last him perhaps ten minutes and when he’s finished, he doesn’t recall half of what he’s written. No one comes back to ask him anything else, though, so he must have filled them out correctly.
Well. That was entertaining.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She’s a bit late, his girl.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“We’re going to keep you overnight, Mr. Smith, just in case. There are no signs of lasting damage, but we would like to run a few more tests.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
He thinks of his mobile, decides not to sound needy.
He’s bored, really. That’s all.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“A few more questions, if you don’t mind?”
“What?”
“Is your apartment air conditioned?”
“No.”
“Have you got a fan?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“O-kay. How often a day do you drink water?”
“Does tea count?”
“No.”
“Not often, then.”
The nurse makes a note. “Do you eat regular meals?”
“No.”
“How are you sleeping?”
He shrugs a bit. “I dream a lot. Usually wake up in between.”
“How long would you say you sleep for?”
“What does this have to do with being dehydrated?”
“Mr. Smith, when was your last check-up?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it and nods. “Point taken.”
“So how are you sleeping?”
“I wake up a lot. Four or so hours and I feel like I should be done.”
“Your body needs far more than four hours a night.”
“I get more than that, I just...”
“You mentioned dreams?”
He shrugs a bit more.
“...All right. I’ll be back later, Mr. Smith. In the meantime, I’d advise you not to wear sweaters in June.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Look, you can’t just-”
Her words are battered to the side, blown away into stale air.
“Please, you have to-”
She’s brushed off, shoved into a corner.
“Listen! Listen to me!”
She fades in the sunlight, paper falling through her.
“I have to find him! You don’t understand, I have to find him!”
Words are thrown at her, batter her, tear at her and he reaches out, reaches and tried to hold the words away, tries to pull away the harsh truths and twist them into petty, harmless lies.
His reach is far too short, far too contained.
“Rose!” he yells, muffled and far from where she is. He yells and he yells louder and his voice echoes in the abyss of eternity, fading away until not even a whimper remains.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He hates hospitals.
He hates sleeping in them especially.
He’s dozed and rolled about and has nearly done painful things to himself with the IV. He’s slept into the night, past the limits of visiting hours and this annoys him more than he can say.
There’s a phantom touch on his brow, the memory of a soft, warm palm. He looks in the dark for traces of her, for a glimpse of a sign. The other bed in the room is still unoccupied, the sheets undisturbed. But was the chair there before? Had Sanchez moved it back when he’d left or had he not bothered? His jacket, had it been hanging up before? Had she been here?
He reaches for his phone, flips it open, unsure of what he’s looking for. A text message? He doesn’t know how to text. Two in the morning, the screen tells him. No new messages at two in the morning, text or otherwise.
Returning his mobile to the stand, he presses his head back into the hospital pillow, breathes out slowly, pulls at the jumble inside of him to find something close to calm or lethargy. He closes his eyes and he breathes and he can imagine it. He can imagine her walking into this room with him asleep. He can imagine that very well.
She walks through the door, almost glancing back at the number outside of it, almost. She catches sight of him first, opens her mouth to speak before realizing, before closing her mouth and sitting down in Sanchez’s abandoned chair.
He’s asleep and she’s afraid. Doesn’t know how he’ll react if she wakes him, so she doesn’t. So she only sits there, only watches him and studies the IV and tries to reassure herself that she isn’t going to lose someone else so soon.
Yeah, he could see that happening. That’s what had happened, or something like it. She would have visited the garage and gotten the story from Sanchez, would have either called or come in person. She hasn’t called, his mobile tells him. So she must have come.
She must’ve.
He falls into a slow and clumsy sleep, his mind stumbling to a stop it can never quite reach.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The next time he awakes, his foggily remembered dreams are nearly normal in nature, like something out of a bad action movie. He assumes people normally dream about stuff like that. Shooting zombies and running from danger with a blond girl.
Or maybe they don’t; he’s not much sure what normal means anymore.
What he does know is that he desperately needs the loo. It’s a feeling he’s been getting used to all day and now all night, but remains annoying. Still, he can hardly expect much else, putting this much liquid into his body.
The hospital tiles are cold and clammy beneath his feet, as if the floor itself is ill. It puts a sick feeling into his mouth, pulls him back to the turn of the century, and he wobbles slightly as he pulls the IV rack after him. He’s been sitting still for too long, and this is what he gets for it. His unsteadiness is purely physical in nature.
He pads through the dark to the bathroom door, manages to maneuver the IV rack inside with him without doing damage to his arm. He lifts the seat and nearly cries out at the vestiges of a nightmare in his mind. His breath catches in his throat and irrational terror passes.
For one insane moment, he had been certain that something awful had been done to his genitalia. Telling himself that his action dream had probably entailed the threat of castration or mutation, he relieves himself, that horrible suggestion of something wrong still hanging at the back of his mind.
He reminds himself that he’s exhausted, blames it easily enough on that. Though it’s hardly like this is the first time this particular night terror has jumped into his brain, the sudden and bizarre fear of having the genitalia of another species. Probably some traumatic experience in his formative years.
That’s what Fred would’ve said. Had he told her about this? He can’t remember.
Too late now, anyway. Bit of a pattern in his life, that.
Pulling the IV rack along behind him, he goes back to bed.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She’s curled in on herself upon the hotel bed, rectangular plastic in her hand instead of circular metal. The muscles of her legs ache beneath his hands, pained and exhausted and shaking with tension. The room is dark, but he doesn’t need light to see, doesn’t need eyes to observe the state of her, to see the panic beating where her other heart should be.
The mobile rings and she answers instantly, her entire body jerking as she fumbles the mobile to her ear. “Mickey? Did you find it?”
The voice rings into the world, such a harmless voice with such ominous words. “Checked every online auction I could find, babe. Your watch isn’t up yet.”
“It’s not a watch,” she argues. “It’s him. It’s him and I lost it.”
There’s a pause, the world ringing through a mobile, the world pushing in through all the calls that were never made. “Does that mean he’s dead?” the boy asks.
“No,” he says, leaning over his girl. He folds his hand around hers, but she’s too numb with warmth to feel it. “No. Rose.”
She’s looking at a man miles away, but he’s right next to her. “Rose,” he says. “Look at me.”
She reaches for him and only then does he realize he’s not there.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Do you still feel dizzy when you stand up?” the nurse is back to ask the following morning. Tuesday, now, it’s Tuesday.
He shakes his head, gesturing a falsehood instead of lying outright. He’s dizzy when he’s sitting still, when he’s lying down. He’s dizzy all the time, but it doesn’t feel like being dizzy.
Not his fault the world keeps spinning. Not his fault that everyone else is too thick to feel it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He is released back into the world and nobody seems to have noticed that he was ever gone.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The apartment is unbearably hot when he gets back to it. Still scoffing at the idea of needing someone to take him home - he can walk perfectly well, thank you - he starts the fan, opens the windows in bedroom and kitchenette. Air moves sluggishly as he puts his jacket into the closet.
Plucking a thick novel at random off the shelf, he settles down on the lumpy couch that isn’t his, a lumpy couch in a stifling room that isn’t his. His boots scuff the top of the coffee table once, twice more as he gets as comfortable as he’s going to get. He shifts, opening the book without regard for page number. Starts reading words he already knows.
This can’t last.
Sanchez doesn’t want him back until perhaps Thursday and he’s yet to have his Tuesday lunch. He’s not to drive for a week, and he assumes that means riding, too.
Nothing to do.
No one to do it with.
Small wonder the girl keeps bothering him, he realizes, stuck with nothing else to do. On the heels of that thought comes a plan, come twenty plans. He knows what he can do today, knows exactly what he could do in a pair that would be dead boring on his own.
He checks for missed calls before he dials, looks to make sure. Looks to make sure again. He presses send, listens to her mobile ring. And ring. And ring. It’s not off, but she’s not picking up. Might be on vibrate or it might be deep in her pocket. Trapped in her pocket, more like, with those tight jeans of hers.
As he mulls that over, her recorded voice greets him. “Hey, it’s Rose. I can’t get to my phone at the moment ‘cos aliens stole it, probably, but I’ll get back to you soon.” She laughs halfway through and he closes his eyes, smiling just a little. Anything will amuse that girl.
“It’s me,” he tells her. “Got today and tomorrow off. Call me if you get bored.” That said, he ends the call, not at all worried about sounding abrupt. He holds the mobile in his hand for a moment, staring vaguely at the opposite wall. The mobile remains quiet, lying atop his palm as calmly as if its battery were dead.
He stays like that for a moment longer until part of his brain kicks in to remind him that he’s hardly about to get instant feedback. Shaking his head at himself, he nearly pockets his mobile before something occurs to him, something he should’ve done a while back. After a little bit of jiggery-pokery, he’s put her on speed dial.
For some reason, it makes him feel better.
.-.-.-.-.-.
After a shower and a fresh change of clothes - a t-shirt this time instead of a jumper - he heads out into the streets, ambles his way through crowds to the air-conditioned building that is a public library. His gaze moves from face to face, searching automatically through the blonds. It keeps his mind from collapsing from the lack of stimulation. It keeps him from picking at the bandage over the mark from the IV.
He feels strange today and it’s more than just the t-shirt. It’s not the hospital stay, obviously; he won’t let the memories sway him. It’s not even the world spinning under his feet; he knows how to walk. He fills his empty hand with his mobile and the strangeness decreases, slightly.
Something’s squeezing him, across the chest, around the head. Something is trying to break him open, break him, but carefully. Something wants him open, his insides flung into the air.
Or, he tells himself forcefully as bile rises in his throat, he’s simply feeling ill. His stomach rumbles, protesting its emptiness by trying to digest itself.
He stops to eat. He moves on afterwards.
The library steps are harder to climb today than they were the last time he came. He blames sitting still, blames the hospital. Wonders vaguely if he had anything to drink with his meal. He can’t remember.
He wanders through the shelves, trying to find something worth reading, trying to find one worth a read that hasn’t already gotten one. He pulls out his mobile to switch it to vibrate, checks it while he has it out. Nothing.
In the end, he settles down into an armchair with War and Peace in his hands, his t-shirt sticking to his back. It’s been a while since he’s given it a look and Tolstoy is always worth a reread.
A few hours later, he finishes it, decides he likes it better in Russian, and puts it back where he found it. He considers the shelf, but his eyes are tired. He gives Karmen the librarian a small wave on his way out and she waves back. Going outside, he changes his mobile back from vibrate and finds he still hasn’t missed a call.
From there, he wanders until nightfall.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Three balls over the door, three round circles on a wooden background. She runs to it, darts inside to the display case full of bodies. It’s bigger on the inside; they all fit on the shelves. She looks through them, shifts through them. There are women and children and pets and beasts, but she’s searching through the men.
The hand of a corpse fits in hers until it’s rejected by touch, until it’s deemed too warm. She rolls the bodies over, looks at all of their faces. Noses too flat, ears too small, hair too long, eyes the wrong blue; none of them are what she’s looking for.
“One’s got a soul in it,” she explains to the old man behind the counter. “There’s one like that. I want that one.”
“I’ll check in the back,” the man tells her, frail and uncaring. He returns with a body over each of his thin shoulders. “What about these?”
She shakes her head as he rattles in a drawer, buried alive only blocks away. “No,” she says. “I want the one with a soul in it. The bit that makes a person into a person. I need his soul back, it’s mine.”
“Sorry,” the man says, arranging the limbs of the bodies in the display case just so, wiping blank faces with a cloth smelling of polish. “Haven’t seen one like that. Are you sure you wouldn’t like-”
“I’m sure,” she interrupts and the bells on the door jingle cheerfully as she leaves.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He gets up for a glass of water in the middle of the night, stumbles out of bed because he can’t stay there with his dreams. The water is a simple excuse to move, to make his blood flow the way it’s supposed to. He goes to the cabinet above the sink, reaches up and pulls it open.
Thick and clear and battered, the plastic cup seems too small in his hand, seems old and strange and when was the last time he’d actually used the kitchenette for anything? He turns the tap, fills the cup, drains it. Once, twice.
Water trickles down his chin and he straightens his back as he pauses for air, for a refill. The third cup, the fourth.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, it finally occurs to him that he was thirsty.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Wednesday morning, he picks at his arm, at where the IV tape pulled skin and hair and took some with it when removed. Gingerly, staring at the ceiling instead of the bandage, he pulls off the remaining tape and the bit of gauze in the middle of it.
It hurts a little.
He gets up to throw the bandage away, but he returns to bed afterwards. There’s nothing else to do, his silent mobile mocking him on the bed stand.
It’s too early to call, he thinks.
He sleeps.
He dreams.
He wakes to wonder, to wonder idle, unimportant thoughts he doesn’t much care about. He thinks because that’s what he does, because he can’t stop. He can’t stop wondering.
Does she ever dream about him?
.-.-.-.-.-.
Wednesday is a long, long day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Wednesday night is longer.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He has never been half so eager to go to work, to throw himself into it, put both hearts and mind into the effort. He endures a friendly mocking at the hands of his coworkers before his health is asked after, before turning up the radio and getting down to business.
The car he’d been working on before is long gone by now, the owner evidently pleased enough not to come back and complain. And so the day passes by at something faster than a crawl.
There are two bikes to work on today and he finds himself grinning his way through the work. “Beautiful,” he murmurs within Pedro’s earshot, the other mechanic on the other bike. When he feels the man staring at him, he turns to look, finds surprise across the other man’s face.
“You ride?” Pedro asks.
He shrugs yes and the next hour is passed discussing their experiences with rain and drum brakes. There’s some debate as to the manliness of a kick start versus an electric start, some talk about riceburners versus bikes with more personality than a dishwasher.
“Mind you,” he adds, “I’ve known a few dishwashers with personality.”
Pedro laughs and he grins a bit and still that feeling won’t leave him, that tightness around him, that feeling of being stuffed in the cold dark. He drinks some more water, after, and waits for the sensation to fade.
He’s as productive as he’s ever been, but come siesta, Sanchez is giving him looks of concern, little glances that fail to bode well. He’s changed back into his street clothes when he realizes what it is, when he realizes what’s missing.
“¿Cómo está tu chica rubia?” Sanchez asks him lightly, conversationally, as he’s locking up for the lunch break. Apparently, they’re friends now, if conjugation is anything to go by.
“Bien,” he replies just as lightly, even though he really doesn’t know. He has no idea how his blond girl is. How or where or any of it.
Sanchez gives him a look, this considering look. “¿Y cómo estás?”
He shrugs, hands in the pockets of his jeans because he doesn’t have his jacket with him. He feels naked in his t-shirt. “Bien.”
Sanchez gives him another look, a different look. “Mentiroso,” the Spaniard calls him.
There’s little use denying it. “Sí,” he admits.
“Not just a liar, but a monosyllabic liar,” Sanchez remarks. “You’re a miserable bastard and I doubt you’ve seen her in days. I know I haven’t.”
“Thanks,” he replies dryly. “That’s exactly what I-”
“Smith.”
“I’m all right,” he says, once he remembers that this is his name.
“You’d better be,” Sanchez tells him. “I can hardly work you to death if you’re already there. Now go eat food, drink water, and tell your girlfriend you’re sorry for whatever the hell you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything,” he protests, allowing Sanchez’s term to pass. He’ll never persuade the other man out of it.
“Let me tell you something,” says the married man to the bachelor. “In the mind of a woman, you have always done something.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
He mulls it over as he eats.
Sunday was when he’d seen her last and Sunday had certainly been... emotionally intense. He’d gotten her to talk in a situation where she didn’t have room to shut him out. He’d had the bike and the control and she had cried, but he still wasn’t entirely sure.
His little tourist had needed someone to talk to. She’d-
Tourist.
Sanchez hadn’t seen her in days, he’d said that. Neither of them had seen her in days and she was a tourist, was only staying until her friend got back to her. It’s possible- But she wouldn’t have, not without... She wouldn’t’ve.
He wolfs down the remainder of his food without appetite, gets off the bench he’s come to think of as theirs and chucks the paper wrapper into the trash bin. And then he’s moving.
The metro brings him close enough to her hotel to walk the rest of the way without feeling too dizzy, without the world spinning too much. It’s a cheap little place she’s at, cheap without being seedy. Sort of a place for families on holiday without much extra cash, he’s always thought in a vague sort of way.
He goes inside for the first time, walks up to the front desk and smiles at the woman sitting behind it. “Hullo!” he says, his voice filled with cheer. “I’m here to see Rose Tyler, is that all right?”
He has two plans in the back of his mind, one involving lying about being on UNIT business, the other entailing lying about the delivery of a singing telegram. Thankfully, neither plan needs to be executed: the woman behind the desk simply picks up her phone and calls some extension number.
“I’m sorry, she’s out,” the woman tells him, quite politely. “I don’t know when she’ll back...”
“Nope, that’s all right,” he tells her, grinning quite a bit more than a disappointed man should be. If he were a disappointed man, that is. “Thanks for your help.”
She’s still here.
Still in the city, still here. Still out there somewhere.
He leaves with a lighter step and he’s nearly grinning outright as he heads back towards the garage, grinning right up until he’s not.
Because she hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s simply avoiding him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He throws himself back into his work hard enough to hurt. There’s not enough to do today, but he does it all the same, cleans up after himself and makes a little more mess to clean up a little more. The bikes are beautiful - one of them quite worn, for a Norton - but even that fails to put him to rights.
Taking a few minutes to breathe, he looks out the garage door, looks up at that gap between buildings that shows him the sky. He’s staring into infinity, he tells himself. He’s looking up and up and up and staring into the infinity of the universe. It goes on forever above their heads and it looks so flat, so dull.
It makes no sense and so that’s what he thinks about.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Her recorded message fails to make him smile as he listens to it again that night. He ends the call, tosses his mobile onto the dresser only for it to fall down the back. He sits down on the bed, shucks his t-shirt and sprawls his way into sleep, not caring when sleep won’t come.
When he dreams, his dreams are strange and frightening and he wants to be awake. When he’s awake, he can’t stand to be. No way out, really.
He’s torn inside and intelligent enough to admit to it. But he’s as torn as he’s going to get, torn and vaguely patched up and generally resigned.
He looks out the window and he can’t see the stars.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Friday morning comes and he’s had enough.
He doesn’t have to be at work until ten and he sets out far earlier than that, early enough to be out as the commute starts trickling in, as opposed to the flood it will be in an hour. He takes the metro with impatience, can’t sit and is almost too dizzy to stand. He finds his balance, compromises the spin of the planet with the race of the train.
When he walks into the hotel lobby, there’s a few people scattered in armchairs with newspapers, a family by the counter with their luggage. The mother’s struggling with her kids, telling them to behave and not whine so much about leaving. Waves him on in front of them when he approaches.
“Hullo,” he says to the man behind the counter. “I’m here to see Rose Tyler - that all right?”
“Oh!” says the woman behind him instead of the man in front of him. “Are you Rose’s mechanic?”
This is not something he expected to hear, and this early in the morning, he’s not entirely sure he heard it. “Sorry?”
“Rose’s mechanic friend?” the woman repeats and a significant part of his brain labels this as promising.
“That’s me,” he replies, smiling in a politely bemused way he hasn’t had to smile in years. “Unless she’s got another mechanic friend.”
“She only talks about you,” the woman says, looking at him as if he doesn’t fully match her expectations. Which, considering the face she’s looking at, he probably doesn’t.
“Ah,” he says, then recovers. “Which room is she again? Something with a three in it?” That’s a wild guess, but he doesn’t need to let that on. “I can never remember and I think she’s got my mobile.”
“Two-oh-four,” the woman tells him and he taps himself on the head, gesturing across his own idiocy.
“Thanks,” he says and a few more moments of increasingly awkward interaction are all he has to endure.
It feels stupid to take the lift when he could easily climb, but he can’t seem to find the stairs. The lift dings open and it dings shut and the world drops away that tiny, insignificant amount. It dings open, it dings shut.
He finds the door with the numbers attached to it, finds the one pseudo-wooden door he wants in this purposefully nondescript hallway. It’s right there, he’s right there, and now he’s not entirely sure what to do.
Besides knock, of course.
He breathes, still able to do that, watching the small peephole and waiting for someone to watch back. It occurs to him she might not be alone, a thought that sends his stomach lurching.
Feeling it more than seeing or hearing, he raps on the door once more, conveying his impatience with his knuckles. “Rose, I know you’re right there.”
The world spins and they spin with it, standing so very still.
She opens the door.
It’s clear she only just climbed out of bed, her hair a tangled mess. It’s his first time seeing her with her make-up off and she looks at once younger and older, at once more vulnerable and far, far more tired. Her hands toy with the pull-string of her pajama bottoms and the toes of her bare feet draw his notice as they dig into the carpet, the paint on her nails chipped half off.
He realizes he’s looking at her feet, brings his gaze back up to her face. She’s not looking back at him, is sorta staring towards his chest, her lip between her teeth.
“’Morning,” he says.
She looks up at him and he moves without thinking about it, without needing to think about it. He pulls her into his arms and she presses herself into his chest, burrows into him with her hands fisted in his t-shirt and her face buried in his neck. Her arms say she missed him and his reply is the same.
“Tell me what happened?” he asks.
She nods into his neck and it might be to agree or it might just be to get closer, to hold on tighter. She holds onto him as if he’s the one who might disappear, as if he were already gone.
He returns her grip and thinks, can only think and wonder why it’s taken him so long to come.
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “It’s not a watch,” she argues. “It’s him. It’s him and I lost it.”
A/N: I'm off to college this weekend, so this might be the last update for a while. I'll try not to keep you guys waiting too long and, with any luck, I might finally get that creative writing class.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
He doesn’t remember the ride to the hospital.
He does, however, hear about it in agonizing detail.
Sanchez chews him out for a while, once it’s clear - passably close to clear, at least - that there hasn’t been any pesky brain damage. “Haven’t you heard of water?” the Spaniard demands. “A liquid. You drink it. More than once a week, you drink it.”
He makes some sort of reply, picking idly at the tape holding the IV to his arm. He doesn’t look at the needle, stuck within his arm. He feels awkward and out of place, feels like this can’t be him. He doesn’t do this, doesn’t get sick, doesn’t collapse from heat.
Most especially, he doesn’t sit around in hospital in little hospital gowns. He wants his jumper back, now. Not to mention his jeans.
“You are either sour or passing out. However, if we find you a balance between the two,” Sanchez adds, “I would like to keep you on. It would help if you were conscious for it.”
He gripes a bit, but it all seems to dribble out, all of his hard words a soft mush. Sarcasm is taken as light-hearted joking. Lighter-hearted, perhaps.
Sanchez leans down, looks him in the eyes with a thick hand on his shoulder. “Señor, I have met no other man like you. None close. Eres un bobo loco, pero...” The older man shrugs, removes his hand, the friendly gesture evidently over. “Do you remember what you were doing to that car, before you collapsed?”
“I was fixing it,” he says thickly.
“Fixing it?” Sanchez echoes. “Fixing it? You rebuilt the entire engine!”
He would have thought that was obvious. “Does it work now?”
The man blinks at him. “¿Repite?”
“I said, does it work now?” He rolls his eyes as he says it and Sanchez doesn’t take the nonverbal sarcasm well.
“Smith.”
He bites back an impatient sigh. “Look, I’m dehydrated and irritable. I’m sor- What?”
Sanchez is staring at him in a way that can’t be good.
“What?” he asks again, his mind feeling blank.
“What language is that?”
It’s asked of him slowly and although he understands the words, he doesn’t understand the question.
“Spanish,” he answers in that language and Sanchez shakes his head. “English, Spanish, Catalan; that’s my list.”
“Sounded like Japanese, maybe,” the other man informs him.
“Took a class once,” his mouth says without him, the words leaving him before they can be judged true or false.
“What happened to the three language list?”
“Fluent language list,” he corrects. “Not fluent in Japanese,” he adds, taking extra care not to use the language. He doesn’t think he was speaking Japanese anyway, not really.
Maybe it’s the brain damage talking, he thinks before he can stop himself. He doesn’t know yet, doesn’t have anything besides a quickly uttered “it’s unlikely” in regards to the heat damaging his mind. It’s going to drive him up the wall, and soon.
Sanchez’s eyebrows attempt to rise off of his face.
“Anyway,” he says, trying to turn the topic back to one close to normal. “What about the engine?”
Sanchez shakes his head at him for a moment before pausing, before thinking. “Have you ever considered customizing?”
He’s considered building entire engines in his spare time, but he doesn’t say that. He shakes his head instead.
“You could do what you’ve been doing, but it would pay more.”
“You mean you could charge more,” he surmises.
“Ah, my ill and tired friend,” Sanchez corrects, “it would pay more.”
He chuckles and the pair nearly laughs, nearly.
They chat until the Spaniard is too bored to stay. Sanchez squeezes his shoulder, gives him a few words of less-than-helpful advice. He very almost leaves.
“I nearly forgot,” he says, interrupting his own exit. “What do I tell Rose when she asks where you are?”
That she’s supposed to be here, with him. That if no one else ever is, she should be at his side, should be there to laugh at him and make him laugh at himself and make this tiring ordeal go by a little faster.
“Tell her not to worry,” he decides.
“But also where you are,” Sanchez assumes.
“I don’t know where I am.”
The words keep spilling out of him today, all these words he doesn’t mean to say.
“El Hospital de Nens de Barcelona,” Sanchez answers simply. “Room... whatever room number is on the little plaque outside the door.”
“Might want to remember that,” he replies.
“Mm.” Sanchez smiles. “Now. No more stupidity from you. You will sleep for a few days and when I see you again, there will be nothing in your head but engines, engines, engines.” He pauses. “I don’t suppose you have a brother I could replace you with.”
He shakes his head. “Not anymore.”
Sanchez sighs at him. “My friend, you need fewer dead people in your life. And stop picking at that!”
Rolling his eyes, he leaves the IV tape alone. “Yes, mum.”
“Is she dead too?” Sanchez asks, refreshingly blunt. There’s no tiptoeing, no condolences, only simple questions.
“A bit, yeah,” he replies.
“In that case,” the other man decides, “you cannot tell me of your father - I would have to cry and I have a headache from you already.”
“Don’t get dehydrated,” he advises oh-so-helpfully.
Sanchez waves his hand at him before commenting somewhat wryly, “I can see why you like that girl of yours: she might outlive you.”
He gives the bag of IV fluid a very pointed glance. “Going at this rate...”
They laugh and the man not trapped in a bed leaves, abandoning the other to his boring fate.
And it is a very boring fate.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He tries to sleep, but all his dreams are the same. He dreams for hours and wakes a minute later and it’s not worth it, never worth it.
His eyes close as he breathes out, as he tries to ignore the needle in his arm anchoring him to this bed. He breathes out and he can’t breathe in. He can’t, not quite, not like-
He gasps in, shaking. There’s something wrong with him. There’s something very wrong with him. He feels cramped and contained and he can’t entirely blame it on sitting still.
Feels like there’s a vise around him, a hard pressure, squeezing, pressing, not letting him breathe. And it hurts.
Still dehydrated, he tells himself, still tired. Bed rest and fluids, see if the symptoms persist.
He’s not entirely sure why he’s thinking like a doctor, but he finds it unreasonably funny when he does.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She’s coming to see him. To find him.
He knows she is.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s given a tray of something he’d rather not eat, chews between answering questions. There are some issues with his paperwork, that long-standing problem of his.
“Travel around a lot,” he explains. “Stuff gets left behind in places. I can fill in the missing bits.”
He gets forms and a pen to go with his meal. He wonders whose bright idea it was to put the IV in his right arm as he gingerly applies said pen to said forms.
Name: John Smith. 43 years old; born February 16th, 1963. Height: 1.87 m. Weight: don’t own a scale.
That last bit doesn’t actually fit in the space provided, but he’s bored. The forms last him perhaps ten minutes and when he’s finished, he doesn’t recall half of what he’s written. No one comes back to ask him anything else, though, so he must have filled them out correctly.
Well. That was entertaining.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She’s a bit late, his girl.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“We’re going to keep you overnight, Mr. Smith, just in case. There are no signs of lasting damage, but we would like to run a few more tests.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
He thinks of his mobile, decides not to sound needy.
He’s bored, really. That’s all.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“A few more questions, if you don’t mind?”
“What?”
“Is your apartment air conditioned?”
“No.”
“Have you got a fan?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“O-kay. How often a day do you drink water?”
“Does tea count?”
“No.”
“Not often, then.”
The nurse makes a note. “Do you eat regular meals?”
“No.”
“How are you sleeping?”
He shrugs a bit. “I dream a lot. Usually wake up in between.”
“How long would you say you sleep for?”
“What does this have to do with being dehydrated?”
“Mr. Smith, when was your last check-up?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it and nods. “Point taken.”
“So how are you sleeping?”
“I wake up a lot. Four or so hours and I feel like I should be done.”
“Your body needs far more than four hours a night.”
“I get more than that, I just...”
“You mentioned dreams?”
He shrugs a bit more.
“...All right. I’ll be back later, Mr. Smith. In the meantime, I’d advise you not to wear sweaters in June.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Look, you can’t just-”
Her words are battered to the side, blown away into stale air.
“Please, you have to-”
She’s brushed off, shoved into a corner.
“Listen! Listen to me!”
She fades in the sunlight, paper falling through her.
“I have to find him! You don’t understand, I have to find him!”
Words are thrown at her, batter her, tear at her and he reaches out, reaches and tried to hold the words away, tries to pull away the harsh truths and twist them into petty, harmless lies.
His reach is far too short, far too contained.
“Rose!” he yells, muffled and far from where she is. He yells and he yells louder and his voice echoes in the abyss of eternity, fading away until not even a whimper remains.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He hates hospitals.
He hates sleeping in them especially.
He’s dozed and rolled about and has nearly done painful things to himself with the IV. He’s slept into the night, past the limits of visiting hours and this annoys him more than he can say.
There’s a phantom touch on his brow, the memory of a soft, warm palm. He looks in the dark for traces of her, for a glimpse of a sign. The other bed in the room is still unoccupied, the sheets undisturbed. But was the chair there before? Had Sanchez moved it back when he’d left or had he not bothered? His jacket, had it been hanging up before? Had she been here?
He reaches for his phone, flips it open, unsure of what he’s looking for. A text message? He doesn’t know how to text. Two in the morning, the screen tells him. No new messages at two in the morning, text or otherwise.
Returning his mobile to the stand, he presses his head back into the hospital pillow, breathes out slowly, pulls at the jumble inside of him to find something close to calm or lethargy. He closes his eyes and he breathes and he can imagine it. He can imagine her walking into this room with him asleep. He can imagine that very well.
She walks through the door, almost glancing back at the number outside of it, almost. She catches sight of him first, opens her mouth to speak before realizing, before closing her mouth and sitting down in Sanchez’s abandoned chair.
He’s asleep and she’s afraid. Doesn’t know how he’ll react if she wakes him, so she doesn’t. So she only sits there, only watches him and studies the IV and tries to reassure herself that she isn’t going to lose someone else so soon.
Yeah, he could see that happening. That’s what had happened, or something like it. She would have visited the garage and gotten the story from Sanchez, would have either called or come in person. She hasn’t called, his mobile tells him. So she must have come.
She must’ve.
He falls into a slow and clumsy sleep, his mind stumbling to a stop it can never quite reach.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The next time he awakes, his foggily remembered dreams are nearly normal in nature, like something out of a bad action movie. He assumes people normally dream about stuff like that. Shooting zombies and running from danger with a blond girl.
Or maybe they don’t; he’s not much sure what normal means anymore.
What he does know is that he desperately needs the loo. It’s a feeling he’s been getting used to all day and now all night, but remains annoying. Still, he can hardly expect much else, putting this much liquid into his body.
The hospital tiles are cold and clammy beneath his feet, as if the floor itself is ill. It puts a sick feeling into his mouth, pulls him back to the turn of the century, and he wobbles slightly as he pulls the IV rack after him. He’s been sitting still for too long, and this is what he gets for it. His unsteadiness is purely physical in nature.
He pads through the dark to the bathroom door, manages to maneuver the IV rack inside with him without doing damage to his arm. He lifts the seat and nearly cries out at the vestiges of a nightmare in his mind. His breath catches in his throat and irrational terror passes.
For one insane moment, he had been certain that something awful had been done to his genitalia. Telling himself that his action dream had probably entailed the threat of castration or mutation, he relieves himself, that horrible suggestion of something wrong still hanging at the back of his mind.
He reminds himself that he’s exhausted, blames it easily enough on that. Though it’s hardly like this is the first time this particular night terror has jumped into his brain, the sudden and bizarre fear of having the genitalia of another species. Probably some traumatic experience in his formative years.
That’s what Fred would’ve said. Had he told her about this? He can’t remember.
Too late now, anyway. Bit of a pattern in his life, that.
Pulling the IV rack along behind him, he goes back to bed.
.-.-.-.-.-.
She’s curled in on herself upon the hotel bed, rectangular plastic in her hand instead of circular metal. The muscles of her legs ache beneath his hands, pained and exhausted and shaking with tension. The room is dark, but he doesn’t need light to see, doesn’t need eyes to observe the state of her, to see the panic beating where her other heart should be.
The mobile rings and she answers instantly, her entire body jerking as she fumbles the mobile to her ear. “Mickey? Did you find it?”
The voice rings into the world, such a harmless voice with such ominous words. “Checked every online auction I could find, babe. Your watch isn’t up yet.”
“It’s not a watch,” she argues. “It’s him. It’s him and I lost it.”
There’s a pause, the world ringing through a mobile, the world pushing in through all the calls that were never made. “Does that mean he’s dead?” the boy asks.
“No,” he says, leaning over his girl. He folds his hand around hers, but she’s too numb with warmth to feel it. “No. Rose.”
She’s looking at a man miles away, but he’s right next to her. “Rose,” he says. “Look at me.”
She reaches for him and only then does he realize he’s not there.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Do you still feel dizzy when you stand up?” the nurse is back to ask the following morning. Tuesday, now, it’s Tuesday.
He shakes his head, gesturing a falsehood instead of lying outright. He’s dizzy when he’s sitting still, when he’s lying down. He’s dizzy all the time, but it doesn’t feel like being dizzy.
Not his fault the world keeps spinning. Not his fault that everyone else is too thick to feel it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He is released back into the world and nobody seems to have noticed that he was ever gone.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The apartment is unbearably hot when he gets back to it. Still scoffing at the idea of needing someone to take him home - he can walk perfectly well, thank you - he starts the fan, opens the windows in bedroom and kitchenette. Air moves sluggishly as he puts his jacket into the closet.
Plucking a thick novel at random off the shelf, he settles down on the lumpy couch that isn’t his, a lumpy couch in a stifling room that isn’t his. His boots scuff the top of the coffee table once, twice more as he gets as comfortable as he’s going to get. He shifts, opening the book without regard for page number. Starts reading words he already knows.
This can’t last.
Sanchez doesn’t want him back until perhaps Thursday and he’s yet to have his Tuesday lunch. He’s not to drive for a week, and he assumes that means riding, too.
Nothing to do.
No one to do it with.
Small wonder the girl keeps bothering him, he realizes, stuck with nothing else to do. On the heels of that thought comes a plan, come twenty plans. He knows what he can do today, knows exactly what he could do in a pair that would be dead boring on his own.
He checks for missed calls before he dials, looks to make sure. Looks to make sure again. He presses send, listens to her mobile ring. And ring. And ring. It’s not off, but she’s not picking up. Might be on vibrate or it might be deep in her pocket. Trapped in her pocket, more like, with those tight jeans of hers.
As he mulls that over, her recorded voice greets him. “Hey, it’s Rose. I can’t get to my phone at the moment ‘cos aliens stole it, probably, but I’ll get back to you soon.” She laughs halfway through and he closes his eyes, smiling just a little. Anything will amuse that girl.
“It’s me,” he tells her. “Got today and tomorrow off. Call me if you get bored.” That said, he ends the call, not at all worried about sounding abrupt. He holds the mobile in his hand for a moment, staring vaguely at the opposite wall. The mobile remains quiet, lying atop his palm as calmly as if its battery were dead.
He stays like that for a moment longer until part of his brain kicks in to remind him that he’s hardly about to get instant feedback. Shaking his head at himself, he nearly pockets his mobile before something occurs to him, something he should’ve done a while back. After a little bit of jiggery-pokery, he’s put her on speed dial.
For some reason, it makes him feel better.
.-.-.-.-.-.
After a shower and a fresh change of clothes - a t-shirt this time instead of a jumper - he heads out into the streets, ambles his way through crowds to the air-conditioned building that is a public library. His gaze moves from face to face, searching automatically through the blonds. It keeps his mind from collapsing from the lack of stimulation. It keeps him from picking at the bandage over the mark from the IV.
He feels strange today and it’s more than just the t-shirt. It’s not the hospital stay, obviously; he won’t let the memories sway him. It’s not even the world spinning under his feet; he knows how to walk. He fills his empty hand with his mobile and the strangeness decreases, slightly.
Something’s squeezing him, across the chest, around the head. Something is trying to break him open, break him, but carefully. Something wants him open, his insides flung into the air.
Or, he tells himself forcefully as bile rises in his throat, he’s simply feeling ill. His stomach rumbles, protesting its emptiness by trying to digest itself.
He stops to eat. He moves on afterwards.
The library steps are harder to climb today than they were the last time he came. He blames sitting still, blames the hospital. Wonders vaguely if he had anything to drink with his meal. He can’t remember.
He wanders through the shelves, trying to find something worth reading, trying to find one worth a read that hasn’t already gotten one. He pulls out his mobile to switch it to vibrate, checks it while he has it out. Nothing.
In the end, he settles down into an armchair with War and Peace in his hands, his t-shirt sticking to his back. It’s been a while since he’s given it a look and Tolstoy is always worth a reread.
A few hours later, he finishes it, decides he likes it better in Russian, and puts it back where he found it. He considers the shelf, but his eyes are tired. He gives Karmen the librarian a small wave on his way out and she waves back. Going outside, he changes his mobile back from vibrate and finds he still hasn’t missed a call.
From there, he wanders until nightfall.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Three balls over the door, three round circles on a wooden background. She runs to it, darts inside to the display case full of bodies. It’s bigger on the inside; they all fit on the shelves. She looks through them, shifts through them. There are women and children and pets and beasts, but she’s searching through the men.
The hand of a corpse fits in hers until it’s rejected by touch, until it’s deemed too warm. She rolls the bodies over, looks at all of their faces. Noses too flat, ears too small, hair too long, eyes the wrong blue; none of them are what she’s looking for.
“One’s got a soul in it,” she explains to the old man behind the counter. “There’s one like that. I want that one.”
“I’ll check in the back,” the man tells her, frail and uncaring. He returns with a body over each of his thin shoulders. “What about these?”
She shakes her head as he rattles in a drawer, buried alive only blocks away. “No,” she says. “I want the one with a soul in it. The bit that makes a person into a person. I need his soul back, it’s mine.”
“Sorry,” the man says, arranging the limbs of the bodies in the display case just so, wiping blank faces with a cloth smelling of polish. “Haven’t seen one like that. Are you sure you wouldn’t like-”
“I’m sure,” she interrupts and the bells on the door jingle cheerfully as she leaves.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He gets up for a glass of water in the middle of the night, stumbles out of bed because he can’t stay there with his dreams. The water is a simple excuse to move, to make his blood flow the way it’s supposed to. He goes to the cabinet above the sink, reaches up and pulls it open.
Thick and clear and battered, the plastic cup seems too small in his hand, seems old and strange and when was the last time he’d actually used the kitchenette for anything? He turns the tap, fills the cup, drains it. Once, twice.
Water trickles down his chin and he straightens his back as he pauses for air, for a refill. The third cup, the fourth.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, it finally occurs to him that he was thirsty.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Wednesday morning, he picks at his arm, at where the IV tape pulled skin and hair and took some with it when removed. Gingerly, staring at the ceiling instead of the bandage, he pulls off the remaining tape and the bit of gauze in the middle of it.
It hurts a little.
He gets up to throw the bandage away, but he returns to bed afterwards. There’s nothing else to do, his silent mobile mocking him on the bed stand.
It’s too early to call, he thinks.
He sleeps.
He dreams.
He wakes to wonder, to wonder idle, unimportant thoughts he doesn’t much care about. He thinks because that’s what he does, because he can’t stop. He can’t stop wondering.
Does she ever dream about him?
.-.-.-.-.-.
Wednesday is a long, long day.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Wednesday night is longer.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He has never been half so eager to go to work, to throw himself into it, put both hearts and mind into the effort. He endures a friendly mocking at the hands of his coworkers before his health is asked after, before turning up the radio and getting down to business.
The car he’d been working on before is long gone by now, the owner evidently pleased enough not to come back and complain. And so the day passes by at something faster than a crawl.
There are two bikes to work on today and he finds himself grinning his way through the work. “Beautiful,” he murmurs within Pedro’s earshot, the other mechanic on the other bike. When he feels the man staring at him, he turns to look, finds surprise across the other man’s face.
“You ride?” Pedro asks.
He shrugs yes and the next hour is passed discussing their experiences with rain and drum brakes. There’s some debate as to the manliness of a kick start versus an electric start, some talk about riceburners versus bikes with more personality than a dishwasher.
“Mind you,” he adds, “I’ve known a few dishwashers with personality.”
Pedro laughs and he grins a bit and still that feeling won’t leave him, that tightness around him, that feeling of being stuffed in the cold dark. He drinks some more water, after, and waits for the sensation to fade.
He’s as productive as he’s ever been, but come siesta, Sanchez is giving him looks of concern, little glances that fail to bode well. He’s changed back into his street clothes when he realizes what it is, when he realizes what’s missing.
“¿Cómo está tu chica rubia?” Sanchez asks him lightly, conversationally, as he’s locking up for the lunch break. Apparently, they’re friends now, if conjugation is anything to go by.
“Bien,” he replies just as lightly, even though he really doesn’t know. He has no idea how his blond girl is. How or where or any of it.
Sanchez gives him a look, this considering look. “¿Y cómo estás?”
He shrugs, hands in the pockets of his jeans because he doesn’t have his jacket with him. He feels naked in his t-shirt. “Bien.”
Sanchez gives him another look, a different look. “Mentiroso,” the Spaniard calls him.
There’s little use denying it. “Sí,” he admits.
“Not just a liar, but a monosyllabic liar,” Sanchez remarks. “You’re a miserable bastard and I doubt you’ve seen her in days. I know I haven’t.”
“Thanks,” he replies dryly. “That’s exactly what I-”
“Smith.”
“I’m all right,” he says, once he remembers that this is his name.
“You’d better be,” Sanchez tells him. “I can hardly work you to death if you’re already there. Now go eat food, drink water, and tell your girlfriend you’re sorry for whatever the hell you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything,” he protests, allowing Sanchez’s term to pass. He’ll never persuade the other man out of it.
“Let me tell you something,” says the married man to the bachelor. “In the mind of a woman, you have always done something.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
He mulls it over as he eats.
Sunday was when he’d seen her last and Sunday had certainly been... emotionally intense. He’d gotten her to talk in a situation where she didn’t have room to shut him out. He’d had the bike and the control and she had cried, but he still wasn’t entirely sure.
His little tourist had needed someone to talk to. She’d-
Tourist.
Sanchez hadn’t seen her in days, he’d said that. Neither of them had seen her in days and she was a tourist, was only staying until her friend got back to her. It’s possible- But she wouldn’t have, not without... She wouldn’t’ve.
He wolfs down the remainder of his food without appetite, gets off the bench he’s come to think of as theirs and chucks the paper wrapper into the trash bin. And then he’s moving.
The metro brings him close enough to her hotel to walk the rest of the way without feeling too dizzy, without the world spinning too much. It’s a cheap little place she’s at, cheap without being seedy. Sort of a place for families on holiday without much extra cash, he’s always thought in a vague sort of way.
He goes inside for the first time, walks up to the front desk and smiles at the woman sitting behind it. “Hullo!” he says, his voice filled with cheer. “I’m here to see Rose Tyler, is that all right?”
He has two plans in the back of his mind, one involving lying about being on UNIT business, the other entailing lying about the delivery of a singing telegram. Thankfully, neither plan needs to be executed: the woman behind the desk simply picks up her phone and calls some extension number.
“I’m sorry, she’s out,” the woman tells him, quite politely. “I don’t know when she’ll back...”
“Nope, that’s all right,” he tells her, grinning quite a bit more than a disappointed man should be. If he were a disappointed man, that is. “Thanks for your help.”
She’s still here.
Still in the city, still here. Still out there somewhere.
He leaves with a lighter step and he’s nearly grinning outright as he heads back towards the garage, grinning right up until he’s not.
Because she hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s simply avoiding him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He throws himself back into his work hard enough to hurt. There’s not enough to do today, but he does it all the same, cleans up after himself and makes a little more mess to clean up a little more. The bikes are beautiful - one of them quite worn, for a Norton - but even that fails to put him to rights.
Taking a few minutes to breathe, he looks out the garage door, looks up at that gap between buildings that shows him the sky. He’s staring into infinity, he tells himself. He’s looking up and up and up and staring into the infinity of the universe. It goes on forever above their heads and it looks so flat, so dull.
It makes no sense and so that’s what he thinks about.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Her recorded message fails to make him smile as he listens to it again that night. He ends the call, tosses his mobile onto the dresser only for it to fall down the back. He sits down on the bed, shucks his t-shirt and sprawls his way into sleep, not caring when sleep won’t come.
When he dreams, his dreams are strange and frightening and he wants to be awake. When he’s awake, he can’t stand to be. No way out, really.
He’s torn inside and intelligent enough to admit to it. But he’s as torn as he’s going to get, torn and vaguely patched up and generally resigned.
He looks out the window and he can’t see the stars.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Friday morning comes and he’s had enough.
He doesn’t have to be at work until ten and he sets out far earlier than that, early enough to be out as the commute starts trickling in, as opposed to the flood it will be in an hour. He takes the metro with impatience, can’t sit and is almost too dizzy to stand. He finds his balance, compromises the spin of the planet with the race of the train.
When he walks into the hotel lobby, there’s a few people scattered in armchairs with newspapers, a family by the counter with their luggage. The mother’s struggling with her kids, telling them to behave and not whine so much about leaving. Waves him on in front of them when he approaches.
“Hullo,” he says to the man behind the counter. “I’m here to see Rose Tyler - that all right?”
“Oh!” says the woman behind him instead of the man in front of him. “Are you Rose’s mechanic?”
This is not something he expected to hear, and this early in the morning, he’s not entirely sure he heard it. “Sorry?”
“Rose’s mechanic friend?” the woman repeats and a significant part of his brain labels this as promising.
“That’s me,” he replies, smiling in a politely bemused way he hasn’t had to smile in years. “Unless she’s got another mechanic friend.”
“She only talks about you,” the woman says, looking at him as if he doesn’t fully match her expectations. Which, considering the face she’s looking at, he probably doesn’t.
“Ah,” he says, then recovers. “Which room is she again? Something with a three in it?” That’s a wild guess, but he doesn’t need to let that on. “I can never remember and I think she’s got my mobile.”
“Two-oh-four,” the woman tells him and he taps himself on the head, gesturing across his own idiocy.
“Thanks,” he says and a few more moments of increasingly awkward interaction are all he has to endure.
It feels stupid to take the lift when he could easily climb, but he can’t seem to find the stairs. The lift dings open and it dings shut and the world drops away that tiny, insignificant amount. It dings open, it dings shut.
He finds the door with the numbers attached to it, finds the one pseudo-wooden door he wants in this purposefully nondescript hallway. It’s right there, he’s right there, and now he’s not entirely sure what to do.
Besides knock, of course.
He breathes, still able to do that, watching the small peephole and waiting for someone to watch back. It occurs to him she might not be alone, a thought that sends his stomach lurching.
Feeling it more than seeing or hearing, he raps on the door once more, conveying his impatience with his knuckles. “Rose, I know you’re right there.”
The world spins and they spin with it, standing so very still.
She opens the door.
It’s clear she only just climbed out of bed, her hair a tangled mess. It’s his first time seeing her with her make-up off and she looks at once younger and older, at once more vulnerable and far, far more tired. Her hands toy with the pull-string of her pajama bottoms and the toes of her bare feet draw his notice as they dig into the carpet, the paint on her nails chipped half off.
He realizes he’s looking at her feet, brings his gaze back up to her face. She’s not looking back at him, is sorta staring towards his chest, her lip between her teeth.
“’Morning,” he says.
She looks up at him and he moves without thinking about it, without needing to think about it. He pulls her into his arms and she presses herself into his chest, burrows into him with her hands fisted in his t-shirt and her face buried in his neck. Her arms say she missed him and his reply is the same.
“Tell me what happened?” he asks.
She nods into his neck and it might be to agree or it might just be to get closer, to hold on tighter. She holds onto him as if he’s the one who might disappear, as if he were already gone.
He returns her grip and thinks, can only think and wonder why it’s taken him so long to come.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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