Fic: In Human Hands (16/24?)
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: She touches him like she believes he won’t respond, as if he wouldn’t care either way. As if action has no reaction when she must know that it does.
It always does.
A/N: Back at school and things are good, if full of madness. (Also, my roommate has asked that I include a link to her page of awesome costume stuff. She listens when I need to ramble about this thing and has for a year, so I owe her. [There's no longer a picture on the page of me in a tree wearing a monkey tail, but it might come back in the future.])
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The Determined
The Unaware
The Celebrant
The Nurse
The Visitor
The Illusion
The Distraction
The Guest
“This is so weird,” she keeps saying, keeps laughing.
Which more or less means she’s gone completely mental.
“Rose, I don’t think there’s anything more normal than laundry,” he tries to tell her, sorting his stuff into two piles on the table. Jeans here, shirts and pants here. The table isn’t exactly spotless, but down in the laundry room, about to wash the stuff he’s dumping on it, he doesn’t think it much matters.
She laughs again and he rolls his eyes.
“Rose-”
“No, not that- I mean, your clothes.”
He gives them a glance, sees no reason for her giggling. “What about them?”
She keeps looking at the pile of t-shirts and the pairs of jeans. “Just a theme, I guess.”
He looks, but he can’t see it. Blue t-shirt, deep red, black... no discernible pattern. “What?” What’s she got against solid colours?
She just grins at him, delighted in his cluelessness. “Some things never change.”
“What?” he asks again.
She laughs and he rolls his eyes. It’s like they’re stuck on repeat.
“Enough of that.” She’s taking the mickey; that’s clear enough by the tongue in her smile. “C’mon, there’s a machine open.”
For only being in that hotel room of hers one night, her things reek of it. Laundry day it is. It’s simple enough, a small hassle he walks through without paying attention, without much caring.
But, for some reason, that girl of his thinks it funny.
Once they have their things all loaded in the machines, they head back up to his flat, climbing the four flights from basement to temporary home. There, the takeaway he picked up on the way back from work, those styrofoam containers are still plenty warm, especially in this heat.
“Which one’s mine?” she asks as she hops up onto the counter. She asks it over her shoulder at him, her legs on the living room side, him in the kitchenette.
“What makes you think one’s yours?” he asks, fetching a glass of water for each of them.
He sees her shrug out of the corner of his eye, the motion bouncing her hair on her shoulders. “You don’t look hungry enough for all of it.”
The glasses go down on the counter next to her and he comes round to join her, to sit down where she has to hop up.
He taps the container and she takes it. “Thanks.”
Plastic fork in hand, he grunts.
Things go quiet between them after that, but it’s all right. They don’t need to yammer on with each other all the time. Good thing, too, with her stuck here for the next week. With her staying here. Not stuck. She’s stuck in this city, but she’s staying with him.
Which is good. Which ought to be fantastic but is still good enough.
“What’re you thinking about?” she asks him eventually.
“Carburettors,” he says automatically.
She laughs.
“What?”
She laughs harder.
“What’s wrong with a bloke thinking about carbs?” That he hadn’t been isn’t the point.
“You really are a mechanic,” she says.
“‘Course I am,” he tells her. “What else am I supposed to be?”
“Lots of things.”
He looks at her.
She looks back, all hazel-brown eyes that are perfectly serious. Her gaze combines oddly with her chewing mouth, half intent and half unfocused. She swallows and doesn’t take another bite. “I mean it.” Like she thinks he needs to be convinced. Like she doesn’t want to be the one doing the convincing.
“Things like what, then?”
She chews her lip, glances down at the styrofoam box and plastic fork and the food of similar quality. Her arm slides against his a little as she breathes.
He presses back.
Smiling, she gives him a bit of a jab of the elbow. They do small and contained battle, her legs kicking against the side of the counter as she fights to keep her balance. He’s not trying to shove her off, not really.
“You’re a five-year-old, for one,” she answers. Tongue between her teeth, she gives him one last nudge.
He wonders, not for the first time, what she would do if he put his arm around her. Not the way he usually does. Not a simple hold when she’s already leaning. If he put his arm around her, and pulled her close, and didn’t mind if she dropped her dinner on the floor, what then?
She ducks her head again, poking plastic through styrofoam to leave little pockmarked patterns. “You’re five,” she says again. “And you’re a traveller - ‘cause you like to see stuff, but more ‘cause you can’t sit still. You hate waiting, even when it’s only two days until goin’ up to the mountains now. You’re a dramatic driver, or rider, or whatever it gets called on a motorbike. You... you’re smarter than you let on.”
“You mean I act like an idiot?” It’s said in a sarcastic tone. He’s not sure what kind of mood she’s trying to pull them into, but sarcasm has always, almost always worked for him. “Or look like one.”
She gives him a shove on the arm, sets down her dinner to better do it. “I mean, you don’t advertise it.”
“What’s there to advertise?”
She shrugs. “You know stuff. History, this city.... Mythology. How spicy isn’t a flavour. Y’know: stuff.”
It’s not sweet talking, this. And it’s not a piece of clinging domesticity either. It’s a list, facts lined up and delivered in a slightly sentimental row.
It’s honest.
He likes that.
He really does.
“That everything?” he asks, just to check. He leans in, nudging her with his elbow.
“You’re dead handsome, too,” she answers, nudging back, and he laughs because it’s the only option.
So much for honest.
“And don’t I know it,” he says, looking down at his food, for some reason copping an American accent. It feels like he’s quoting. It’s a film he can’t place, has to be. He can see the grin that goes with the line, the movie star grin.
It occurs to him that she’s gone still beside him, gone still and stiff and he has the thought that she’s seen that movie too. Must be a sad one, he thinks when he looks at her.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” she says. Shrugs. “Think it’s time to get that laundry yet?”
He shakes his head, willing to keep from poking at her bruises. She doesn’t poke at his. “Twelve more minutes.”
She takes out her mobile to check the time. “Right.”
“I’m also a living watch,” he tells her. “You left that part out.”
“No you’re not,” she contradicts immediately, oddly intense about it.
He blinks at her.
“If you were, I’d lose you,” she says wryly, trying for a joke.
That he knows she’s trying means she didn’t succeed.
“Right,” he says, rather than saying sorry. “Though I think the legs would help me find my way back.”
She smiles again, just a little. “You’d get lost.”
“Oi!” More indignant than he is, far more indignant, and she laughs. An idle, restless part of his brain wonders: if she smiles enough, laughs enough here, will she stay?
He forces the thought down and defends his sense of direction until she can’t breathe from giggling. Whatever he’s doing, he’ll say it’s worth it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s dreaming and he knows it’s a dream. It’s the same dream three times running.
There’s power in triplicate. It’s the structural integrity of a triangle and the dramatic effect of repetition. It’s Aeneas reaching trice for Creüsa’s ghost, a wraith breeze-soft in this unvanishing dream. There’s power in threes. Triads are powerful indeed, depending on who you ask. On whenwhere you go. He knows this.
Because the girl’s across his lap, sleeping.
Because Fred’s behind him, alive.
Because there’s a man he never knew even when he knew him.
Three of them, stuck in his mind. Stuck or staying, it doesn’t much matter.
"I hate dramatic irony, don’t you?" Fred asks mildly, looking over his shoulder at the woman in his arms. His girl cries in her sleep, her eyes leaking silent tears.
"No," he says, shaking his head. He could wake her from her nightmare and into his own, doesn’t think it wise.
Male hands cover his shoulders from behind, the leather shell somehow stripped away. Those hands are human hot, boiling from the inside. "She means besides sarcasm," the man clarifies, green smoke falling from his playful words. “We all know you love that.”
"No," he says again and those hands squeeze, hard and tight and almost a massage for all the aches he refuses to let go.
He gasps with the hurt of it, rolling onto his side, curling around himself. He can’t get back his balance for a minute, for one dizzy minute where he’s sitting up mentally and lying down physically as the planet races around the sun it’s turning back to.
His heart’s pounding enough for two and he doesn’t know why.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He suffers through the morning, fighting the urge to simply get up and check on the girl for something to do. Hasn’t done that since Susan, though, and that’s not a connotation he needs anywhere near the girl.
If he checks on her, he’s going to wake her up and there aren’t many options there. He’s not sure which way she’d take it, but with the options of letch and needy bastard, he’d rather not be either. He doesn’t want to be a needy bastard, can’t stand the thought of being so domestic. Where’s the point in hiding his jealous outburst of a bike ride if he goes and wakes her up for a hug now? There’s no point at all, then.
It’s also a bit too late to go steal his pillow back.
He stays where he is, closing his eyes against the dark and missing those long ago years when four hours was more than enough.
.-.-.-.-.-.
When he hears the shower start, his eyes blink back open. There’s no telling how long he’s been lying there, except that there is. He’d just rather not think about it anymore.
First thing in the morning and he’s already exhausted. They leave for the mountains tomorrow night, he reminds himself, but that’s not enough to get him standing today. Time is so slow like this, pulling at this human body to lengthen itself like taffy. Being subjective doesn’t make the sensation any less real.
He stands up anyway, resisting the pull. As he dresses, the sensation fades, or he gets used to it. It’s hard to say which, though he knows it matters.
Shaking his head, he opens his bedroom door, walks out into the flat proper. Goes to fold the blanket on the couch, except it’s already been folded. His stolen pillow is set atop it.
There’s a feeling in his chest, a feeling behind the lungs. Behind the lungs and swelling like a balloon, an actual, physical sensation that comes out in a grin, irrational and giddy. He sits down where it’s still warm, his lethargy transformed into contentment, into tired glee.
He just sits there, feeling.
He likes the way it feels.
Eventually, the shower stops. He’s not sure how long it was, only that he’s yet to want to move. He leans back, eyes closed, and breathes in contentment for as long as he can. He hears her getting dressed and he hears her looking around for a hairdryer he doesn’t have and it’s funny, listening to the search through empty cabinets that she didn’t know were empty.
Dramatic irony, he thinks. It’s a thought he can’t pin down, not all the way, so he leaves it be.
Incredibly, he feels himself drifting off again. It’s a remarkably gentle sort of drifting, the gentle sort he can’t remember ever feeling before.
Whatever happens at the end of next month, it’s worth it. Two days and a month left, with her leaving August first. And still worth it. Somehow, right now, it feels like an infinite stretch of time.
He hears the door open, but he doesn’t hear her speak. Keeps his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to break his mood, decides to let her do it for him.
Footsteps come close, then come closer.
They’re light and soft and expected and he fails to move. He fails to move even when he feels her near. Her foot brushes against his shin as she steps over, steps to stand between his stretched out legs and the coffee table.
Marveling at the pounding in his chest, he stays still. His breathing, however, doesn’t.
Not at that touch.
He opens his eyes to hers as her hand settles on his shoulder, his girl leaning forward, studying his face, her feet between his. Wet hair spills over her shoulders and his eyes glance down, follow the fluid flow to where it hangs over her chest, droplets dripping onto the bare skin of his crossed arms.
She’s thinking. Deciding.
Her fingertip touches the edge of his ear. Follows the rim, brushing back the hair that tries and fails to cover skin. She leans on him as she touches, a slight lean and a soft touch that slowly grows, finger by finger.
His mouth opens, just a little, just enough to breathe through, and she doesn’t notice. Noticing his details is never her strong suit, except for the forever when it is.
She touches him like she believes he won’t respond, as if he wouldn’t care either way. As if action has no reaction when she must know that it does.
It always does.
“Rose,” he murmurs, and her gaze stops looking at his face and begins to see him, her eyes deepening without a flicker of movement. Her hand still presses into his shoulder and her fingertips still touch the edge of his ear, brush against it with such slight, soft heat.
“’S long,” she says, sounding confused. Spell broken, she pulls back.
It takes him a moment to catch up, too preoccupied with how she’s stopped leaning onto him, too aware of the cold spot on his shoulder, a spot the exact shape of her hand. “What?”
“Your hair,” she tells him as if pointing out the obvious, moving from between his legs to sit down on the sofa with a small bounce. The underside of her arm rests against his shoulder as her fingertips travel to his scalp. “It’s long.”
“You’re one to talk,” he counters, not stopping her play. He needs to take a leak, but that can wait.
“’S weird,” she adds, focusing more on the former fuzz than his face.
“If you think this is weird, just wait until it gets curly.”
“...No way.”
He gives her a look, daring her to doubt him. He wishes he didn’t, after, when doubt makes her remove her hand.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, but I’ll cut it before that happens. Never liked it long, really.” Not when it could get in his eyes, at least. Can’t run if you can’t see.
“But you had it long anyway?” she asks, disbelieving but leaning in. Her hand returns, slowly ruffling hair just long enough to ruffle. “Just trying out new something, Mr. Black-Jeans-And-Jumper?”
Those were t-shirts in the laundry and a t-shirt on him, but he shrugs. She’s got it right with the jeans. “Fred liked it that way.” Curly when they’d met, at least. It’d been her preference for him even if she’d never said it outright.
He leans in a bit too, but she’s gone stiff now. Playful curiosity turned to pained confusion while he wasn’t watching and he hasn’t so much as blinked.
“What?” he asks, but it fails to make her laugh this time.
“Who’s he?”
It’s his turn to be confused. “Who’s who?”
“Fred,” she says, looking stunned.
He has to laugh a little. “A woman,” he says, a gentle reassurance of his interest in them.
She doesn’t find it so funny. Not even close. She’s stiff and staring and then she shifts on the couch, turns to sit crosslegged, to sit sideways. It puts her legs between them, takes her touch away. “When was this?” she asks, her voice turning oddly in pitch.
He shrugs and stands, biting back an exact answer he shouldn’t have to tell her. “A lifetime ago, Rose. It’s not important.”
“Where’re you going?” she asks and it’s the sudden inexplicable fear of it that makes him move faster.
“I need a piss,” he replies sharply, comes close to snapping. It’s hard not to snap when she looks at him like she can’t understand what she’s seeing. Thirty seconds of new information and suddenly, she’s scared. He can’t stand her looking at him like that. If she were just toying with him, he could be pissed off at her and be done with it. “Now that you’re done with the loo, think I’ll take it.”
He turns his back on her and shuts the door before she can reply and it traps him there, traps him in a small room that smells of her.
She shouldn’t’ve brought it up.
He shouldn’t’ve mentioned.
If he goes back out here and she wants to talk about it....
Well, then they won’t, he supposes.
He stands there, thinking like that while he takes care of things. He’s still sensitive about his family and she’s sensitive about so many random things. Bad dreams or not, he can’t let it get to him.
If she wants to look so betrayed at him for having a past, that’s her problem.
He washes his hands thoroughly before he comes out. His stomach does things no stomach should do when he doesn’t see her on the couch; it only takes two steps forward to see she’s in the kitchenette, but his stomach still does these things.
Her back turned to him, she’s standing there, watching the kettle, arms pulled tight around herself. Regular morning cuppa or no, her wanting tea is probably a bad sign. She’s taking it so hard when it’s not even hers to take - when he’s not even said anything, not really - and it makes him want to shout and yell.
“We havin’ a fight or somethin’?” he asks, arms crossed. “Can’t be easy, wakin’ up on the wrong side of a couch.”
“Had a good rolling start and flipped over the back,” she explains, her back still turned.
At least she’s still got some humour in her, he reflects, leaning against the wall. Shoulder pressing, head resting, he waits.
“I just-” She cuts herself off.
He keeps on waiting.
“It was all nice an’- an’ I’m just being a stupid ape, so forget it.”
Even though she’s not looking, he shakes his head. “Easiest way to make someone curious? Tell them to forget. You’ve gone and piqued my interest now.”
It takes some more waiting before she explains. It takes some more waiting as her arms stay wrapped around herself, as she keeps her back turned and her head down. He wants to hold her so badly; it’s at once remarkable and bizarre, the way simply looking at her can change his mood.
He’s far more hers than she’s his. Maybe more than she’ll ever be his. Probably more. Looks like it’s going to be one of those things he’ll have to live with until he’ll have to live without it. And he still wants to hold her. She’s not accusing, only small and confused.
“It was a weird moment to bring up your ex, s’all.” As she says it, she looks at him over her shoulder, her eyes uncertain.
He goes to her. Gathers her up.
She goes still, so fresh and new and easily hurt where there’s no callus to protect. Goes still while somehow soft and when she moves, it’s to turn between his arms, to hide her face against his chest.
“I had a family once,” he tells her. “More or less.” He doesn’t need her to understand or even to know, not really. It’s something he needs her to be able to cope with. And so he asks, “Is that all right?”
“Yeah,” she says in a winded breath.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” she says again, still not holding to him. She stands in his embrace rather than return it, her forehead against his shoulder. Beneath his hands, the muscles of her back refuse to relax. She refuses to relax but she refuses to pull back and that’s all the permission he needs to keep holding on.
“That’s more of a ‘sort of, yeah’ than a ‘yeah’.”
“S’ just.... You've had this whole life,” she says, the word spoken as if it ought to be impossible. Or maybe he’s mishearing the tone a little, what with her muffled against his t-shirt like that.
“Yeah,” he says. “People do that. It’s called ‘living’, Rose. You’re not half bad at it yourself.” There’s so much of hers he doesn’t know, so much of hers that she won’t say; only fair he does the same, isn’t it? He can justify it.
“Yeah, but,” she says and there’s really nothing more, just that hanging word.
“But what?”
“S’like,” she says, tries to explain. “It’s.... For all I know, you've got a tattoo covering your entire back or something. And it’s a part of you and you’ve had it for years, but you never let the skin show, so....”
“You askin’ me to strip?” he asks her, feeling it through her back when she surprises herself with a grin. “’Cause you’re gonna have to buy me a drink first.”
Laughing quietly against his chest, she finally gives in to his arms. “I bought you one yesterday.”
He shrugs around her, looking down at that blond little head. “Yeah, but it wasn’t alcoholic.”
“Fine. Buy you one tonight.” She shifts closer, breathes against his collarbone. Tightens her grip on him, her arms no longer hanging loose around his middle. It’s a proper hug now, maybe something more.
His eyes try to fall shut. Keep trying to.
The kettle whistles, the steam shrieking, and they release each other, half surprised. She turns back to the stove, turns away from him again - except this time, she doesn’t mean it.
“Want some?”
She looks at him over her shoulder again and he nods, stepping back to lean against the counter. He takes a banana from where it’s been ripening on top of the fridge, eats as she fusses with the tea. This, at least, is familiar ground.
She brings their mugs to the counter, sets them down and fetches herself a banana as well. They eat breakfast the same way they ate dinner, almost, sitting on the counter but facing into the kitchenette this time. His flat isn’t much good for living in, he’s realizing through having her here, realizing in small and absent ways. Really, he hasn’t even got a table.
He doesn’t much want a table, mind. But the point still stands.
It’s not a train of thought he can keep going for long; can’t distract yourself with what you’re not interested in, not really.
He finishes his banana first, gets up to chuck the peel in the bin. He has got a bin. It’s not very big and he’s not sure where he got it.
He’s trying to figure out if he wants to brave the awkward silence or ignore it until she’s better when she goes and surprises him. It’s the unexpected expected or maybe the other way around. All the same, it’s very much her.
“Sorry,” she says.
“What?” he says.
She shrugs a little, her hands cupped around her mug. “Sorry for bein’ weird today. S’your fault, though.”
It’s so matter-of-fact that he has to give her a warning smile. “How so?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Did you know you snore? Could hear you through the wall.” Her tongue touches her smile and gives away the simple tease.
“Now that’s scary.” He sits back down on the counter, gives her a significant look as he retrieves his mug.
It’s her turn to ask: “What?”
“I thought that was you.” She tries to smack his shoulder, but he continues on. “We ought to check the closets or somethin’.”
“Thought about it, but I didn’t want any skeletons fallin’ out, makin’ a racket in the middle of the night,” she replies.
“Nah - too Bluebeard for me.” Which, on reflection, isn’t the best reference to make.
“Would that be a curly blue beard or just a normal one?” she asks. “’Cause I think it’d look funny either way.”
He shakes his head. “Not a beard person. Never have been, never will be.”
“No?” And she reaches for his chin, her fingertips finding his stubble before he swats her hand away.
“I’m getting to that.”
“Did I throw off your routine?” she asks, not looking remotely apologetic. She knows him too well for that. They’d both like to think so, at any rate.
“I don’t have a routine,” he tells her, matter-of-fact, between sips of his drink. “I have things that need doing that get done better in a particular order.”
“Right,” she says, laughing with her eyes. So beautiful, his girl. “Am I mixing up that particular order?”
He shrugs, his mouth grinning on without asking permission. “Means I don’t have to make myself tea. Can’t complain about that.”
“You so could.”
He feigns insult. “About your tea?”
“From your cupboard,” she points out. “Technically your tea.”
“Could complain about you stealin’ my tea,” he muses.
“Go on, then.”
“Said I could, didn’t I? Don’t need to go around proving it.”
“If you don’t complain, I’m taking it as a compliment,” she warns.
“Worst cuppa I ever had.” With that little announcement, he downs the remainder of the drink. “And now, to shave.”
“Don’t cut yourself,” she warns, jinxing him, and when he inevitably does, his foulest language only delights her.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Like the lost little stray she is, she follows him to work. They’re chatting again, almost easily. She holds to his hand tighter than usual, but not too tightly. It’s better than her letting go. Most things are, so it’s not that high of a bar, but the point still stands.
“So where’re you off to for the day? Or is that important secret UNIT business?”
“Important secret Tyler business, yeah,” she agrees, bumping against him a little in the crowd. Her hair, still damp from his lack of hairdryer, feels different against his arm than it usually does. It’s not the brushing tickle.
He looks down to see the flash of tongue in her smile, looks down and sees a lack of it. Not a playful bump then, just part of walking. But it’s strange, the tight grip and the failure to really tease.
He tries walking without conversation for only a few seconds before deciding he can’t stand it.
“Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“Something the matter?”
She shakes her head.
“A morning like that, Rose, something’s the matter.” It’s still the Fred thing, he’s pretty sure. Unless he’s done something in the past five minutes, it’s still about Fred. But until she makes a real move, until she lays an actual claim on him, all of this is just overreacting.
“Phone call from UNIT this morning.”
Oh. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“If you can sleep through your own snoring, wouldn’t think you would,” she answers and that smile is back, that teasing touch of tongue.
All the same: “I don’t snore.” Not enough to be heard through a closed door, anyway.
“Right.” Another bump against his arm, this one intentional. “Sure. Anyway, I took it in the bathroom ‘cause I didn’t want to wake you. First rule of freeloading, yeah? Don’t be an alarm clock.”
“You get reception in there?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“S’pose.”
They reach the garage and stand together, hand in hand. Something’s still off - he can feel it through her skin - but something being off with her here is still better than normalcy without her. Between madness and boredom, he’ll never pick the sane option.
Doesn’t mean it’s not making him itch, though.
“See you for lunch?” she asks and her uncertainty only confuses him more.
“Only if you’re planning on eating.”
“Might be, yeah.”
“Sounds like lunch, then,” he reasons, leaning in a bit to look her more levelly in the eyes.
She grins up at him, eyes bright and nothing’s off anymore. All that mess running around in his head; it’s his one last piece of holding back. He’s done it before, thinks he might be doing it now. Thinks it might be too late when her tongue pulls back from her grin for her to say, “It does, doesn’t it?”
“Could sound like dinner, though. Might want to be careful about that,” he warns, her hand still very much in his.
“Me being careful doesn’t work too well,” she admits. She sways forward a little, just a little. Her hand is so warm.
He shakes his head at her. “Jeopardy friendly.” His free hand alights upon her waist, fingertips touching before the palm settles.
She tenses but doesn’t pull away. “That’s me,” she says quietly. Her head ducks a little and he’s looking at her hairline instead of her eyes.
He sighs. Lets his hand drop from her side. “So it is.”
She bites her lip, her fingers squeezing his. “I just-”
“So it is,” he says again, a hint of a warning in it this time. He’d rather have hope than an explanation. He leans in, brushes a kiss over her brow. “See you later.”
“See you,” she echoes as he pulls back. She looks at him like she’s got something else to say, something else to keep quiet and he drops her hand to wave to her as he heads into the garage.
A month is long enough to sort this out.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Come to think of it, he probably should have given her a key again. He’s more or less locked her out from her stuff.
Is it wrong that this makes them weirdly even?
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s probably wrong, but it’s kind of funny, too.
.-.-.-.-.-.
When she pops back round, he gives it to her. First thing he does. He’s freed the key from its chain and he presses it into her hand, metal and grease and oil pressed against her palm.
The way she looks at him... well.
The way she looks at him results in Sanchez yelling “¡Bésela ya!” at him. Which leads to him hurrying off to change into his civvies so he doesn’t have to translate.
He hears her laugh, though, as Sanchez does. Hears it through the door, an awkward sound. Not only has Sanchez translated - he must have - the man is probably pressing for details.
He rolls his eyes, lets out a breath that has more to do with exasperation than oxygen. Shakes his head as he comes back out, tucking the tag of his t-shirt back down. He’s just in time to see the girl shaking her own head, to hear her saying something he’s heard before.
“...not my boyfriend. He’s better than that.”
He knows those words, knows that tone of voice. She’s back to talking about her doctor, must be explaining why Sanchez’s demand to hurry up and kiss went unanswered the way it had. It’s the explanation he hadn’t wanted but already halfway knew.
“Ready to go?” he asks, trying to gauge whether a bomb has been planted in the conversation. That’s the one kind of explosion he wouldn’t say yes to.
She nods and takes his hand and if the amused look on Sanchez’s face is anything to go by, things seem to be safe.
“See you, Miguel!” she calls back as they walk out together.
“¡Hasta luego, mi Rosita bonita!”
It’s not until they round the corner that she turns to him, her smile small but sort of impish. “I like him,” she confides.
“I do too,” he admits. Except for in situations like that. Still - seeing as she’s back to being happy, he can’t particularly mind. “C’mon,” he says, giving her hand a squeeze. “Let’s get you fed.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
As the day goes on, it occurs to him that nothing’s really changed. After dinner, he works it out so she doesn’t need to be buzzed into the flat anymore or sneak in or whatever it was she did. Takes a bit of talk and half-awkward half-explanations, but it’s not so bad. He does that one thing and that’s it.
Oh, and he needs to buy another pillow. He’ll do that eventually.
But beyond that, the dynamic is more or less unchanged. Maybe even improved. Instead of wondering if she’s going to fall asleep here by accident, he knows she’s here on purpose. He likes that.
They’re sitting on the floor again, a card game between them as he prods at her piecemeal Spanish. Simple sentences lead to simple conversation and strange mistakes. When he corrects, they laugh together.
“Creo que las manzanas verdes son sabrosas,” he tells her at a decent clip, his belief that green apples taste good.
He watches the way her eyes look back and forth as she thinks, the way her lips move as she sorts that out. It’s no wonder he’s winning the card game. “Creo las manzanas rojas son sabrosas,” she contests - or tries to.
“Crees que,” he corrects. “No creas.”
“...No idea what that meant.”
“You said you created apples.”
“I created delicious apples,” she answers with a grin, correcting him right back. “Red ones. So what am I supposed to say?”
He tells her, explaining creer against crear, throwing out examples and even anecdotes right up until he wins the game.
“Such a cheater.”
“Multitasking isn’t cheating.”
About to find some comeback, she gets distracted midthought. It’s certainly something worth watching, her mental detour clear on her face. “Oh - almost forgot.”
“Yeah?”
“Go check the fridge.”
His eyebrows rise.
She grins at him. “Go on.”
His eyebrows rising further, he complies, standing up and making his way to the kitchenette. “Is it going to blow up?”
“No. Sorry about that,” she adds. She stays on the other side of the counter, leans on it with folded arms.
He laughs a little, then opens the door. Eyes scanning down, he laughs again when he spots it. “Not exactly what I meant, Rose.”
“You told me to buy you a drink.”
“That’s a six pack.”
“I’m an overachiever.” She looks so pleased with herself.
“That’s not what I meant.” He can feel it around his eyes, the way he’s looking at her so fondly. He knows it and he can’t seem to stop doing it.
She doesn’t seem to mind. Just shrugs. “Figured this would be easier than getting you out to a bar.”
He shrugs back; she’s probably right about that.
“So you want one or no?” she asks, still grinning a bit.
“How about this: The greasy mechanic takes a shower and then we take two of these up on the roof.”
She grins wider. “Sounds good.”
“Sounds fantastic,” he corrects, already moving toward the bathroom.
She stands back to let him pass, and they watch each other through their movements, neither quite willing to look away. He gets to the doorway, stands there for a mo’. She breaks the moment first, bending down to get the cards off the floor. Time to stop staring.
But about to go in, he turns back, remembering his half of the deal. “Oh, Rose?” he says.
“Yeah?” she asks, looking up.
In one smooth motion, he pulls off his t-shirt. “No tattoo,” he tells her, grinning at her surprise.
There’s a small pause before she straightens up, before she says, “Hold on a sec” while reaching for her pocket.
“What?”
Her eyes practically sparkle. “Camera phone.”
Quick about it, though still grinning, he shuts the door behind him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Up on the roof, she looks for lights in the sky rather than lights in the skyline. For all the shades of artificial yellow and car-tail red, for all the flow of Barcelona at night, he can’t blame her.
He misses the stars too.
“Tomorrow night,” he tells her. “Less light pollution up by the mountains.”
“Yeah?”
“Somewhere along the mountains,” he hedges.
“That’ll be nice,” she says, leaning into his side.
“Yeah,” he says, and the city shines on below them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG13, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: She touches him like she believes he won’t respond, as if he wouldn’t care either way. As if action has no reaction when she must know that it does.
It always does.
A/N: Back at school and things are good, if full of madness. (Also, my roommate has asked that I include a link to her page of awesome costume stuff. She listens when I need to ramble about this thing and has for a year, so I owe her. [There's no longer a picture on the page of me in a tree wearing a monkey tail, but it might come back in the future.])
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
The Puzzle
The Passenger
The Victim
The Absent
The Found
The Determined
The Unaware
The Celebrant
The Nurse
The Visitor
The Illusion
The Distraction
The Guest
“This is so weird,” she keeps saying, keeps laughing.
Which more or less means she’s gone completely mental.
“Rose, I don’t think there’s anything more normal than laundry,” he tries to tell her, sorting his stuff into two piles on the table. Jeans here, shirts and pants here. The table isn’t exactly spotless, but down in the laundry room, about to wash the stuff he’s dumping on it, he doesn’t think it much matters.
She laughs again and he rolls his eyes.
“Rose-”
“No, not that- I mean, your clothes.”
He gives them a glance, sees no reason for her giggling. “What about them?”
She keeps looking at the pile of t-shirts and the pairs of jeans. “Just a theme, I guess.”
He looks, but he can’t see it. Blue t-shirt, deep red, black... no discernible pattern. “What?” What’s she got against solid colours?
She just grins at him, delighted in his cluelessness. “Some things never change.”
“What?” he asks again.
She laughs and he rolls his eyes. It’s like they’re stuck on repeat.
“Enough of that.” She’s taking the mickey; that’s clear enough by the tongue in her smile. “C’mon, there’s a machine open.”
For only being in that hotel room of hers one night, her things reek of it. Laundry day it is. It’s simple enough, a small hassle he walks through without paying attention, without much caring.
But, for some reason, that girl of his thinks it funny.
Once they have their things all loaded in the machines, they head back up to his flat, climbing the four flights from basement to temporary home. There, the takeaway he picked up on the way back from work, those styrofoam containers are still plenty warm, especially in this heat.
“Which one’s mine?” she asks as she hops up onto the counter. She asks it over her shoulder at him, her legs on the living room side, him in the kitchenette.
“What makes you think one’s yours?” he asks, fetching a glass of water for each of them.
He sees her shrug out of the corner of his eye, the motion bouncing her hair on her shoulders. “You don’t look hungry enough for all of it.”
The glasses go down on the counter next to her and he comes round to join her, to sit down where she has to hop up.
He taps the container and she takes it. “Thanks.”
Plastic fork in hand, he grunts.
Things go quiet between them after that, but it’s all right. They don’t need to yammer on with each other all the time. Good thing, too, with her stuck here for the next week. With her staying here. Not stuck. She’s stuck in this city, but she’s staying with him.
Which is good. Which ought to be fantastic but is still good enough.
“What’re you thinking about?” she asks him eventually.
“Carburettors,” he says automatically.
She laughs.
“What?”
She laughs harder.
“What’s wrong with a bloke thinking about carbs?” That he hadn’t been isn’t the point.
“You really are a mechanic,” she says.
“‘Course I am,” he tells her. “What else am I supposed to be?”
“Lots of things.”
He looks at her.
She looks back, all hazel-brown eyes that are perfectly serious. Her gaze combines oddly with her chewing mouth, half intent and half unfocused. She swallows and doesn’t take another bite. “I mean it.” Like she thinks he needs to be convinced. Like she doesn’t want to be the one doing the convincing.
“Things like what, then?”
She chews her lip, glances down at the styrofoam box and plastic fork and the food of similar quality. Her arm slides against his a little as she breathes.
He presses back.
Smiling, she gives him a bit of a jab of the elbow. They do small and contained battle, her legs kicking against the side of the counter as she fights to keep her balance. He’s not trying to shove her off, not really.
“You’re a five-year-old, for one,” she answers. Tongue between her teeth, she gives him one last nudge.
He wonders, not for the first time, what she would do if he put his arm around her. Not the way he usually does. Not a simple hold when she’s already leaning. If he put his arm around her, and pulled her close, and didn’t mind if she dropped her dinner on the floor, what then?
She ducks her head again, poking plastic through styrofoam to leave little pockmarked patterns. “You’re five,” she says again. “And you’re a traveller - ‘cause you like to see stuff, but more ‘cause you can’t sit still. You hate waiting, even when it’s only two days until goin’ up to the mountains now. You’re a dramatic driver, or rider, or whatever it gets called on a motorbike. You... you’re smarter than you let on.”
“You mean I act like an idiot?” It’s said in a sarcastic tone. He’s not sure what kind of mood she’s trying to pull them into, but sarcasm has always, almost always worked for him. “Or look like one.”
She gives him a shove on the arm, sets down her dinner to better do it. “I mean, you don’t advertise it.”
“What’s there to advertise?”
She shrugs. “You know stuff. History, this city.... Mythology. How spicy isn’t a flavour. Y’know: stuff.”
It’s not sweet talking, this. And it’s not a piece of clinging domesticity either. It’s a list, facts lined up and delivered in a slightly sentimental row.
It’s honest.
He likes that.
He really does.
“That everything?” he asks, just to check. He leans in, nudging her with his elbow.
“You’re dead handsome, too,” she answers, nudging back, and he laughs because it’s the only option.
So much for honest.
“And don’t I know it,” he says, looking down at his food, for some reason copping an American accent. It feels like he’s quoting. It’s a film he can’t place, has to be. He can see the grin that goes with the line, the movie star grin.
It occurs to him that she’s gone still beside him, gone still and stiff and he has the thought that she’s seen that movie too. Must be a sad one, he thinks when he looks at her.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” she says. Shrugs. “Think it’s time to get that laundry yet?”
He shakes his head, willing to keep from poking at her bruises. She doesn’t poke at his. “Twelve more minutes.”
She takes out her mobile to check the time. “Right.”
“I’m also a living watch,” he tells her. “You left that part out.”
“No you’re not,” she contradicts immediately, oddly intense about it.
He blinks at her.
“If you were, I’d lose you,” she says wryly, trying for a joke.
That he knows she’s trying means she didn’t succeed.
“Right,” he says, rather than saying sorry. “Though I think the legs would help me find my way back.”
She smiles again, just a little. “You’d get lost.”
“Oi!” More indignant than he is, far more indignant, and she laughs. An idle, restless part of his brain wonders: if she smiles enough, laughs enough here, will she stay?
He forces the thought down and defends his sense of direction until she can’t breathe from giggling. Whatever he’s doing, he’ll say it’s worth it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He’s dreaming and he knows it’s a dream. It’s the same dream three times running.
There’s power in triplicate. It’s the structural integrity of a triangle and the dramatic effect of repetition. It’s Aeneas reaching trice for Creüsa’s ghost, a wraith breeze-soft in this unvanishing dream. There’s power in threes. Triads are powerful indeed, depending on who you ask. On whenwhere you go. He knows this.
Because the girl’s across his lap, sleeping.
Because Fred’s behind him, alive.
Because there’s a man he never knew even when he knew him.
Three of them, stuck in his mind. Stuck or staying, it doesn’t much matter.
"I hate dramatic irony, don’t you?" Fred asks mildly, looking over his shoulder at the woman in his arms. His girl cries in her sleep, her eyes leaking silent tears.
"No," he says, shaking his head. He could wake her from her nightmare and into his own, doesn’t think it wise.
Male hands cover his shoulders from behind, the leather shell somehow stripped away. Those hands are human hot, boiling from the inside. "She means besides sarcasm," the man clarifies, green smoke falling from his playful words. “We all know you love that.”
"No," he says again and those hands squeeze, hard and tight and almost a massage for all the aches he refuses to let go.
He gasps with the hurt of it, rolling onto his side, curling around himself. He can’t get back his balance for a minute, for one dizzy minute where he’s sitting up mentally and lying down physically as the planet races around the sun it’s turning back to.
His heart’s pounding enough for two and he doesn’t know why.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He suffers through the morning, fighting the urge to simply get up and check on the girl for something to do. Hasn’t done that since Susan, though, and that’s not a connotation he needs anywhere near the girl.
If he checks on her, he’s going to wake her up and there aren’t many options there. He’s not sure which way she’d take it, but with the options of letch and needy bastard, he’d rather not be either. He doesn’t want to be a needy bastard, can’t stand the thought of being so domestic. Where’s the point in hiding his jealous outburst of a bike ride if he goes and wakes her up for a hug now? There’s no point at all, then.
It’s also a bit too late to go steal his pillow back.
He stays where he is, closing his eyes against the dark and missing those long ago years when four hours was more than enough.
.-.-.-.-.-.
When he hears the shower start, his eyes blink back open. There’s no telling how long he’s been lying there, except that there is. He’d just rather not think about it anymore.
First thing in the morning and he’s already exhausted. They leave for the mountains tomorrow night, he reminds himself, but that’s not enough to get him standing today. Time is so slow like this, pulling at this human body to lengthen itself like taffy. Being subjective doesn’t make the sensation any less real.
He stands up anyway, resisting the pull. As he dresses, the sensation fades, or he gets used to it. It’s hard to say which, though he knows it matters.
Shaking his head, he opens his bedroom door, walks out into the flat proper. Goes to fold the blanket on the couch, except it’s already been folded. His stolen pillow is set atop it.
There’s a feeling in his chest, a feeling behind the lungs. Behind the lungs and swelling like a balloon, an actual, physical sensation that comes out in a grin, irrational and giddy. He sits down where it’s still warm, his lethargy transformed into contentment, into tired glee.
He just sits there, feeling.
He likes the way it feels.
Eventually, the shower stops. He’s not sure how long it was, only that he’s yet to want to move. He leans back, eyes closed, and breathes in contentment for as long as he can. He hears her getting dressed and he hears her looking around for a hairdryer he doesn’t have and it’s funny, listening to the search through empty cabinets that she didn’t know were empty.
Dramatic irony, he thinks. It’s a thought he can’t pin down, not all the way, so he leaves it be.
Incredibly, he feels himself drifting off again. It’s a remarkably gentle sort of drifting, the gentle sort he can’t remember ever feeling before.
Whatever happens at the end of next month, it’s worth it. Two days and a month left, with her leaving August first. And still worth it. Somehow, right now, it feels like an infinite stretch of time.
He hears the door open, but he doesn’t hear her speak. Keeps his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to break his mood, decides to let her do it for him.
Footsteps come close, then come closer.
They’re light and soft and expected and he fails to move. He fails to move even when he feels her near. Her foot brushes against his shin as she steps over, steps to stand between his stretched out legs and the coffee table.
Marveling at the pounding in his chest, he stays still. His breathing, however, doesn’t.
Not at that touch.
He opens his eyes to hers as her hand settles on his shoulder, his girl leaning forward, studying his face, her feet between his. Wet hair spills over her shoulders and his eyes glance down, follow the fluid flow to where it hangs over her chest, droplets dripping onto the bare skin of his crossed arms.
She’s thinking. Deciding.
Her fingertip touches the edge of his ear. Follows the rim, brushing back the hair that tries and fails to cover skin. She leans on him as she touches, a slight lean and a soft touch that slowly grows, finger by finger.
His mouth opens, just a little, just enough to breathe through, and she doesn’t notice. Noticing his details is never her strong suit, except for the forever when it is.
She touches him like she believes he won’t respond, as if he wouldn’t care either way. As if action has no reaction when she must know that it does.
It always does.
“Rose,” he murmurs, and her gaze stops looking at his face and begins to see him, her eyes deepening without a flicker of movement. Her hand still presses into his shoulder and her fingertips still touch the edge of his ear, brush against it with such slight, soft heat.
“’S long,” she says, sounding confused. Spell broken, she pulls back.
It takes him a moment to catch up, too preoccupied with how she’s stopped leaning onto him, too aware of the cold spot on his shoulder, a spot the exact shape of her hand. “What?”
“Your hair,” she tells him as if pointing out the obvious, moving from between his legs to sit down on the sofa with a small bounce. The underside of her arm rests against his shoulder as her fingertips travel to his scalp. “It’s long.”
“You’re one to talk,” he counters, not stopping her play. He needs to take a leak, but that can wait.
“’S weird,” she adds, focusing more on the former fuzz than his face.
“If you think this is weird, just wait until it gets curly.”
“...No way.”
He gives her a look, daring her to doubt him. He wishes he didn’t, after, when doubt makes her remove her hand.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, but I’ll cut it before that happens. Never liked it long, really.” Not when it could get in his eyes, at least. Can’t run if you can’t see.
“But you had it long anyway?” she asks, disbelieving but leaning in. Her hand returns, slowly ruffling hair just long enough to ruffle. “Just trying out new something, Mr. Black-Jeans-And-Jumper?”
Those were t-shirts in the laundry and a t-shirt on him, but he shrugs. She’s got it right with the jeans. “Fred liked it that way.” Curly when they’d met, at least. It’d been her preference for him even if she’d never said it outright.
He leans in a bit too, but she’s gone stiff now. Playful curiosity turned to pained confusion while he wasn’t watching and he hasn’t so much as blinked.
“What?” he asks, but it fails to make her laugh this time.
“Who’s he?”
It’s his turn to be confused. “Who’s who?”
“Fred,” she says, looking stunned.
He has to laugh a little. “A woman,” he says, a gentle reassurance of his interest in them.
She doesn’t find it so funny. Not even close. She’s stiff and staring and then she shifts on the couch, turns to sit crosslegged, to sit sideways. It puts her legs between them, takes her touch away. “When was this?” she asks, her voice turning oddly in pitch.
He shrugs and stands, biting back an exact answer he shouldn’t have to tell her. “A lifetime ago, Rose. It’s not important.”
“Where’re you going?” she asks and it’s the sudden inexplicable fear of it that makes him move faster.
“I need a piss,” he replies sharply, comes close to snapping. It’s hard not to snap when she looks at him like she can’t understand what she’s seeing. Thirty seconds of new information and suddenly, she’s scared. He can’t stand her looking at him like that. If she were just toying with him, he could be pissed off at her and be done with it. “Now that you’re done with the loo, think I’ll take it.”
He turns his back on her and shuts the door before she can reply and it traps him there, traps him in a small room that smells of her.
She shouldn’t’ve brought it up.
He shouldn’t’ve mentioned.
If he goes back out here and she wants to talk about it....
Well, then they won’t, he supposes.
He stands there, thinking like that while he takes care of things. He’s still sensitive about his family and she’s sensitive about so many random things. Bad dreams or not, he can’t let it get to him.
If she wants to look so betrayed at him for having a past, that’s her problem.
He washes his hands thoroughly before he comes out. His stomach does things no stomach should do when he doesn’t see her on the couch; it only takes two steps forward to see she’s in the kitchenette, but his stomach still does these things.
Her back turned to him, she’s standing there, watching the kettle, arms pulled tight around herself. Regular morning cuppa or no, her wanting tea is probably a bad sign. She’s taking it so hard when it’s not even hers to take - when he’s not even said anything, not really - and it makes him want to shout and yell.
“We havin’ a fight or somethin’?” he asks, arms crossed. “Can’t be easy, wakin’ up on the wrong side of a couch.”
“Had a good rolling start and flipped over the back,” she explains, her back still turned.
At least she’s still got some humour in her, he reflects, leaning against the wall. Shoulder pressing, head resting, he waits.
“I just-” She cuts herself off.
He keeps on waiting.
“It was all nice an’- an’ I’m just being a stupid ape, so forget it.”
Even though she’s not looking, he shakes his head. “Easiest way to make someone curious? Tell them to forget. You’ve gone and piqued my interest now.”
It takes some more waiting before she explains. It takes some more waiting as her arms stay wrapped around herself, as she keeps her back turned and her head down. He wants to hold her so badly; it’s at once remarkable and bizarre, the way simply looking at her can change his mood.
He’s far more hers than she’s his. Maybe more than she’ll ever be his. Probably more. Looks like it’s going to be one of those things he’ll have to live with until he’ll have to live without it. And he still wants to hold her. She’s not accusing, only small and confused.
“It was a weird moment to bring up your ex, s’all.” As she says it, she looks at him over her shoulder, her eyes uncertain.
He goes to her. Gathers her up.
She goes still, so fresh and new and easily hurt where there’s no callus to protect. Goes still while somehow soft and when she moves, it’s to turn between his arms, to hide her face against his chest.
“I had a family once,” he tells her. “More or less.” He doesn’t need her to understand or even to know, not really. It’s something he needs her to be able to cope with. And so he asks, “Is that all right?”
“Yeah,” she says in a winded breath.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” she says again, still not holding to him. She stands in his embrace rather than return it, her forehead against his shoulder. Beneath his hands, the muscles of her back refuse to relax. She refuses to relax but she refuses to pull back and that’s all the permission he needs to keep holding on.
“That’s more of a ‘sort of, yeah’ than a ‘yeah’.”
“S’ just.... You've had this whole life,” she says, the word spoken as if it ought to be impossible. Or maybe he’s mishearing the tone a little, what with her muffled against his t-shirt like that.
“Yeah,” he says. “People do that. It’s called ‘living’, Rose. You’re not half bad at it yourself.” There’s so much of hers he doesn’t know, so much of hers that she won’t say; only fair he does the same, isn’t it? He can justify it.
“Yeah, but,” she says and there’s really nothing more, just that hanging word.
“But what?”
“S’like,” she says, tries to explain. “It’s.... For all I know, you've got a tattoo covering your entire back or something. And it’s a part of you and you’ve had it for years, but you never let the skin show, so....”
“You askin’ me to strip?” he asks her, feeling it through her back when she surprises herself with a grin. “’Cause you’re gonna have to buy me a drink first.”
Laughing quietly against his chest, she finally gives in to his arms. “I bought you one yesterday.”
He shrugs around her, looking down at that blond little head. “Yeah, but it wasn’t alcoholic.”
“Fine. Buy you one tonight.” She shifts closer, breathes against his collarbone. Tightens her grip on him, her arms no longer hanging loose around his middle. It’s a proper hug now, maybe something more.
His eyes try to fall shut. Keep trying to.
The kettle whistles, the steam shrieking, and they release each other, half surprised. She turns back to the stove, turns away from him again - except this time, she doesn’t mean it.
“Want some?”
She looks at him over her shoulder again and he nods, stepping back to lean against the counter. He takes a banana from where it’s been ripening on top of the fridge, eats as she fusses with the tea. This, at least, is familiar ground.
She brings their mugs to the counter, sets them down and fetches herself a banana as well. They eat breakfast the same way they ate dinner, almost, sitting on the counter but facing into the kitchenette this time. His flat isn’t much good for living in, he’s realizing through having her here, realizing in small and absent ways. Really, he hasn’t even got a table.
He doesn’t much want a table, mind. But the point still stands.
It’s not a train of thought he can keep going for long; can’t distract yourself with what you’re not interested in, not really.
He finishes his banana first, gets up to chuck the peel in the bin. He has got a bin. It’s not very big and he’s not sure where he got it.
He’s trying to figure out if he wants to brave the awkward silence or ignore it until she’s better when she goes and surprises him. It’s the unexpected expected or maybe the other way around. All the same, it’s very much her.
“Sorry,” she says.
“What?” he says.
She shrugs a little, her hands cupped around her mug. “Sorry for bein’ weird today. S’your fault, though.”
It’s so matter-of-fact that he has to give her a warning smile. “How so?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Did you know you snore? Could hear you through the wall.” Her tongue touches her smile and gives away the simple tease.
“Now that’s scary.” He sits back down on the counter, gives her a significant look as he retrieves his mug.
It’s her turn to ask: “What?”
“I thought that was you.” She tries to smack his shoulder, but he continues on. “We ought to check the closets or somethin’.”
“Thought about it, but I didn’t want any skeletons fallin’ out, makin’ a racket in the middle of the night,” she replies.
“Nah - too Bluebeard for me.” Which, on reflection, isn’t the best reference to make.
“Would that be a curly blue beard or just a normal one?” she asks. “’Cause I think it’d look funny either way.”
He shakes his head. “Not a beard person. Never have been, never will be.”
“No?” And she reaches for his chin, her fingertips finding his stubble before he swats her hand away.
“I’m getting to that.”
“Did I throw off your routine?” she asks, not looking remotely apologetic. She knows him too well for that. They’d both like to think so, at any rate.
“I don’t have a routine,” he tells her, matter-of-fact, between sips of his drink. “I have things that need doing that get done better in a particular order.”
“Right,” she says, laughing with her eyes. So beautiful, his girl. “Am I mixing up that particular order?”
He shrugs, his mouth grinning on without asking permission. “Means I don’t have to make myself tea. Can’t complain about that.”
“You so could.”
He feigns insult. “About your tea?”
“From your cupboard,” she points out. “Technically your tea.”
“Could complain about you stealin’ my tea,” he muses.
“Go on, then.”
“Said I could, didn’t I? Don’t need to go around proving it.”
“If you don’t complain, I’m taking it as a compliment,” she warns.
“Worst cuppa I ever had.” With that little announcement, he downs the remainder of the drink. “And now, to shave.”
“Don’t cut yourself,” she warns, jinxing him, and when he inevitably does, his foulest language only delights her.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Like the lost little stray she is, she follows him to work. They’re chatting again, almost easily. She holds to his hand tighter than usual, but not too tightly. It’s better than her letting go. Most things are, so it’s not that high of a bar, but the point still stands.
“So where’re you off to for the day? Or is that important secret UNIT business?”
“Important secret Tyler business, yeah,” she agrees, bumping against him a little in the crowd. Her hair, still damp from his lack of hairdryer, feels different against his arm than it usually does. It’s not the brushing tickle.
He looks down to see the flash of tongue in her smile, looks down and sees a lack of it. Not a playful bump then, just part of walking. But it’s strange, the tight grip and the failure to really tease.
He tries walking without conversation for only a few seconds before deciding he can’t stand it.
“Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“Something the matter?”
She shakes her head.
“A morning like that, Rose, something’s the matter.” It’s still the Fred thing, he’s pretty sure. Unless he’s done something in the past five minutes, it’s still about Fred. But until she makes a real move, until she lays an actual claim on him, all of this is just overreacting.
“Phone call from UNIT this morning.”
Oh. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“If you can sleep through your own snoring, wouldn’t think you would,” she answers and that smile is back, that teasing touch of tongue.
All the same: “I don’t snore.” Not enough to be heard through a closed door, anyway.
“Right.” Another bump against his arm, this one intentional. “Sure. Anyway, I took it in the bathroom ‘cause I didn’t want to wake you. First rule of freeloading, yeah? Don’t be an alarm clock.”
“You get reception in there?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“S’pose.”
They reach the garage and stand together, hand in hand. Something’s still off - he can feel it through her skin - but something being off with her here is still better than normalcy without her. Between madness and boredom, he’ll never pick the sane option.
Doesn’t mean it’s not making him itch, though.
“See you for lunch?” she asks and her uncertainty only confuses him more.
“Only if you’re planning on eating.”
“Might be, yeah.”
“Sounds like lunch, then,” he reasons, leaning in a bit to look her more levelly in the eyes.
She grins up at him, eyes bright and nothing’s off anymore. All that mess running around in his head; it’s his one last piece of holding back. He’s done it before, thinks he might be doing it now. Thinks it might be too late when her tongue pulls back from her grin for her to say, “It does, doesn’t it?”
“Could sound like dinner, though. Might want to be careful about that,” he warns, her hand still very much in his.
“Me being careful doesn’t work too well,” she admits. She sways forward a little, just a little. Her hand is so warm.
He shakes his head at her. “Jeopardy friendly.” His free hand alights upon her waist, fingertips touching before the palm settles.
She tenses but doesn’t pull away. “That’s me,” she says quietly. Her head ducks a little and he’s looking at her hairline instead of her eyes.
He sighs. Lets his hand drop from her side. “So it is.”
She bites her lip, her fingers squeezing his. “I just-”
“So it is,” he says again, a hint of a warning in it this time. He’d rather have hope than an explanation. He leans in, brushes a kiss over her brow. “See you later.”
“See you,” she echoes as he pulls back. She looks at him like she’s got something else to say, something else to keep quiet and he drops her hand to wave to her as he heads into the garage.
A month is long enough to sort this out.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Come to think of it, he probably should have given her a key again. He’s more or less locked her out from her stuff.
Is it wrong that this makes them weirdly even?
.-.-.-.-.-.
It’s probably wrong, but it’s kind of funny, too.
.-.-.-.-.-.
When she pops back round, he gives it to her. First thing he does. He’s freed the key from its chain and he presses it into her hand, metal and grease and oil pressed against her palm.
The way she looks at him... well.
The way she looks at him results in Sanchez yelling “¡Bésela ya!” at him. Which leads to him hurrying off to change into his civvies so he doesn’t have to translate.
He hears her laugh, though, as Sanchez does. Hears it through the door, an awkward sound. Not only has Sanchez translated - he must have - the man is probably pressing for details.
He rolls his eyes, lets out a breath that has more to do with exasperation than oxygen. Shakes his head as he comes back out, tucking the tag of his t-shirt back down. He’s just in time to see the girl shaking her own head, to hear her saying something he’s heard before.
“...not my boyfriend. He’s better than that.”
He knows those words, knows that tone of voice. She’s back to talking about her doctor, must be explaining why Sanchez’s demand to hurry up and kiss went unanswered the way it had. It’s the explanation he hadn’t wanted but already halfway knew.
“Ready to go?” he asks, trying to gauge whether a bomb has been planted in the conversation. That’s the one kind of explosion he wouldn’t say yes to.
She nods and takes his hand and if the amused look on Sanchez’s face is anything to go by, things seem to be safe.
“See you, Miguel!” she calls back as they walk out together.
“¡Hasta luego, mi Rosita bonita!”
It’s not until they round the corner that she turns to him, her smile small but sort of impish. “I like him,” she confides.
“I do too,” he admits. Except for in situations like that. Still - seeing as she’s back to being happy, he can’t particularly mind. “C’mon,” he says, giving her hand a squeeze. “Let’s get you fed.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
As the day goes on, it occurs to him that nothing’s really changed. After dinner, he works it out so she doesn’t need to be buzzed into the flat anymore or sneak in or whatever it was she did. Takes a bit of talk and half-awkward half-explanations, but it’s not so bad. He does that one thing and that’s it.
Oh, and he needs to buy another pillow. He’ll do that eventually.
But beyond that, the dynamic is more or less unchanged. Maybe even improved. Instead of wondering if she’s going to fall asleep here by accident, he knows she’s here on purpose. He likes that.
They’re sitting on the floor again, a card game between them as he prods at her piecemeal Spanish. Simple sentences lead to simple conversation and strange mistakes. When he corrects, they laugh together.
“Creo que las manzanas verdes son sabrosas,” he tells her at a decent clip, his belief that green apples taste good.
He watches the way her eyes look back and forth as she thinks, the way her lips move as she sorts that out. It’s no wonder he’s winning the card game. “Creo las manzanas rojas son sabrosas,” she contests - or tries to.
“Crees que,” he corrects. “No creas.”
“...No idea what that meant.”
“You said you created apples.”
“I created delicious apples,” she answers with a grin, correcting him right back. “Red ones. So what am I supposed to say?”
He tells her, explaining creer against crear, throwing out examples and even anecdotes right up until he wins the game.
“Such a cheater.”
“Multitasking isn’t cheating.”
About to find some comeback, she gets distracted midthought. It’s certainly something worth watching, her mental detour clear on her face. “Oh - almost forgot.”
“Yeah?”
“Go check the fridge.”
His eyebrows rise.
She grins at him. “Go on.”
His eyebrows rising further, he complies, standing up and making his way to the kitchenette. “Is it going to blow up?”
“No. Sorry about that,” she adds. She stays on the other side of the counter, leans on it with folded arms.
He laughs a little, then opens the door. Eyes scanning down, he laughs again when he spots it. “Not exactly what I meant, Rose.”
“You told me to buy you a drink.”
“That’s a six pack.”
“I’m an overachiever.” She looks so pleased with herself.
“That’s not what I meant.” He can feel it around his eyes, the way he’s looking at her so fondly. He knows it and he can’t seem to stop doing it.
She doesn’t seem to mind. Just shrugs. “Figured this would be easier than getting you out to a bar.”
He shrugs back; she’s probably right about that.
“So you want one or no?” she asks, still grinning a bit.
“How about this: The greasy mechanic takes a shower and then we take two of these up on the roof.”
She grins wider. “Sounds good.”
“Sounds fantastic,” he corrects, already moving toward the bathroom.
She stands back to let him pass, and they watch each other through their movements, neither quite willing to look away. He gets to the doorway, stands there for a mo’. She breaks the moment first, bending down to get the cards off the floor. Time to stop staring.
But about to go in, he turns back, remembering his half of the deal. “Oh, Rose?” he says.
“Yeah?” she asks, looking up.
In one smooth motion, he pulls off his t-shirt. “No tattoo,” he tells her, grinning at her surprise.
There’s a small pause before she straightens up, before she says, “Hold on a sec” while reaching for her pocket.
“What?”
Her eyes practically sparkle. “Camera phone.”
Quick about it, though still grinning, he shuts the door behind him.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Up on the roof, she looks for lights in the sky rather than lights in the skyline. For all the shades of artificial yellow and car-tail red, for all the flow of Barcelona at night, he can’t blame her.
He misses the stars too.
“Tomorrow night,” he tells her. “Less light pollution up by the mountains.”
“Yeah?”
“Somewhere along the mountains,” he hedges.
“That’ll be nice,” she says, leaning into his side.
“Yeah,” he says, and the city shines on below them.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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