Fic: In Human Hands (13/24?)
Title: In Human Hands
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “Why Barcelona?” she asks, her voice fitting between human footsteps and the gentle breeze of the sky, all three somehow fitting together down here, below here.
“Why not?” he counters.
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
“You sure you’re up for this?”
“Rose,” he says, “for the last time, it’s not even that far.”
She raises her hands, playful even while defensive. “Just checkin’,” she’ll say, says, is saying. The gesture sticks in his head, though, makes him pause and think and wonder and then she’s concerned at him again.
He grabs one of her hands before she can say anything more. “Metro - c’mon!”
He tugs and she laughs, both actions reflexive, both instinctual, and then they’re running.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s crowded, Sunday morning notwithstanding. With the day of San Juan just yesterday, the extra tourists are only to be expected. Still, they’re hardly crammed into the compartment, no, it’s not that bad. No seats open, though. Well, not a pair open. Not together.
“Sit,” she says, nods at the space. Just the one, between a mother with her child and a bloke with a newspaper. Concern makes her commanding, and just a touch condescending.
“Sorry, left the bone and collar at home,” he answers with a roll of the eyes, keeping one hand on the metal bar above their heads, letting her take the hanging handle.
She rolls her eyes back at him. The train lurches a little, going around a corner, and she wobbles with it, holding on tight to the plastic grip. He shifts on his feet, balancing on this train on this earth with no problems.
He grins at her and she tries to look sour, hanging there by a hand, but she tilts toward him, against him. When his arm holds her around the waist, her smile appears. Becomes something close-to-but-certainly-not-shy as she presses against his side, as he keeps her there, her center against his hip.
“Think you might want to sit down, sense of balance like yours,” he tells her, only just loud enough to hear over the noise surrounding them. It’s not hard with her head at his shoulder.
“You first,” she counters and the train sways them back and forth.
“One seat.”
She hasn’t forgotten, lets it show in her eyes as she repeats, “You first.”
“You’re a bit old for lap-sittin’,” he points out before immediately, immediately wishing he hadn’t because he already knows what she’s going to say, already knows what their reactions to each other will be.
First, she grins, that tongue-touched smile. “Or maybe just old enough,” she counters.
Second is his hand, the automatic reaction of releasing what is recognized, the jerk away when all he wants is towards.
Third is the widening of her eyes, the distance as they rock, as he stays and she moves to the side, is moved to the side without his touch upon her.
Fourth is what he doesn’t want to happen.
So he reaches instead, a decision made in the gap between heartbeats, a decision that doesn’t break the chain of events, a chain made into chainmail, not a weak line but a solid web. It’s not a new link but a different one and this is the cool piece of metal he’ll trace with a fingertip.
His arm slips around her, fits around her, traps her hair against her back, pulls her against him with an abrupt snap and her mouth is open and she’s winded and just a little scared, and so he says it, says exactly the right thing at exactly the right time and he can hear her laughter in her still-silent mouth, he can see the joy in tense eyes. He can. Oh, he can.
“Old enough to be heavy,” he shoots back, blunt and insulting, close enough to feel her breath rising in her chest, to feel it released toward his neck.
And she laughs and she swats him, tells him to shut up, and all he does is smile back, laugh at that light hit, at ruin averted, at how the world has turned fantastic beneath the palm of his hand.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The first look of guilt comes later than he thought it would, walking uphill. She starts to lag - understandable enough - and when he turns, she’s looking at him, looking pained.
“Still San Juan weekend,” he reminds her, pausing just long enough to let her catch up, for one of them to take the other’s hand. “Any shop or market’s going to be flooded with tourists, today. They clear out all the non-broken watches, all the better.”
“And if they buy a non-broken non-watch?” she asks, can’t help but question him. It’s so easy to see it in her face, the way she wants to believe him.
The way she doesn’t dare to.
He shrugs, keeps on walking, keeps on guiding her along. “They’ll try to sell it off somewhere else. So long as it looks valuable, no one’s going to dump it in the bin.”
“...hope so.”
He’d like to think she’s out of breath, quiet as she is, that it’s just the uphill climb. “We’ll find it,” he tells her, keeps on telling her. “Just taking today off, that’s all.” It’s the right thing to do: she’s driving herself half mad over it all.
“Takin’ the whole weekend off,” she corrects and though it’s guilt, it’s also a sulk.
“I wasn’t stopping you yesterday,” he points out and by the look on her face, this is clearly the wrong thing to say.
“You were sick. And you still probably are, but I’m not stupid enough to try an’ make you stay still.”
True enough, he acknowledges silently. Lets the conversation lapse as they climb the street. It reminds him of home in a way that echoes, like a sound made false as it hits uneven rock.
“God, this is steep,” she says and he laughs because that was the thought; that was it. That’s the echo. “What?” she asks.
“Nothing compared to San Francisco,” he answers. “Maybe a little, but not much.”
That catches her ear, tilts her head. “San Francisco?”
“The city,” he says, for some reason feeling the need to clarify.
“I know,” she says, still looking at him oddly, like she’s going to say something she might regret. “But when’d you go?”
He shrugs a bit. “Years back.”
The words fall between them and stick there, don’t quite continue in their tumble to the sidewalk. Won’t be set down to be left behind.
“Years back,” she says, repeating carefully.
He thinks of Grace, of a return that hadn’t lasted. He lies, partially: “A long time ago. Almost six and a half years now.”
She’s watching him carefully, holding his hand carefully; her increased attention turns him hyperaware.
He looks to her, to her eyes and nose and bitten lip. “I was a different man, back then,” he tells her, feels it’s something she should know.
It’s something she might already know, something he can almost see, something half illuminated by the light of her eyes. He’s not sure how it got there.
“Yeah,” she says and he pretends it was a question.
“Yeah,” he answers.
Things go silent between them once more, just for a moment, for a little while. Their palms sweat against each other as they climb, lifting legs high and setting them down in a shortened step, up and up and up. He checks his watch - it’s still before ten. Good.
Eventually, she tries to pull him back into banter, or into something like it:
“You sure we’re going the right way?”
“Trust me, would you?”
“I’ve already been to Parc Güell. Back when I started hanging around the garage, remember?”
Actually, he didn’t really; he hadn’t much been paying attention, back then. “Yeah, but you did it wrong.”
That sets off a small staring contest, a bad thing to do while walking.
“What d’you mean, ‘wrong’?”
He shrugs. “Show you when we get there.”
She sighs at him, breaks eye contact to look ahead, to take a verbal pause. “...There’s an escalator built into this hill. Tell me I’m not imagining that.”
He laughs a little, just at the look on her face. “What, you didn’t see it last time?”
“Took the bus,” she explains, picking up her pace, eager for the opportunity to stand instead of climb.
“You see? Did it wrong.”
“You’re so full of it,” she tells him, but it’s more a statement of glee than an accusation of arrogance.
“Sor’ of, yeah,” he answers, looking where he’s going instead of at her. So he only feels it against his hand, that little jerk, only sees her after she’s recovered, only sees the top of her head as she hugs his arm tight. There’s something he should say to her here, that’s more than likely, but his mind goes blank.
He’s in a t-shirt and she’s in a tank top and he’d never noticed how much skin there is on arms when he was still wearing his jacket. There’s a lot. She’s hot and soft and her hair ghosts against his skin as she hugs his arm to her chest, as her cheek touches against his shoulder. Their steps match, even going uphill.
“You’re gonna see it the right way,” he tells her but that’s not what he means, not quite. What he means is that he’s going to show it to her, is that he’s going to give her this. That it’s been far, far too long since the last time he did this, could do this. Not since Tarragona.
“Okay,” she says and when they get on the escalator, she holds his arm all the way up.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s an off-white world beyond the entrance, an off-white world trimmed with colour and framed with two houses made of gingerbread stone and frosted with mosaics. A staircase split in two leads up to the terrace, to a building of columns, to the blue, blue sky. Fountains gurgle faintly, a salamander of pottery losing water through its speckled open mouth, the constructed lizard not quite guarding the passage upwards. The ridge of its back mimics the wave of the sea in shape and color both, forming a fitting body for a fountain.
Cracks in its skin give it scales, give it stripes and shining colours as the pottery changes piece to piece, yellow and blue and blue and blue. It’s not quite beautiful, not in the usual way of it, but it’s not half a sight to see.
On either side of the stairs are the passageways he wants to walk with her later, brown and earthy and hard, a contrast to the dreamlike design of the terrace above. It smells more like plants up here, barely at all like the sea, only a little of metal and engines. He can still hear people, can still hear the world down the hill, but there are birds here, and footsteps. It’s a sound he finds he loves, that of so many moving.
Information is rippling in his brain, so much he could tell her on the history of the place, the design, the architect. He finds he wants to tell her, to say it all, to set his hands on her shoulders from behind and murmur every last detail into her ear. His hands nearly pull from the pockets of his jeans at the thought.
He looks to her, waiting for her reaction, watching the sunlight stroke her face.
“S’less crowded,” she says.
He gives her a sharp look, but she only returns his gaze, disappointed and trying not to show it.
It stings.
“Less crowded,” he repeats. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“It’s pretty,” she admits, gives that to him readily enough. “S’just, I looked around last time. Pretty much saw the whole thing in half an hour.” She says it like she’s okay being here, but her eyes say she’s trying not to be bored, like she thinks she owes it to him to be interested. But if she thought it would be that bad, he tells himself, she wouldn’t’ve let him drag her along in the first place.
He takes back her hand with a firm grip and a pointed expression. “That was on your own,” he tells her, and waits for her to say it.
Her eyes watch his, flicker from one to other as she thinks, as his expectation is clearly seen but not clearly understood. She bites her lip and her hand doesn’t quite hold to his, not the usual way. Her voice is as soft and uncertain as her hand in his when she offers up those three words: “Better with two...?”
“Much,” he agrees and grins. That wasn’t too hard, was it?
She smiles back, uneasy about it in a way he can’t pin down and doesn’t particularly like. He’d say he’s put her on edge, would say that of the way her body tenses, the way her hand doesn’t quite know his.
“What?” he asks and that weak smile stops, is readily replaced by something close to surprise, close enough that he can call it that, will call it that. He doesn’t want to search for the word to describe what it might be.
“S’nothing.”
He wishes that were true, isn’t careful about it, but wishing doesn’t make him blind.
“You don’t want to be here.”
“I need to be looking for the watch,” she corrects, sidesteps. “I’ve stopped for too long, I-”
“You need a break.”
She shakes her head, uses the opportunity to break eye contact, to break contact. To take her hand back in the guise of tucking her hair back over her ear. “I’ve had one. A long one.”
He can tell she’s about to go and get mad over it, maybe even leave outright. In the face of that, his mind closes down on one detail, on his greatest want and truest need:
“Come with me,” he says.
Brown eyes reflect blue as she looks to him, looks up at him. And maybe it’s the sky in her eyes or maybe it’s his eyes, maybe even something as human and cliché as that, but it’s a thought that feels good, a thought that makes him half confident as he waits, as he stares into her and vows not to beg.
“...Okay,” she says, and it’s little more than a breath.
He’ll settle for that much.
Taking her hand, he hurries her up the stairs, bringing her past the reptilian fountain, past the tourists who’d had the same idea of an early entry. “D’you know,” he asks her over his shoulder as he jogs up the stairs, only half pulling her now, “how I know you did it wrong the first time?”
“I know you’re gonna tell me!” she answers, forced back into good humour by his dash.
He waits to answer and they run across the terrace together to the sinuous wall around the wide, open space, a wall made of mosaic, a wall with a bench set into it. Not built into it, he wants to say. Sculpted out of it, maybe. Might do for it, sculpted. The wall meanders, a sinuous snake shining in the fresh sunlight, concave and converse, in and out of the terrace, forming so many small balconies, all similar without being the same.
This is where he brings her.
“Okay,” she says, finds what she might think is his point and concedes to it immediately. She nods a little and he holds her hand and she gives him a smile.
But has she got it right? There’s the question. “What is?”
“You can see it now,” she tells him, turning to look back the way they’ve come. To see the wide terrace, to see the extent of the place without it being filled, without it overrun. She thinks it beautiful now. That’s clear enough in her eyes, in the gentle, thankful squeeze of her fingers before he lets go.
He steps in front of her.
She looks up at him. Looks up at his face and at his eyes and at his mouth and there’s a moment when he’s not sure if she’s looking at or into him, a moment where he tenses and shrinks inside, loses volume and keeps mass, concentrating whatever it is she sees instead of diluting it. He’s going about this the wrong way, enacts the change he needs rather than continue this way.
He places his hands on her shoulders, so nearly bare and tinged with the bronze of the sun. He places his hands on her shoulders and the rise and fall of them stops, shakes. His damp hands on her sweatmarked shoulders and he turns her.
It’s not a smooth turn, one hand pushing, the other pulling, and neither her feet nor mind understanding, not at first. If he presses like so, she’ll stumble, stumble and tumble against him, into him - but only if he presses like so.
He keeps his hands steady.
Steady and on her shoulders, his grip returning to its previous location once she’s facing out, his hand simply on the other side. Her shoulders tense in anticipation and he regrets the bench, regrets that he can’t walk her right up to the edge. He’d let her taste the air as he held her, safe from the fall. He wants to do that. It’s a sudden urge and it seizes him so strongly, this urge he can’t act upon, and so he does the next best thing and pulls her to him, steps into her.
She tries to look up at him but he nudges her back to where he wants her, presses her temple with his chin, turns her face back out to the bay, to the water beyond close trees and far buildings. He bends his neck, lowers his mouth.
“Look at it.”
Her hair covering her ear moves with the natural breeze, with the air holding his words, and she shivers under his palms.
“Just look, Rose. Not at the park entrance. Look out there.”
“The city,” she says, might say.
“The city?” he questions, her hair tickling the side of his face. He’d brush it away if that didn’t mean letting go.
It’s a breath this time, an exhalation like a sigh. Her shoulders rise and fall, pull the word up and let it fly out to the skyline: “Barcelona.”
“Best view of the bay,” he tells her, voice quiet. He doesn’t need his words to carry when his only audience is a centimetre away. “You can see up here, Rose. Stand up high enough and you can see most everything. Not the small bits, mind, just how they fit.”
“What d’you...?”
“Look at the streets,” he tells her without knowing why. He doesn’t know what he’ll say from here, only what she’ll say when it’s finished.
She looks. “S’ traffic.”
He shakes his head and where his chin brushes against her crown, she moves to sustain contact.
“It’s a wave,” he says and he taps his fingers against her skin in demonstration, one hand and the other in the same direction, mimicking the motion he speaks of. “One slows down, what do the rest do?”
She breathes in.
“Rose,” he says, patient, quiet. “What do the rest do?”
“They, they slow down.”
“Getting them closer. And if the first car turns off to the side?”
“Speed up again,” she answers, more sure of herself.
“Different speeds at first, though,” he half-tells her, half-reminds her. “It makes gaps between, speeding up. Only get rid of those once they all adjust and it’s all after the crunch from slowing down in the first place. Get a long enough line and you’ll never be rid of it. Make it infinite. Make one car slow down in an infinite line, get rid of it, and let the rest speed up and they’ll make it back up to speed, sure. But always a bit behind where they could’ve been. And always with that gap after the crunch. Different amounts of space in the same amount of time - always throws things off, that.”
There’s a pause where nothing stops, where they breathe and he thinks she’s thinking.
She leans into his hands, just the once. It’s a sway. “Something wrong with gaps?” she asks, only half a question.
“Stuff can get in between. Another car. A motorbike. But with another car speeding up behind you. If it doesn’t slow down, it’ll hit. And if it slows....”
“Another wave?”
“Another wave.”
“And that’s bad,” she says, says it like a question, and her hair touches his throat.
He closes his eyes to the bay and the city and the mosaics and her hair and he lets himself talk. “Depends on what’s in the gap. How big and what speed and what it might do.”
“So... a wave happens.”
“Yeah.”
“And then a gap happens. And if it’s infinite, it’s stuck with a gap.”
His thumb strokes a yes into her skin.
She inhales.
He waits.
“But the gap could fill with somethin’ good - but it would start a new wave.”
“You’re being a bit slow,” he tells her and she taps her head against his cheek in answer, continues undeterred.
“Another crunch and another gap, another chance for something else to go in. Something good or bad,” she says, says it like there’s some concern for quality control. “Mucks up more stuff down the line, but could be good for now.”
He nods, feels a tired sigh inside of him. It’s a breath that doesn’t belong in this body, not so soon in the day.
“And it never ends,” he says. “Always another gap, always... always more.”
She doesn’t reply to him, not right away, and he doesn’t continue, doesn’t have much more to continue with. She breathes in and out and he counts the breaths and it doesn’t matter that he can’t always hear them beneath the growing number of voices, of footsteps; he can feel them beneath his palms, under his hands.
He counts because counting is simple and sometimes, he’s not sure he understands his own mind.
When she speaks, when she turns breath to sound, it’s clear she doesn’t understand him either.
But she wants to.
“What’re we talkin’ about? Really?” Her voice brings him to open his eyes.
“Traffic,” he says and it only sounds like a lie once it’s said.
“Why’s that important? Why’re you telling me?” she asks, adds the second question like she doesn’t know if there’ll ever be an answer. Her hand rises, covers his on her shoulder, presses his into her shoulder.
“’Cos it’s real,” he tells her, head bent, head bowed to keep his lips close to her ear even as she leans back against him. “And that makes it worth knowin’.”
Hers isn’t a verbal response, isn’t audible in itself. Her response is one she makes him voice, makes him fail to voice as her hand leaves his to reach further backwards, as her arm rises, as her palm finds his nape and her fingers encounter his hair, thread through it.
He can’t breathe.
She turns in his arms and he still can’t breathe, can’t do more than let his hands circle her shoulders, than make contact light instead of suffocating. Her hand stays on him, stays where he’s already begun to sweat, where human skin strains against the heat of the sun. She presses her free hand against his chest, holds it there like she needs reminding of his life.
He looks to her mouth before he looks to her eyes, find both of them open. Brown eyes search his, search him like there’s something to be found in him, like there’s something lost, like he’s lost and he is.
He is.
“D’you mean that?” she asks and her tone says the conversation is continuing, but her eyes say that his mind is a book for her reading. A book open and set before her, written in a language she’s only half fluent in, written in a language that comes without translation.
Only way to find clarity is to ask. He doesn’t suppose he’ll get much, if any, with her so close, with his hands and her hands as they are. “Mean what?”
“Dunno. Any of it.”
He’s not sure, but doesn’t know how to say it. He was certain, when he started, when he turned her in his arms, but now she’s turned back and they’re face-to-face and he doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know and that should scare him. The reason why it doesn’t seems to have escaped him too.
She stares into him, waits for him and she is so very close, close enough to kiss and come to think of it, that’s probably why the fear’s cut out. He thinks it and then he knows it and then maybe it shows on his face.
Maybe it shows and maybe she sees it and maybe that’s why she shivers in the sun, why she pulls away from his body as she grips his hands, holds to hands while releasing hearts and maybe she sees that too, maybe his reaction is in his face both times. Might be he’s transparent or might be he’s numb on the outside or might be she’s just so very oblivious so some very obvious things. Might be anything.
Her smile shakes, and she doesn’t seem entirely stable as she says, as she says with a nervous giggle, “I really need to sit down.”
“You’re standing in front of a bench,” he says.
She looks behind herself, looks over her shoulder where her hand holds to his and she wobbles a little as he pulls away. “Right,” she says, laughs like there’s no air, like she’s dizzy and confused. She sits, dropping his hands, a release he can’t fault her for when it’s accompanying the motion he’s caused.
“Okay,” she continues, face flushed with more than the sun, and when he sits down out of her reach, she looks like she might reach for him all the same. “You win. S’ more than very pretty here.”
He knew he could make her say that. He knew she would, like he knew to reach for her on the metro, like that but not. There are places for actions to fit in and filling one gap in makes another and that shouldn’t make so much sense in his head, shouldn’t explain to him the ill feeling he doesn’t let rise as he gives her his best look of “I told you so.”
He should feel something in this, feel some sort of manly pride in it, in how he’s affected her, in what he’s done to her. He should, he thinks.
But really, he’s not so sure.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They sit on the slope of the wall, wall and columns both tilted to the side, the world set at a slant. It’s like sitting on a cobblestone floor and sliding off, sort of like that. The ceiling is an arch, a long arch that makes a passage beneath the terrace. Looking through the columns is looking out into the world; looking down the wall is staring into a tunnel of rock so brown and so light as to be orange, a tunnel so impossibly sunlit as to be beautiful.
Sitting on the slant of the wall with her makes him think of that overpass, of sitting under it in the rain on rocks grey instead of orange-brown. It makes him miss his bike, makes him miss having her close. It’s his own fault, of course, him the one who’d sat second, but he’s not yet sure he dares to touch. He feels strange, feels like the rock beneath his hands is a necessity.
“You walked on through, first time, didn’t you?” It’s not the best of conversation topics, only the best he has to offer.
“Yeah,” she says in the way that means she’s looking at him, the way that means she wants him to look back at her.
He nods to himself, like he’d expected that answer - which he had - and closes his eyes, leans back carefully. He’s sitting on the closest thing to an outcropping as could be found in the hill of a wall, sitting on the closest one next to hers. Really, this is the closest they could sit here; no need for him to keep dwelling on it.
“S’ cool,” she says and he nods again. The rock is good beneath his hands, chilled with the shade, gritty with dirt. It’s cool and rough and his hands feel natural pressed against it.
“Doesn’t much look manmade,” he remarks after a moment, after a breeze, after opening his eyes to consider the ceiling. “Depending on how you look at it.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm.”
The park’s getting increasingly crowded now, and as they sit, people walk before them, walk down the open passage with their heads in shadow and feet in sunlight. It’s enough to make private conversation difficult, enough for him to quiet himself for a time, for her to do the same.
He leans back, sets his head against mismatched stone somehow made to fit. It’s nearly comfortable, provided he keeps himself from sliding. He tastes the air and the smells of life crowd his noise. And he can hear the footsteps of those walking before them, hear so many walking upon stone. A breeze lends a tremble to his skin, to the bones beneath, and he turns his head to watch a tourist walk away, a teen with an ugly yellow backpack, just a young bloke with his hand in his pocket and a friend prodding him in the ribs.
He doesn’t know why he watches. Thin fellow, scrawny slim legs visible below the bag, neat hair seen above it. He really doesn’t know why he watches, only has this feeling, only feels that strange touch, that uncertain pull and he shifts to stand, will shift to stand.
Would have shifted to stand.
“Hey,” she says, before he moves. His head turns, his gaze snapping to her, overly quick. She blinks at his jerky movement but doesn’t falter in her smile.
“What?”
“Thanks for making me do this again,” she tells him and he wants her against him, her heart balancing out his chest.
He shrugs, tries not to betray himself. Ignores the impulse to move in preference to the need to stay. “Sometimes you need someone to slow you down.”
She looks at him oddly, at that. “Thought you weren’t much for stopping.”
And he has to roll his eyes. “Never said I was,” he contradicts. “Some things are just worth movin’ slowly for - you can forget that, if you’re always rushing around.” He gives her a pointed look there, doesn’t need to hope she’ll understand what he means when he knows she does.
She looks down for a moment, withdrawing at the mention of her impossible search, and he looks back at where the kid had been, looks for that ugly backpack and can’t see it. He makes himself not mind the absence, blames too much sun and too little rest.
“Never did this back in London,” she says after a moment, drawing his gaze back to her, renewing his attention.
“’Course you didn’t,” he answers, shrugs. “Home’s never as interesting as anywhere else. All that grass bein’ so much greener makes travelin’ worthwhile. ”
She considers him, her sunlight hair in shadow, her eyes too dark a brown for the rock around them. No, she doesn’t quite fit here, down with the stones that look like they were grown into columns and arches, into sloping structural supports that remind him so much of coral. But it’s still good to have her here.
“Why Barcelona?” she asks, her voice fitting between human footsteps and the gentle breeze of the sky, all three somehow fitting together down here, below here.
“Why not?” he counters.
Her expression tightens and he lets his meaning show, lets her see his irreverence as a bid for more time to think. Why Barcelona, indeed. Because going back to San Francisco didn’t work, could never work? Because home isn’t a damp little island? And even if it were, he wouldn’t be going back to it. Too much there, too much and too little.
“Because it’s not filled up yet, Barcelona, in my head,” he supposes slowly. “Not like London. Or Paris,” he adds.
His voice breaks on the word without warning.
She leans forward as he turns his face away, as he tilts his face up and blinks down and there’s still enough distance between them, just enough that she can’t reach without getting up. She knows him well enough not to call attention to his lapse or maybe she’s just as unprepared for it as he is.
“Paris,” he repeats, says it again, says it right, without shaking. Taps his tight chest with a closed fist, pretending he’d burped, refusing to excuse himself, refusing to prove himself weak. “Or San Francisco.”
“You’re a traveler,” she says, holds onto this piece of information instead of looking too closely at what he obviously feels.
“Used to be,” he says.
Her eyes look so afraid.
“What?” he asks, tries to be soft about it and likely fails.
“Why... why’d you stop, then?” She’s so hesitant in asking her question, so focused on hearing his answer.
Because they’re still dead.
And they always will be.
He shrugs, uses the time of the motion to swallow down a heart misplaced in his throat. “It didn’t matter either way,” he says, blunt about it, and pushes himself off the wall, pushing off rough rock with palms not yet callused enough not to feel the pain of the scrape.
She follows, has never learned not to. “Where-”
“Lunch,” he snaps and shoves his hands into his pockets so she can’t dare to take them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He buys her a sandwich.
She eats it.
They pretend to be all right.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They’re not half bad at pretending.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They walk through the wooded area, side-by-side instead of hand-in-hand and it’s this careful thing, this strange way of moving in the same direction without truly moving together. She tries for conversation, plies at it, and it limps down the path behind them.
She talks about lunch, about the man at the counter yelling “Five minutes! Five minutes!” to every customer at the stand, about her wonder at it all actually working. She slips in a thank-you, tries to get him to say what he wants to do for dinner. She mentions stuff about those friends of hers, about people at the hotel. She’s sure to talk about how she’s going to be switching soon, her myriad of reservations in that building finally run out, about how she’s moving to a different place across the city. She tries to catch his eye as she says this. Tries, maybe, to let him know something more than just where she’ll be. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, exactly what she means.
“Rose,” he says and holds out his hand.
She takes it and this, if nothing else, is perfectly understood between them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Could help you move your stuff,” he offers sometime later. He doesn’t know why he makes the offer, might simply want a better gesture than a sandwich bought and a hand held.
She turns her head, chin still resting in her palm. Looking out at the city again, this time while sitting down on the sinuous bench, her mind had wandered. “What?”
“When you switch hotels.”
“You’re working then,” she tells him, but she says it like it’s something she regrets, his employment.
He gives her a smile, not having much else. “Good luck with that, then.”
And she rolls her eyes at him, either a skilled imitation or an unconscious echo. “I’ve moved fine on my own before.”
It makes him lean forward, lean towards her in their curving nook. Only so far he can lean in towards her when she’s got her leg up on the bench, elbow on knee. “When was that?”
“First month in,” she answers. “Moved around, oh, four, five times in May? Place I’m at right now, managed to get reservations for a bunch of different rooms and when they realized, they just let me keep the same room all June.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, the breeze trying to play with it. “You have any idea how hard it is to get three months worth of hotels in Barcelona for the summer?”
“Judging by the tone, I’d say very.” It’s easy enough to reply, but his mind has turned into a ticking clock. One month left, it says. One month left and then she’s left him.
Still. That’s something.
He’ll make it into something.
“God, yeah,” she answers, laughing a little. She looks at him, chin still on her palm, elbow still on her knee, and then she smiles. It’s a smile separate from the laugh, from amusement at difficulty. This is a smile just about him, seems to be.
He holds her gaze, smiles back soft and slow, mouth closed to keep his thoughts inside his head.
Her lips quirk and she looks down, more pleased than embarrassed.
The wind keeps on blowing at her hair, a good breeze, chilling his back where his shirt is damp with sweat, where the humidity hasn’t let him dry. She shifts on the bench, moves on the curve of it. They sit together, just sitting.
“Thanks,” she says, leaning back against mosaics, surrounded by soft colour in hard shapes.
He just keeps on smiling, not willing to interrupt, not even to ask what she’s taking him for. He only gives her his hand.
By the look in her eyes, it’s clear that it’s more than enough.
For some reason, he asks it anyway: “D’you like it?” Today. The park. Even with his moods and her not understanding.
“Sor’ of, yeah,” she answers and he laughs with her this time, seeing the joke even if he doesn’t understand it.
“We could go see Gaudí’s house, but we’d have to pay,” he suggests, not really wanting to go, just wanting to have a small joke of his own. “You might get a discount, though.”
“Could pass off as a university student?” she asks, thinking of reasons clever instead of a bit silly.
He shrugs. “It’s la Torre Rosa.”
She groans, hits his shoulder lightly. Nearly keeps her hand there. “Not funny.”
“Not to you, no,” he agrees, grinning, and she smacks him again.
He catches her hand, sets it down on the railing as if it’s a dangerous object. When he lifts his hand away, she hooks a finger over his, a tiny and tenuous restraint he doesn’t fight against.
“We should do this more often,” he says, decides.
She tries for a warning glance, tries for warning words, but there’s hope under them. There’s something more than even that in the small movements of her fingers against his. “It’s a nice park, but three times might be pushing it.”
He shakes his head, strokes the underside of her thumb with his own. “I don’t mean here, Rose.”
She lowers her head, looks up through her lashes. “Then what d’you mean?”
“I mean anywhere,” he answers, breathing out that last word, breathing it out the way he knows will make her shiver. “Could stay in Barcelona, if you like - cities aren’t made for sittin’ in.”
She opens her mouth to reply, but he interrupts, catches her on the inhale.
“Or we could leave,” he tells her, leaning forward, and she’s oblivious of the crowd so very close to them, the woman behind her, the child running by. It’s just them here, only her and him. “We could get on the bike and go,” he continues. “Pick a direction and ride. Stop where and when we want, an’ only turn ‘round when the sun’s done settin’.”
“What’s there to see?” She doesn’t ask it like she wants information, only like she wants him to continue.
His grip tightens on her hand. “Could go to Salou or Stiges, but that’s a bit tame, don’t you think? Resorts, all tourists and beaches. Lleida’s farther, older. We could park the bike, walk along the banks of the Segre until dark. Or do something a bit more solid. Still some walls from the Zuda standing - that’s only twelve centuries old, wouldn’t want to bore you.”
“Do I look bored?” she asks, fantastically rhetorical, all his.
“Or Girona,” he continues, not bothering to answer her. “The town, not just the province. Not a tourist town, that. Too small for it, you might think. Bit bigger, once you’re in. Could take a wander through the Banys Arabs. Still a bit dry, that, if you’re getting tired of ruins and cobblestone. Don’t need to stop in Girona. Could keep going on up to the Pyrenees if you fancy a snowfall.”
She’s so open as she looks at him, so remarkably open. Her eyes are open and her mouth is open and she’s only like this so she can drink him in. Her hand is clinging to his and the way she’s looking at him.... Oh, the way she’s looking at him.
“Your choice,” he tells her.
Her eyes dart across his face, can’t seem to settle on him. Not on lips or nose or eye to eye. Her mouth opens farther, closes, and she swallows, her breathing unsteady. He wants to say her name, wants the power inside the word to pull her to him, but he doesn’t have to, trusts that he doesn’t have to.
“I want....” she says, and when she stops, he lets her.
He doesn’t move, or interrupt, or comment on how far in she’s leaning, how hard to his hand she holds. He’s already leaning so much farther, already holding so much tighter. He waits for her to pick, for that choice of place.
“Saturday,” she says, and he’s so caught up in persuading her that he nearly tells her that he could take her to Saturday, too.
After a second of thought, he realizes what she’s getting at, what she means, and he shakes his head. “Tomorrow. Monday.” He can’t wait a whole week. He can’t wait a week when there’s so much moving to be done.
Her expression changes, goes from rapt to pained, and he knows he’s lost her. “Gotta look for the watch,” she says, tells him that, dares to be apologetic about it only with her eyes.
“Right,” he says, pulling back, letting go of her hand. “Don’t want to disappoint that doctor of yours.”
“No,” she answers, quiet and sorry and hurting from his efforts at holding her too tight. “No, I don’t.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “Why Barcelona?” she asks, her voice fitting between human footsteps and the gentle breeze of the sky, all three somehow fitting together down here, below here.
“Why not?” he counters.
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
“You sure you’re up for this?”
“Rose,” he says, “for the last time, it’s not even that far.”
She raises her hands, playful even while defensive. “Just checkin’,” she’ll say, says, is saying. The gesture sticks in his head, though, makes him pause and think and wonder and then she’s concerned at him again.
He grabs one of her hands before she can say anything more. “Metro - c’mon!”
He tugs and she laughs, both actions reflexive, both instinctual, and then they’re running.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s crowded, Sunday morning notwithstanding. With the day of San Juan just yesterday, the extra tourists are only to be expected. Still, they’re hardly crammed into the compartment, no, it’s not that bad. No seats open, though. Well, not a pair open. Not together.
“Sit,” she says, nods at the space. Just the one, between a mother with her child and a bloke with a newspaper. Concern makes her commanding, and just a touch condescending.
“Sorry, left the bone and collar at home,” he answers with a roll of the eyes, keeping one hand on the metal bar above their heads, letting her take the hanging handle.
She rolls her eyes back at him. The train lurches a little, going around a corner, and she wobbles with it, holding on tight to the plastic grip. He shifts on his feet, balancing on this train on this earth with no problems.
He grins at her and she tries to look sour, hanging there by a hand, but she tilts toward him, against him. When his arm holds her around the waist, her smile appears. Becomes something close-to-but-certainly-not-shy as she presses against his side, as he keeps her there, her center against his hip.
“Think you might want to sit down, sense of balance like yours,” he tells her, only just loud enough to hear over the noise surrounding them. It’s not hard with her head at his shoulder.
“You first,” she counters and the train sways them back and forth.
“One seat.”
She hasn’t forgotten, lets it show in her eyes as she repeats, “You first.”
“You’re a bit old for lap-sittin’,” he points out before immediately, immediately wishing he hadn’t because he already knows what she’s going to say, already knows what their reactions to each other will be.
First, she grins, that tongue-touched smile. “Or maybe just old enough,” she counters.
Second is his hand, the automatic reaction of releasing what is recognized, the jerk away when all he wants is towards.
Third is the widening of her eyes, the distance as they rock, as he stays and she moves to the side, is moved to the side without his touch upon her.
Fourth is what he doesn’t want to happen.
So he reaches instead, a decision made in the gap between heartbeats, a decision that doesn’t break the chain of events, a chain made into chainmail, not a weak line but a solid web. It’s not a new link but a different one and this is the cool piece of metal he’ll trace with a fingertip.
His arm slips around her, fits around her, traps her hair against her back, pulls her against him with an abrupt snap and her mouth is open and she’s winded and just a little scared, and so he says it, says exactly the right thing at exactly the right time and he can hear her laughter in her still-silent mouth, he can see the joy in tense eyes. He can. Oh, he can.
“Old enough to be heavy,” he shoots back, blunt and insulting, close enough to feel her breath rising in her chest, to feel it released toward his neck.
And she laughs and she swats him, tells him to shut up, and all he does is smile back, laugh at that light hit, at ruin averted, at how the world has turned fantastic beneath the palm of his hand.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The first look of guilt comes later than he thought it would, walking uphill. She starts to lag - understandable enough - and when he turns, she’s looking at him, looking pained.
“Still San Juan weekend,” he reminds her, pausing just long enough to let her catch up, for one of them to take the other’s hand. “Any shop or market’s going to be flooded with tourists, today. They clear out all the non-broken watches, all the better.”
“And if they buy a non-broken non-watch?” she asks, can’t help but question him. It’s so easy to see it in her face, the way she wants to believe him.
The way she doesn’t dare to.
He shrugs, keeps on walking, keeps on guiding her along. “They’ll try to sell it off somewhere else. So long as it looks valuable, no one’s going to dump it in the bin.”
“...hope so.”
He’d like to think she’s out of breath, quiet as she is, that it’s just the uphill climb. “We’ll find it,” he tells her, keeps on telling her. “Just taking today off, that’s all.” It’s the right thing to do: she’s driving herself half mad over it all.
“Takin’ the whole weekend off,” she corrects and though it’s guilt, it’s also a sulk.
“I wasn’t stopping you yesterday,” he points out and by the look on her face, this is clearly the wrong thing to say.
“You were sick. And you still probably are, but I’m not stupid enough to try an’ make you stay still.”
True enough, he acknowledges silently. Lets the conversation lapse as they climb the street. It reminds him of home in a way that echoes, like a sound made false as it hits uneven rock.
“God, this is steep,” she says and he laughs because that was the thought; that was it. That’s the echo. “What?” she asks.
“Nothing compared to San Francisco,” he answers. “Maybe a little, but not much.”
That catches her ear, tilts her head. “San Francisco?”
“The city,” he says, for some reason feeling the need to clarify.
“I know,” she says, still looking at him oddly, like she’s going to say something she might regret. “But when’d you go?”
He shrugs a bit. “Years back.”
The words fall between them and stick there, don’t quite continue in their tumble to the sidewalk. Won’t be set down to be left behind.
“Years back,” she says, repeating carefully.
He thinks of Grace, of a return that hadn’t lasted. He lies, partially: “A long time ago. Almost six and a half years now.”
She’s watching him carefully, holding his hand carefully; her increased attention turns him hyperaware.
He looks to her, to her eyes and nose and bitten lip. “I was a different man, back then,” he tells her, feels it’s something she should know.
It’s something she might already know, something he can almost see, something half illuminated by the light of her eyes. He’s not sure how it got there.
“Yeah,” she says and he pretends it was a question.
“Yeah,” he answers.
Things go silent between them once more, just for a moment, for a little while. Their palms sweat against each other as they climb, lifting legs high and setting them down in a shortened step, up and up and up. He checks his watch - it’s still before ten. Good.
Eventually, she tries to pull him back into banter, or into something like it:
“You sure we’re going the right way?”
“Trust me, would you?”
“I’ve already been to Parc Güell. Back when I started hanging around the garage, remember?”
Actually, he didn’t really; he hadn’t much been paying attention, back then. “Yeah, but you did it wrong.”
That sets off a small staring contest, a bad thing to do while walking.
“What d’you mean, ‘wrong’?”
He shrugs. “Show you when we get there.”
She sighs at him, breaks eye contact to look ahead, to take a verbal pause. “...There’s an escalator built into this hill. Tell me I’m not imagining that.”
He laughs a little, just at the look on her face. “What, you didn’t see it last time?”
“Took the bus,” she explains, picking up her pace, eager for the opportunity to stand instead of climb.
“You see? Did it wrong.”
“You’re so full of it,” she tells him, but it’s more a statement of glee than an accusation of arrogance.
“Sor’ of, yeah,” he answers, looking where he’s going instead of at her. So he only feels it against his hand, that little jerk, only sees her after she’s recovered, only sees the top of her head as she hugs his arm tight. There’s something he should say to her here, that’s more than likely, but his mind goes blank.
He’s in a t-shirt and she’s in a tank top and he’d never noticed how much skin there is on arms when he was still wearing his jacket. There’s a lot. She’s hot and soft and her hair ghosts against his skin as she hugs his arm to her chest, as her cheek touches against his shoulder. Their steps match, even going uphill.
“You’re gonna see it the right way,” he tells her but that’s not what he means, not quite. What he means is that he’s going to show it to her, is that he’s going to give her this. That it’s been far, far too long since the last time he did this, could do this. Not since Tarragona.
“Okay,” she says and when they get on the escalator, she holds his arm all the way up.
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s an off-white world beyond the entrance, an off-white world trimmed with colour and framed with two houses made of gingerbread stone and frosted with mosaics. A staircase split in two leads up to the terrace, to a building of columns, to the blue, blue sky. Fountains gurgle faintly, a salamander of pottery losing water through its speckled open mouth, the constructed lizard not quite guarding the passage upwards. The ridge of its back mimics the wave of the sea in shape and color both, forming a fitting body for a fountain.
Cracks in its skin give it scales, give it stripes and shining colours as the pottery changes piece to piece, yellow and blue and blue and blue. It’s not quite beautiful, not in the usual way of it, but it’s not half a sight to see.
On either side of the stairs are the passageways he wants to walk with her later, brown and earthy and hard, a contrast to the dreamlike design of the terrace above. It smells more like plants up here, barely at all like the sea, only a little of metal and engines. He can still hear people, can still hear the world down the hill, but there are birds here, and footsteps. It’s a sound he finds he loves, that of so many moving.
Information is rippling in his brain, so much he could tell her on the history of the place, the design, the architect. He finds he wants to tell her, to say it all, to set his hands on her shoulders from behind and murmur every last detail into her ear. His hands nearly pull from the pockets of his jeans at the thought.
He looks to her, waiting for her reaction, watching the sunlight stroke her face.
“S’less crowded,” she says.
He gives her a sharp look, but she only returns his gaze, disappointed and trying not to show it.
It stings.
“Less crowded,” he repeats. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“It’s pretty,” she admits, gives that to him readily enough. “S’just, I looked around last time. Pretty much saw the whole thing in half an hour.” She says it like she’s okay being here, but her eyes say she’s trying not to be bored, like she thinks she owes it to him to be interested. But if she thought it would be that bad, he tells himself, she wouldn’t’ve let him drag her along in the first place.
He takes back her hand with a firm grip and a pointed expression. “That was on your own,” he tells her, and waits for her to say it.
Her eyes watch his, flicker from one to other as she thinks, as his expectation is clearly seen but not clearly understood. She bites her lip and her hand doesn’t quite hold to his, not the usual way. Her voice is as soft and uncertain as her hand in his when she offers up those three words: “Better with two...?”
“Much,” he agrees and grins. That wasn’t too hard, was it?
She smiles back, uneasy about it in a way he can’t pin down and doesn’t particularly like. He’d say he’s put her on edge, would say that of the way her body tenses, the way her hand doesn’t quite know his.
“What?” he asks and that weak smile stops, is readily replaced by something close to surprise, close enough that he can call it that, will call it that. He doesn’t want to search for the word to describe what it might be.
“S’nothing.”
He wishes that were true, isn’t careful about it, but wishing doesn’t make him blind.
“You don’t want to be here.”
“I need to be looking for the watch,” she corrects, sidesteps. “I’ve stopped for too long, I-”
“You need a break.”
She shakes her head, uses the opportunity to break eye contact, to break contact. To take her hand back in the guise of tucking her hair back over her ear. “I’ve had one. A long one.”
He can tell she’s about to go and get mad over it, maybe even leave outright. In the face of that, his mind closes down on one detail, on his greatest want and truest need:
“Come with me,” he says.
Brown eyes reflect blue as she looks to him, looks up at him. And maybe it’s the sky in her eyes or maybe it’s his eyes, maybe even something as human and cliché as that, but it’s a thought that feels good, a thought that makes him half confident as he waits, as he stares into her and vows not to beg.
“...Okay,” she says, and it’s little more than a breath.
He’ll settle for that much.
Taking her hand, he hurries her up the stairs, bringing her past the reptilian fountain, past the tourists who’d had the same idea of an early entry. “D’you know,” he asks her over his shoulder as he jogs up the stairs, only half pulling her now, “how I know you did it wrong the first time?”
“I know you’re gonna tell me!” she answers, forced back into good humour by his dash.
He waits to answer and they run across the terrace together to the sinuous wall around the wide, open space, a wall made of mosaic, a wall with a bench set into it. Not built into it, he wants to say. Sculpted out of it, maybe. Might do for it, sculpted. The wall meanders, a sinuous snake shining in the fresh sunlight, concave and converse, in and out of the terrace, forming so many small balconies, all similar without being the same.
This is where he brings her.
“Okay,” she says, finds what she might think is his point and concedes to it immediately. She nods a little and he holds her hand and she gives him a smile.
But has she got it right? There’s the question. “What is?”
“You can see it now,” she tells him, turning to look back the way they’ve come. To see the wide terrace, to see the extent of the place without it being filled, without it overrun. She thinks it beautiful now. That’s clear enough in her eyes, in the gentle, thankful squeeze of her fingers before he lets go.
He steps in front of her.
She looks up at him. Looks up at his face and at his eyes and at his mouth and there’s a moment when he’s not sure if she’s looking at or into him, a moment where he tenses and shrinks inside, loses volume and keeps mass, concentrating whatever it is she sees instead of diluting it. He’s going about this the wrong way, enacts the change he needs rather than continue this way.
He places his hands on her shoulders, so nearly bare and tinged with the bronze of the sun. He places his hands on her shoulders and the rise and fall of them stops, shakes. His damp hands on her sweatmarked shoulders and he turns her.
It’s not a smooth turn, one hand pushing, the other pulling, and neither her feet nor mind understanding, not at first. If he presses like so, she’ll stumble, stumble and tumble against him, into him - but only if he presses like so.
He keeps his hands steady.
Steady and on her shoulders, his grip returning to its previous location once she’s facing out, his hand simply on the other side. Her shoulders tense in anticipation and he regrets the bench, regrets that he can’t walk her right up to the edge. He’d let her taste the air as he held her, safe from the fall. He wants to do that. It’s a sudden urge and it seizes him so strongly, this urge he can’t act upon, and so he does the next best thing and pulls her to him, steps into her.
She tries to look up at him but he nudges her back to where he wants her, presses her temple with his chin, turns her face back out to the bay, to the water beyond close trees and far buildings. He bends his neck, lowers his mouth.
“Look at it.”
Her hair covering her ear moves with the natural breeze, with the air holding his words, and she shivers under his palms.
“Just look, Rose. Not at the park entrance. Look out there.”
“The city,” she says, might say.
“The city?” he questions, her hair tickling the side of his face. He’d brush it away if that didn’t mean letting go.
It’s a breath this time, an exhalation like a sigh. Her shoulders rise and fall, pull the word up and let it fly out to the skyline: “Barcelona.”
“Best view of the bay,” he tells her, voice quiet. He doesn’t need his words to carry when his only audience is a centimetre away. “You can see up here, Rose. Stand up high enough and you can see most everything. Not the small bits, mind, just how they fit.”
“What d’you...?”
“Look at the streets,” he tells her without knowing why. He doesn’t know what he’ll say from here, only what she’ll say when it’s finished.
She looks. “S’ traffic.”
He shakes his head and where his chin brushes against her crown, she moves to sustain contact.
“It’s a wave,” he says and he taps his fingers against her skin in demonstration, one hand and the other in the same direction, mimicking the motion he speaks of. “One slows down, what do the rest do?”
She breathes in.
“Rose,” he says, patient, quiet. “What do the rest do?”
“They, they slow down.”
“Getting them closer. And if the first car turns off to the side?”
“Speed up again,” she answers, more sure of herself.
“Different speeds at first, though,” he half-tells her, half-reminds her. “It makes gaps between, speeding up. Only get rid of those once they all adjust and it’s all after the crunch from slowing down in the first place. Get a long enough line and you’ll never be rid of it. Make it infinite. Make one car slow down in an infinite line, get rid of it, and let the rest speed up and they’ll make it back up to speed, sure. But always a bit behind where they could’ve been. And always with that gap after the crunch. Different amounts of space in the same amount of time - always throws things off, that.”
There’s a pause where nothing stops, where they breathe and he thinks she’s thinking.
She leans into his hands, just the once. It’s a sway. “Something wrong with gaps?” she asks, only half a question.
“Stuff can get in between. Another car. A motorbike. But with another car speeding up behind you. If it doesn’t slow down, it’ll hit. And if it slows....”
“Another wave?”
“Another wave.”
“And that’s bad,” she says, says it like a question, and her hair touches his throat.
He closes his eyes to the bay and the city and the mosaics and her hair and he lets himself talk. “Depends on what’s in the gap. How big and what speed and what it might do.”
“So... a wave happens.”
“Yeah.”
“And then a gap happens. And if it’s infinite, it’s stuck with a gap.”
His thumb strokes a yes into her skin.
She inhales.
He waits.
“But the gap could fill with somethin’ good - but it would start a new wave.”
“You’re being a bit slow,” he tells her and she taps her head against his cheek in answer, continues undeterred.
“Another crunch and another gap, another chance for something else to go in. Something good or bad,” she says, says it like there’s some concern for quality control. “Mucks up more stuff down the line, but could be good for now.”
He nods, feels a tired sigh inside of him. It’s a breath that doesn’t belong in this body, not so soon in the day.
“And it never ends,” he says. “Always another gap, always... always more.”
She doesn’t reply to him, not right away, and he doesn’t continue, doesn’t have much more to continue with. She breathes in and out and he counts the breaths and it doesn’t matter that he can’t always hear them beneath the growing number of voices, of footsteps; he can feel them beneath his palms, under his hands.
He counts because counting is simple and sometimes, he’s not sure he understands his own mind.
When she speaks, when she turns breath to sound, it’s clear she doesn’t understand him either.
But she wants to.
“What’re we talkin’ about? Really?” Her voice brings him to open his eyes.
“Traffic,” he says and it only sounds like a lie once it’s said.
“Why’s that important? Why’re you telling me?” she asks, adds the second question like she doesn’t know if there’ll ever be an answer. Her hand rises, covers his on her shoulder, presses his into her shoulder.
“’Cos it’s real,” he tells her, head bent, head bowed to keep his lips close to her ear even as she leans back against him. “And that makes it worth knowin’.”
Hers isn’t a verbal response, isn’t audible in itself. Her response is one she makes him voice, makes him fail to voice as her hand leaves his to reach further backwards, as her arm rises, as her palm finds his nape and her fingers encounter his hair, thread through it.
He can’t breathe.
She turns in his arms and he still can’t breathe, can’t do more than let his hands circle her shoulders, than make contact light instead of suffocating. Her hand stays on him, stays where he’s already begun to sweat, where human skin strains against the heat of the sun. She presses her free hand against his chest, holds it there like she needs reminding of his life.
He looks to her mouth before he looks to her eyes, find both of them open. Brown eyes search his, search him like there’s something to be found in him, like there’s something lost, like he’s lost and he is.
He is.
“D’you mean that?” she asks and her tone says the conversation is continuing, but her eyes say that his mind is a book for her reading. A book open and set before her, written in a language she’s only half fluent in, written in a language that comes without translation.
Only way to find clarity is to ask. He doesn’t suppose he’ll get much, if any, with her so close, with his hands and her hands as they are. “Mean what?”
“Dunno. Any of it.”
He’s not sure, but doesn’t know how to say it. He was certain, when he started, when he turned her in his arms, but now she’s turned back and they’re face-to-face and he doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know and that should scare him. The reason why it doesn’t seems to have escaped him too.
She stares into him, waits for him and she is so very close, close enough to kiss and come to think of it, that’s probably why the fear’s cut out. He thinks it and then he knows it and then maybe it shows on his face.
Maybe it shows and maybe she sees it and maybe that’s why she shivers in the sun, why she pulls away from his body as she grips his hands, holds to hands while releasing hearts and maybe she sees that too, maybe his reaction is in his face both times. Might be he’s transparent or might be he’s numb on the outside or might be she’s just so very oblivious so some very obvious things. Might be anything.
Her smile shakes, and she doesn’t seem entirely stable as she says, as she says with a nervous giggle, “I really need to sit down.”
“You’re standing in front of a bench,” he says.
She looks behind herself, looks over her shoulder where her hand holds to his and she wobbles a little as he pulls away. “Right,” she says, laughs like there’s no air, like she’s dizzy and confused. She sits, dropping his hands, a release he can’t fault her for when it’s accompanying the motion he’s caused.
“Okay,” she continues, face flushed with more than the sun, and when he sits down out of her reach, she looks like she might reach for him all the same. “You win. S’ more than very pretty here.”
He knew he could make her say that. He knew she would, like he knew to reach for her on the metro, like that but not. There are places for actions to fit in and filling one gap in makes another and that shouldn’t make so much sense in his head, shouldn’t explain to him the ill feeling he doesn’t let rise as he gives her his best look of “I told you so.”
He should feel something in this, feel some sort of manly pride in it, in how he’s affected her, in what he’s done to her. He should, he thinks.
But really, he’s not so sure.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They sit on the slope of the wall, wall and columns both tilted to the side, the world set at a slant. It’s like sitting on a cobblestone floor and sliding off, sort of like that. The ceiling is an arch, a long arch that makes a passage beneath the terrace. Looking through the columns is looking out into the world; looking down the wall is staring into a tunnel of rock so brown and so light as to be orange, a tunnel so impossibly sunlit as to be beautiful.
Sitting on the slant of the wall with her makes him think of that overpass, of sitting under it in the rain on rocks grey instead of orange-brown. It makes him miss his bike, makes him miss having her close. It’s his own fault, of course, him the one who’d sat second, but he’s not yet sure he dares to touch. He feels strange, feels like the rock beneath his hands is a necessity.
“You walked on through, first time, didn’t you?” It’s not the best of conversation topics, only the best he has to offer.
“Yeah,” she says in the way that means she’s looking at him, the way that means she wants him to look back at her.
He nods to himself, like he’d expected that answer - which he had - and closes his eyes, leans back carefully. He’s sitting on the closest thing to an outcropping as could be found in the hill of a wall, sitting on the closest one next to hers. Really, this is the closest they could sit here; no need for him to keep dwelling on it.
“S’ cool,” she says and he nods again. The rock is good beneath his hands, chilled with the shade, gritty with dirt. It’s cool and rough and his hands feel natural pressed against it.
“Doesn’t much look manmade,” he remarks after a moment, after a breeze, after opening his eyes to consider the ceiling. “Depending on how you look at it.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm.”
The park’s getting increasingly crowded now, and as they sit, people walk before them, walk down the open passage with their heads in shadow and feet in sunlight. It’s enough to make private conversation difficult, enough for him to quiet himself for a time, for her to do the same.
He leans back, sets his head against mismatched stone somehow made to fit. It’s nearly comfortable, provided he keeps himself from sliding. He tastes the air and the smells of life crowd his noise. And he can hear the footsteps of those walking before them, hear so many walking upon stone. A breeze lends a tremble to his skin, to the bones beneath, and he turns his head to watch a tourist walk away, a teen with an ugly yellow backpack, just a young bloke with his hand in his pocket and a friend prodding him in the ribs.
He doesn’t know why he watches. Thin fellow, scrawny slim legs visible below the bag, neat hair seen above it. He really doesn’t know why he watches, only has this feeling, only feels that strange touch, that uncertain pull and he shifts to stand, will shift to stand.
Would have shifted to stand.
“Hey,” she says, before he moves. His head turns, his gaze snapping to her, overly quick. She blinks at his jerky movement but doesn’t falter in her smile.
“What?”
“Thanks for making me do this again,” she tells him and he wants her against him, her heart balancing out his chest.
He shrugs, tries not to betray himself. Ignores the impulse to move in preference to the need to stay. “Sometimes you need someone to slow you down.”
She looks at him oddly, at that. “Thought you weren’t much for stopping.”
And he has to roll his eyes. “Never said I was,” he contradicts. “Some things are just worth movin’ slowly for - you can forget that, if you’re always rushing around.” He gives her a pointed look there, doesn’t need to hope she’ll understand what he means when he knows she does.
She looks down for a moment, withdrawing at the mention of her impossible search, and he looks back at where the kid had been, looks for that ugly backpack and can’t see it. He makes himself not mind the absence, blames too much sun and too little rest.
“Never did this back in London,” she says after a moment, drawing his gaze back to her, renewing his attention.
“’Course you didn’t,” he answers, shrugs. “Home’s never as interesting as anywhere else. All that grass bein’ so much greener makes travelin’ worthwhile. ”
She considers him, her sunlight hair in shadow, her eyes too dark a brown for the rock around them. No, she doesn’t quite fit here, down with the stones that look like they were grown into columns and arches, into sloping structural supports that remind him so much of coral. But it’s still good to have her here.
“Why Barcelona?” she asks, her voice fitting between human footsteps and the gentle breeze of the sky, all three somehow fitting together down here, below here.
“Why not?” he counters.
Her expression tightens and he lets his meaning show, lets her see his irreverence as a bid for more time to think. Why Barcelona, indeed. Because going back to San Francisco didn’t work, could never work? Because home isn’t a damp little island? And even if it were, he wouldn’t be going back to it. Too much there, too much and too little.
“Because it’s not filled up yet, Barcelona, in my head,” he supposes slowly. “Not like London. Or Paris,” he adds.
His voice breaks on the word without warning.
She leans forward as he turns his face away, as he tilts his face up and blinks down and there’s still enough distance between them, just enough that she can’t reach without getting up. She knows him well enough not to call attention to his lapse or maybe she’s just as unprepared for it as he is.
“Paris,” he repeats, says it again, says it right, without shaking. Taps his tight chest with a closed fist, pretending he’d burped, refusing to excuse himself, refusing to prove himself weak. “Or San Francisco.”
“You’re a traveler,” she says, holds onto this piece of information instead of looking too closely at what he obviously feels.
“Used to be,” he says.
Her eyes look so afraid.
“What?” he asks, tries to be soft about it and likely fails.
“Why... why’d you stop, then?” She’s so hesitant in asking her question, so focused on hearing his answer.
Because they’re still dead.
And they always will be.
He shrugs, uses the time of the motion to swallow down a heart misplaced in his throat. “It didn’t matter either way,” he says, blunt about it, and pushes himself off the wall, pushing off rough rock with palms not yet callused enough not to feel the pain of the scrape.
She follows, has never learned not to. “Where-”
“Lunch,” he snaps and shoves his hands into his pockets so she can’t dare to take them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He buys her a sandwich.
She eats it.
They pretend to be all right.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They’re not half bad at pretending.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They walk through the wooded area, side-by-side instead of hand-in-hand and it’s this careful thing, this strange way of moving in the same direction without truly moving together. She tries for conversation, plies at it, and it limps down the path behind them.
She talks about lunch, about the man at the counter yelling “Five minutes! Five minutes!” to every customer at the stand, about her wonder at it all actually working. She slips in a thank-you, tries to get him to say what he wants to do for dinner. She mentions stuff about those friends of hers, about people at the hotel. She’s sure to talk about how she’s going to be switching soon, her myriad of reservations in that building finally run out, about how she’s moving to a different place across the city. She tries to catch his eye as she says this. Tries, maybe, to let him know something more than just where she’ll be. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, exactly what she means.
“Rose,” he says and holds out his hand.
She takes it and this, if nothing else, is perfectly understood between them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“Could help you move your stuff,” he offers sometime later. He doesn’t know why he makes the offer, might simply want a better gesture than a sandwich bought and a hand held.
She turns her head, chin still resting in her palm. Looking out at the city again, this time while sitting down on the sinuous bench, her mind had wandered. “What?”
“When you switch hotels.”
“You’re working then,” she tells him, but she says it like it’s something she regrets, his employment.
He gives her a smile, not having much else. “Good luck with that, then.”
And she rolls her eyes at him, either a skilled imitation or an unconscious echo. “I’ve moved fine on my own before.”
It makes him lean forward, lean towards her in their curving nook. Only so far he can lean in towards her when she’s got her leg up on the bench, elbow on knee. “When was that?”
“First month in,” she answers. “Moved around, oh, four, five times in May? Place I’m at right now, managed to get reservations for a bunch of different rooms and when they realized, they just let me keep the same room all June.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, the breeze trying to play with it. “You have any idea how hard it is to get three months worth of hotels in Barcelona for the summer?”
“Judging by the tone, I’d say very.” It’s easy enough to reply, but his mind has turned into a ticking clock. One month left, it says. One month left and then she’s left him.
Still. That’s something.
He’ll make it into something.
“God, yeah,” she answers, laughing a little. She looks at him, chin still on her palm, elbow still on her knee, and then she smiles. It’s a smile separate from the laugh, from amusement at difficulty. This is a smile just about him, seems to be.
He holds her gaze, smiles back soft and slow, mouth closed to keep his thoughts inside his head.
Her lips quirk and she looks down, more pleased than embarrassed.
The wind keeps on blowing at her hair, a good breeze, chilling his back where his shirt is damp with sweat, where the humidity hasn’t let him dry. She shifts on the bench, moves on the curve of it. They sit together, just sitting.
“Thanks,” she says, leaning back against mosaics, surrounded by soft colour in hard shapes.
He just keeps on smiling, not willing to interrupt, not even to ask what she’s taking him for. He only gives her his hand.
By the look in her eyes, it’s clear that it’s more than enough.
For some reason, he asks it anyway: “D’you like it?” Today. The park. Even with his moods and her not understanding.
“Sor’ of, yeah,” she answers and he laughs with her this time, seeing the joke even if he doesn’t understand it.
“We could go see Gaudí’s house, but we’d have to pay,” he suggests, not really wanting to go, just wanting to have a small joke of his own. “You might get a discount, though.”
“Could pass off as a university student?” she asks, thinking of reasons clever instead of a bit silly.
He shrugs. “It’s la Torre Rosa.”
She groans, hits his shoulder lightly. Nearly keeps her hand there. “Not funny.”
“Not to you, no,” he agrees, grinning, and she smacks him again.
He catches her hand, sets it down on the railing as if it’s a dangerous object. When he lifts his hand away, she hooks a finger over his, a tiny and tenuous restraint he doesn’t fight against.
“We should do this more often,” he says, decides.
She tries for a warning glance, tries for warning words, but there’s hope under them. There’s something more than even that in the small movements of her fingers against his. “It’s a nice park, but three times might be pushing it.”
He shakes his head, strokes the underside of her thumb with his own. “I don’t mean here, Rose.”
She lowers her head, looks up through her lashes. “Then what d’you mean?”
“I mean anywhere,” he answers, breathing out that last word, breathing it out the way he knows will make her shiver. “Could stay in Barcelona, if you like - cities aren’t made for sittin’ in.”
She opens her mouth to reply, but he interrupts, catches her on the inhale.
“Or we could leave,” he tells her, leaning forward, and she’s oblivious of the crowd so very close to them, the woman behind her, the child running by. It’s just them here, only her and him. “We could get on the bike and go,” he continues. “Pick a direction and ride. Stop where and when we want, an’ only turn ‘round when the sun’s done settin’.”
“What’s there to see?” She doesn’t ask it like she wants information, only like she wants him to continue.
His grip tightens on her hand. “Could go to Salou or Stiges, but that’s a bit tame, don’t you think? Resorts, all tourists and beaches. Lleida’s farther, older. We could park the bike, walk along the banks of the Segre until dark. Or do something a bit more solid. Still some walls from the Zuda standing - that’s only twelve centuries old, wouldn’t want to bore you.”
“Do I look bored?” she asks, fantastically rhetorical, all his.
“Or Girona,” he continues, not bothering to answer her. “The town, not just the province. Not a tourist town, that. Too small for it, you might think. Bit bigger, once you’re in. Could take a wander through the Banys Arabs. Still a bit dry, that, if you’re getting tired of ruins and cobblestone. Don’t need to stop in Girona. Could keep going on up to the Pyrenees if you fancy a snowfall.”
She’s so open as she looks at him, so remarkably open. Her eyes are open and her mouth is open and she’s only like this so she can drink him in. Her hand is clinging to his and the way she’s looking at him.... Oh, the way she’s looking at him.
“Your choice,” he tells her.
Her eyes dart across his face, can’t seem to settle on him. Not on lips or nose or eye to eye. Her mouth opens farther, closes, and she swallows, her breathing unsteady. He wants to say her name, wants the power inside the word to pull her to him, but he doesn’t have to, trusts that he doesn’t have to.
“I want....” she says, and when she stops, he lets her.
He doesn’t move, or interrupt, or comment on how far in she’s leaning, how hard to his hand she holds. He’s already leaning so much farther, already holding so much tighter. He waits for her to pick, for that choice of place.
“Saturday,” she says, and he’s so caught up in persuading her that he nearly tells her that he could take her to Saturday, too.
After a second of thought, he realizes what she’s getting at, what she means, and he shakes his head. “Tomorrow. Monday.” He can’t wait a whole week. He can’t wait a week when there’s so much moving to be done.
Her expression changes, goes from rapt to pained, and he knows he’s lost her. “Gotta look for the watch,” she says, tells him that, dares to be apologetic about it only with her eyes.
“Right,” he says, pulling back, letting go of her hand. “Don’t want to disappoint that doctor of yours.”
“No,” she answers, quiet and sorry and hurting from his efforts at holding her too tight. “No, I don’t.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->