Ella Claire Gainsborough {Beauty} (bookshelved) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-05-31 03:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, beauty, dr. watson, irene adler, moriarty |
Who: Ella, Iris, Micah and Jonathan (cameo by Daniel)
What: Moving back into 905 (Completed log)
Where: Between the second floor, 905 and R1
When: The day after the full moon (pre-Trenton face bashing)
Warnings: Language and emo
Jonathan went up to 905 around ten to wait for Ella. He didn’t glance over his shoulder, or allow himself to really entertain any serious worry over whether or not someone in the building might see fit to attack him after what he’d admitted on the forums. Of course they weren’t going to. Moriarty hadn’t had the chance to do anything to them yet, and wouldn’t, if he had any kind of say in the matter.
It would be a reprieve from his worries to meet Ella face to face. Doing something normal like helping her move (even if the circumstances, considering she was moving out of the apartment where he’d read that The Beast lived, were likely less than pleasant) would help him get his head on straight again.
Ella was running late. She’d left Nicholas in charge of the shop, where she’d spent the night, and she’d had to stop by the post office, where the keys to 905 had been left for her. She doubted the apartment could have been fully renovated in just the past few days, but the letter she’d received said it had been. She filed it away as being just another mystery of the building, one she didn’t have the emotional strength to explain.
Ella rounded the steps up to the ninth floor in the same dress she’d worn to see Daniel the day before, and she looked as tired as she felt. Moving back into 905 meant she had failed (again), and now she was going to have to brave the building on her own (a thought which secretly terrified her). As she neared 905, she slowed, hesitated at the unfamiliar man in the hall. New people made her nervous, and that fact was evidenced by the sharp smell of greenery that suddenly flooded the hall. Iris wasn’t there yet, and Ella very much hoped she’d arrive before she reached the man - Jonathan.
Jonathan noticed the scent, but not right away. He registered it and then filed it away-odd, in the middle of an empty hallway, but it could have been coming from any of the apartments. Ella seemed nervous straight from the get-go, and he wasn’t sure exactly what to do that would help. Misinterpreting it as a worry born of who she knew him to be on the full moon nights, he smiled a little. “Morning,” he said, searching her face. “You must be Ella. I’m Jonathan. Good to meet you in person.”
She gave him a tremulous smile, and she slid one of the keys to 905. Seeing the place with the walls freshly painted (nary a hole in sight) was odd, and she trailed her fingers against the wall as she walked toward the hall. It reminded her of all the new trailers and hotel rooms when she was little, the fact that nothing ever actually moved with her family when they left somewhere. The two smaller rooms (once one large room, which had long ago been split) had been painted a pale, butter yellow, and she walked into the one with dumbwaiter door, which had been painted over, but which was still visibly there.
She looked over her shoulder to see if Jonathan had followed, and she gave him another tentative smile. “I normally don’t stop talking,” she told him honestly, apologetically.
He took the smile as a greeting, though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He stayed a good few steps back from her, giving her more than her share of space, and glanced around the empty apartment. It still smelled like fresh paint and plaster, and he wondered what exactly had prompted the redecoration.
Jonathan didn’t look particularly threatening, but, then again, he didn’t look much like the vision most people had of a private detective. He had dressed down for the moving effort, with worn jeans and a yellow t-shirt, with fingerless black work gloves to go with them. Ella had seemed fine when they’d spoken the night before, so unless she’d heard something about him in the night, it either had to be that she felt she’d made a mistake in inviting him along, or she was just nervous around strangers. “I expect you’ll talk when you feel ready to,” he said, not unkindly.
“New people, in person they make me uncomfortable,” she admitted. Beauty’s influence was wearing off the more time that past from the moon, and Ella (now) was nowhere near as trusting and open as her counterpart.Still, she knew his tale, and he was new to the building. She didn’t think he was her attacker; he didn’t sound like him, and he wasn’t Lotte’s Bran. She took a deep breath, and she reached down and touched the door to the dumbwaiter, hoping Iris wouldn’t mind her taking the two smaller rooms. It was silly, thinking Daniel would send anything down or try to contact her, but she couldn’t help keeping that bit of hope alive. She walked past him carefully, and she looked into the master bedroom, which was painted in a soft green, and she wondered that the entire place wasn’t painted white. “Is your apartment white?” she asked him, turning to look at him and his yellow shirt and unconventional attire. “And are you very certain you’re a detective?” she asked, a small grin finally touching her lips at the notion.
After Irene did a fine job of isolating her from the people who knew her best, Iris tried to stop worrying about Moriarty and do things like get out of bed, get dressed, get to work, and get home. She was avoiding sleep where she could, even using the caffeine pills every other night, because she was afraid that Jonathan would step into one of her dreams again, only he would be Moriarty and she could think of few things that quite frightened her more than that prospect. When she did find sleep she was exhausted, and it tended to be empty and black, the way sleep was supposed to be.
She had agreed to Ella's plan with no argument and no thought. If she was going to let Irene try to deal with Moriarty with as few pieces on the board as possible, then it would be better if she wasn't on the same floor as Micah. It might remove the fire escape as a point of contact, and it was getting to the point where she was smoking too much and if she was always hanging out on the fire escape to do it, awkwardness would inevitably ensue.
She came up to 905 without anything in hand but her purse, because she wasn't sure where Ella wanted her (it didn't matter) or where her things would be (it didn't matter), and she wanted to know those things before she actually took her first armful into the elevator. All the books had been returned to the library, so that left a closet of clothes on hangers, two cups, two mugs, two plates, two sets of silverware, her purse, her makeup bag... and one painting.
She wasn't sure what to do about the bed, yet. Maybe buy a fold-out that sat low to the floor and didn't take much space. The rest of the furniture was second-hand and easily abandoned. She thought about it on her way down the ninth floor hallway, and she stepped uneasily into the doorway where the door stood ajar. She heard voices within and tapped on the frame. "Hello? Ella?"
Well, it was a reassurance to know he wasn’t really the source of the problem. “Good thing I only have to be a new person for so long,” he said. “And yes, it is white. I thought they all came that way. Apparently I was wrong.” He met her smile with a slightly wider one of his own. “Very sure,” he said.
The voice at the door was vaguely familiar, but didn’t connect immediately with an identity. He looked over at Ella, waiting to be sure it was someone she knew rather than respond for her.
Ella recognized Iris’ voice immediately, and she went back down the hall to meet the other woman. The apartment was big, being higher up in the building, and Ella hoped Iris would like it. She couldn’t afford it alone; not even if she agreed to one of her mother’s schemes, and she was (admittedly) terrified of sleeping in the building alone. When she’d told Daniel she didn’t need him, it had been precisely the truth. “Iris,” she said, smiling warmly at the other woman through tear-reddened eyes. “What do you think? You can have the master bedroom,” she said immediately, hopeful of acceptance.
Iris was glad that Ella didn’t immediately embrace her in some kind of odd very womanly one-armed hug. She had known quite a lot of women, most of them with money, and they always insisted on imitating real demonstrations of affection with people they barely knew. She was able to smile at Ella encouragingly, and though she wasn’t as naturally warm, it was definitely beyond pure politeness. “It’s big.” She sounded impressed, because the place was big in comparison to a second-floor apartment. Iris had stayed in larger establishments, of course, but one had to keep these things in perspective when one was between jobs. “And not white. You painted?” she was surprised, and looked to either side. “I would have helped.” She would have hated it, but she would have helped.
Ella shook her head. “I turned in my keys last week, and I didn’t see it again until today,” she admitted. “I have a bedroom’s worth of furniture upstairs and a couch,” she said motioning to the empty living room. “It won’t be enough to fill it, but I lost everything else.” she admitted, adding, “and it’s not exactly the best quality.” She motioned toward the hall then. “Your room is at the end.”
Iris didn’t say anything about how much she had or did not have in the way of furniture. It honestly didn’t occur to her to do so. She smiled her thanks, then, eyes still roving up and over the walls at the garden colors they’d been gifted with by the management, she wandered down the way that had been indicated, trailing the hem of an admirably-dyed mulberry colored peasant skirt that, combined with a white top, made her resemble a gypsy stopping by Wall Street.
Ella followed and she was glad of the quiet. Normally, Ella loved to talk. It was one of the things she’d been trying to get Daniel to do for months - talk. But when she was depressed, she liked quiet and written words rather than spoken ones. And so she didn’t say anything until Iris entered the master bedroom, the room where Jonathan was, and when she did speak it was an afterthought. “Oh, Jonathan offered to help move our things. I didn’t know if you had anyone?” she asked; a question.
When Ella had gone out into the hall, Jonathan had begun to follow her until her heard her identify the speaker outside. Iris. He stopped, then went back into the bedroom they’d been in. Hopefully they’d keep the conversation in the main room.
Jonathan didn’t have any illusions about the way Iris likely felt about him, and it would be best to avoid any sort of conflict, if he could. He should have asked Ella in advance who her new roommate was. Iris was moving out of her old apartment? If this was because of Moriarty, he’d-
Then she was in the room. He turned from the window he’d been staring blindly out of, and found he had no idea what to say. “...Hi.”
Iris stopped one step into the room. It was an earthy sage green, a color she attributed to yoga and bamboo, for some reason, and undoubtedly intended to be soothing. It probably would have worked, if the man from her nightmares hadn’t been standing in the middle of it. She was only slightly better off than she had been when they had first met in the flower shop, and she knew as soon as she had the leisure to think it that her initial reaction had been devastatingly obvious. Surprise, at first, then fear, as her eyes flicked from either side to see if anyone else was waiting for her, and finally wariness--right before she shut everything off and her expression went serene. It was an uncanny slideshow of emotion, and she stepped a little to the side so Ella could enter. “Oh, hello.” To her roommate she said, “No, I don’t have any--that much, really. I’ll go start.” She waited for Ella to get out of her way so she could get out of the room.
Ella moved aside, because she knew panic and worry when she saw them, and she didn’t want to hem Iris in when she was frightened. She looked back at Jonathan apologetically, attributing Iris’ reaction to his tale. She kept forgetting that just because Moriarty wasn’t actually in Irene’s short story, it didn’t mean the two hadn’t met outside the scope of the page. Well, forgetting wasn’t quite the right word - it was just something she hadn’t really considered. “I’m sorry,” she said to Jonathan, apologizing for Iris. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.” She sighed with uncertainty. “I can go talk to her, if you can start upstairs? Just the clothes at least, until we find someone to help with the furniture?” she was hoping Iris’ doctor would help, but she hadn’t volunteered him, and Ella found that strange as well. “I would go myself, but-” she shrugged a little, eyes going wet. “I wouldn’t want to take them.”
Well, that had gone catastrophically. He didn’t know what he’d expected, exactly, but ‘abject terror’ had not been it. He barely had time to be surprised before Iris was already gone and down the hall.
Was this how it was going to be, now?
“I’m sure she doesn’t,” he said, mouth set into a grim line. “I’ll head upstairs.” He was going to ask if she was sure the man living there wouldn’t have a problem with a stranger coming in to get her things, but when her eyes started to shine he cut the question off, walking around her and into the hall. The only acknowledgement he gave Iris when he passed her was a quick look-otherwise he acted as if she wasn’t there, since it was what he was pretty sure she wanted.
Iris detoured into the kitchen to steady herself and look without interest at the cabinetry and the view out the living room windows. She stopped herself from drawing into the farthest corner when Jonathan entered, but that was about it. She watched him go, and she didn’t even have the presence of mind to feel badly about how she’d reacted to his presence. She put both of her palms flat on the counter and looked up when the other woman appeared at the end of the hall. “Ella,” she said, in a voice very quiet and even because she made it both, “if we’re going to make this arrangement work, please tell me if you’re going to have visitors. Before I arrive, if possible.”
Ella, who had followed Jonathan out to the main area of the apartment, hugged her arms to her waist, and she nodded. “I’m sorry. He wasn’t a visitor. I’ve never met him before today, and I just needed someone to carry- I didn’t want to go up myself-” she shook her head, cutting off any additional explanations. “I won’t have anyone over,” she said, honestly not thinking that was going to be any sort of an issue. “I’ll stop him so he doesn’t come back,” she said, all the fight gone out of her. She gave her a small smile, and she ducked out of the kitchen and into the living room and to the hall, feeling terrible.
Iris felt terrible too, more for spreading the misery than anything else. It was going to be a grand castle of cheer, was 905. Iris left her bag on the counter, palming her key to her place--that is, 206--and then went to go fetch her things. She mused that it might only take three, maybe four trips, and that only because she was keeping the contents of her closet and the dishware. Then again, she was going to have to take her painting (no question) and she wasn’t exactly sure how to do that. She checked her watch; Micah should still be at work, and she had time.
Jonathan had never been up to R1. He’d never been higher than his floor since he’d moved in-he’d never had a reason to go. The sort of people who lived on those floors made up a large part of his client base, however, and he absently took note of the layout as he moved through. His mind was anywhere but on the present.
Clearly any chance he’d had of getting to know people in the building was sort of shot to hell at this point. Still, maybe if he moved quickly, he could at least move Ella’s clothes into 905 before Iris returned with her own things. And with that small, dismal hope in mind, he knocked on the door to R1.
If Jonathan was coming up to R1 in the hope that it was going to improve his day, he clearly had not been in the building very long. Fortunately for the detective, Daniel was not drunk (yet?) nor was he asleep (and therefore ignoring the door). He was not, however, in a particularly good mood, and he definitely was not going to bake cookies and serve tea for visitors. Frankly, Jonathan was lucky he bothered to pull a shirt on and make sure his pants were buttoned before he opened the door. He gave the man a bleary-eyed stare, and the musty, disused smell of R1 joined the faint aroma of whiskey and drying flowers. “What.”
Oh, this was going to go well. He could just sense it. “Hi. I’m Jonathan. I’m here to pick up some of Ella’s things?” he said, with no idea how that would go over, and the inclination it wouldn’t be well.
An air of identifiable menace met this introduction. “Who?”
“Jonathan,” he repeated, trying to keep everything that had happened so far and the dwindling likelihood of any better success here from making him come across as irritated. He succeeded for the most part, and came across as exasperated instead, which was closer to the truth anyway. “Ella sent me here to pick up her clothes.” God, this man was aware she was moving out. Right?
An expression of outrage entirely dominated Daniel’s expression, which flickered perceptibly with pain before the beet-red anger took over. He took one deliberate step back and slammed the door in Jonathan’s face. So hard that dust actually parted from the hallway ceiling and littered the carpet.
Great.
He ran a hand through his hair to get the dust out of it, and spoke to the door, voice raised to make sure he was heard. “You are aware that hanging onto her things constitutes theft, I hope.”
Daniel was right on the other side of the door. “GET AWAY FROM MY DOOR OR I WILL OPEN IT AGAIN AND BREAK YOUR FUCKING FACE.”
The expression on Jonathan’s face was utterly wasted on the door: disgust mixed lovingly with frustration. “God only knows why she didn’t want to come up here and get her things herself.”
Ella had taken her time climbing the stairs between the ninth floor and the penthouses, and she hesitated at the foot of the staircase leading up the roof. She felt terrible having to tell Jonathan to leave after he’d offered to help so selflessly, and Iris’ comment about not having others over (while logical) made her unbelievably sad. All this meant she didn’t want to get near Daniel’s door, because if she did, she was sure she would run inside and into Daniel’s arms.
She approached Jonathan, and she smiled sadly and kept her voice down, her gaze lingering on the door of R1 a little too long before looking back at Jonathan. “I’m sorry about Iris. She’s not comfortable around strangers,” she said, realizing she was repeating what she’d said about herself downstairs. It hadn’t escaped her that she and Iris were likely the same in that regard, and it made her feel a little better about her new living arrangement. They could work through it together, she decided, even as she motioned toward the R1 door. “I don’t think you should come back to the apartment, but if you get my clothes, I’ll buy you that coffee once I”m done?” she asked. She’d already given up on the notion of furniture (a stop at Walmart would get her something to sleep on), she’d settle for the small box of items she knew was still sitting in the corner of her rented room in R1. Home was another issue, but she was almost willing to leave her with Daniel (even though it was a very obvious tactic).
When Jonathan turned to face Ella, his expression of ire shifted quickly back into something gentler, but he couldn’t totally wipe the anger from his face. At the suggestion Iris wasn’t comfortable with strangers, he smiled faintly. “We’ve met before,” he said. “I’d love to have coffee, but I’ve encountered a small problem in the form of your friend,” he gestured to the door, “Who just slammed the door in my face, and kindly offered to break it if I try to get in to take your clothes.”
Ella hadn’t thought for a moment that Daniel would do anything other than shove her things out of the apartment, especially given the things he’d said. The fact that he hadn’t made her smile just a little (the first true smile of the day), and she walked up past Jonathan and banged her fist once against the door of R1 before speaking. “You can send my clothes down the dumbwaiter, Mr. Webster” she demanded. “And the typewriter I purchased from you,” she added a little more quietly. She didn’t add that she’d be checking the dumbwaiter regularly.
There was a very ominous pause, and then Daniel opened the door again. He opened it like he half-expected a bomb to go off on the other side of it, cautiously, and that didn’t much change when he saw the two of them standing there. He looked from Jonathan to Ella, watching their faces, and then he looked back at Ella. “New friend?” It wasn’t an attack. In fact, it was a very conversational tone, interested.
Then he tipped his head, and stepped back very deliberately, door opening. “I didn’t know he was with you.” Jonathan’s word on the matter wouldn’t be anything. Obviously.
Jonathan’s first thought was that Daniel had to be insane. One minute he was screaming at him about breaking his face, the next he was cheerfully greeting him like he’d never opened the door the first time around. His second thought was of Ella. So she said she was in love with this...erratic man, whom he presumed to be the Beast that she said didn’t love her back. It might explain the cavalier way he was behaving now, but it was still bizarre. If he cared that little about whether or not she stayed, and his anger had been simply at the idea of someone taking her things, no wonder she was leaving.
“He wasn’t,” Ella admitted. “I sent him up alone, because I knew I’d want to stay if I came myself, but then Iris,” she waved her hand in a way that said it was a long story. “Jonathan volunteered to help us move,” she explained, motioning to the other man. “On the forums. We just met today, now, actually. And so far Iris won’t let him back in, and you won’t let him in here,” she said, fully aware by this point that she was babbling.
Daniel made a soft little sound of disgust. Iris. Then he looked at Jonathan, tipped one brow and said, “Moriarty,” but it was an observation, not an invitation at conversation.
Iris wouldn’t let him back in? So he really was the boogieman after all. Daniel recognizing him as Moriarty didn’t do much for his mood as it followed that thought.
She went quiet then, and she just looked at Daniel, watched him as he backed into R1, tried to determine how sober he was through the whiskey and the scent of dying flowers. She knew she looked terrible, rumpled and not at all how she would have wanted to look when he saw her again. “You can just use the dumbwaiter,” she said. She couldn’t very well take the furniture without being able to have Jonathan go back to 905, and she had no attachment to it, having only seen it once for all of five minutes. “It’s only my clothes and the typewriter,” she repeated, tilting her chin up a touch at the last, challenging him to deny her that last item.
He smiled, small, fond, vague regret. “My typewriter.” It was not a challenge. He sobered a minute later, fast, like the last minute of a sunset, where everything dies at once. “Take whatever you want, then.” He waved a vague hand at Jonathan, unapologetic. This time he did turn away. “I’ll send the furniture down tomorrow.”
“My typewriter,” she said. “I paid you for it,” she said, though she had no idea if he’d even bothered to collect any of the things she’d left for him in the dumbwaiter, including the money for the machine. She took a very deep breath, and her chin tipped just a little more. “I don’t want the furniture,” she said truthfully. “I want my clothes and the typewriter,” here she paused, “placed in the dumbwaiter by you.” She looked at him a moment longer, even though he’d turned away. “The sugar glider likes one piece of fruit a day, and you’ll need to let him out at least once at night,” she said, though she knew he was perfectly aware of the creature’s routine. She didn’t ask for any of her other things, though R1 was littered with her books and herbs and pots and tins. Giving him one last look, she turned, and she ran down the stairs and back to 905 before she could change her mind.
Jonathan watched her run, and backed a few steps away from the door to follow her. Hopefully she was running back to 905 so that he would actually know where to find her.
“I wouldn’t make shouting at everyone who knocks on your door a habit,” he offered, dead dry, but with a hint of a smile for how absurdly today had gone.
Daniel regarded the other man with cool detachment entirely separate from his feelings about Ella, and as he pulled his eyes away for a last look at the way she had escaped, he said, “Fuck you,” in a leisurely manner. Then he walked back into the apartment and slammed the door to the master bedroom at the back, leaving the apartment (and both his and Ella’s things, entirely at Jonathan’s mercy).
It had been worth-no. No, it hadn’t really been worth a try. Oh well. He followed Ella down the stairs.
Iris was in the apartment again, hanging up skirts and dresses one by one in a closet from the armful she had. When she heard the door she stepped out in the hallway to make sure it wasn’t someone she wanted to hide from, and when she recognized the silhouette of Ella as she moved in, she said, with some concern, “Everything alright?”
Ella nodded, but she didn’t linger to talk. She walked into her empty bedroom, and she shut the door behind herself softly.
Iris went back into her room and put the clothes back where they belonged. The options were to go back up to R1 and inform him what a selfish pig he was, or keep moving her things. She decided to keep moving her things, because it would be less complicated. She finished that armload, took her key (slowing by Ella’s door to listen) and headed back down to the second floor. She watched her reflection in the elevator mirror as it sunk down. At least the thing was cooperating. She leaned closer to the glass, and then sighed, rolling back on her heels. She looked tired, and no amount of careful powder was going to fix that.
She stepped out onto the second floor, wondering what people did when they weren’t trying to hide things.
Micah had just woken up. He hadn’t heard Irene’s recording for him yet, and he hadn’t gone to meet Cole (though he knew about Trenton at this point), which meant he was tired and angry, but not yet upset when he opened the door to 202 with a cup of fresh coffee in his hand for Iris. He started down the hall toward 206 as the elevator doors opened, and when he saw her his shoulders relaxed a little and he grinned. “Ven, mamita. Hay cafe fresco.”
Iris, surprised, let her steps pause at the end of the hall. She picked up again a moment later, trying to figure out how to approach the meeting and wondering whether or not Irene’s message had gotten through. She wasn’t exactly pleased with the execution, but she couldn’t deny the motivation. She was wrong to suppose she could tell Micah to go away effectively, especially when she didn’t mean it. “You’re not at work?” Obviously he wasn’t, but... she looked down at the coffee. It smelled better than the kind they made at the coffee shop, to be honest.
He changed his direction and walked toward her, handing the coffee cup to her when he’d gotten close enough. She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept, but there was something else there, something more than just lack of sleep. “Mamita, what’s wrong?” he asked, ignoring the question about work. He’d assumed she’d be better today, actually. Yes, there was Moriarty, but Irene was strong, and the woman usually spent the moon with Holmes. Micah assumed that she’d be feeling happy today; she wasn’t.
She took it, a little hurried, and pulled her hand back. “Nothing.” She looked down even though she knew that was not the right way to lie. Ugh, she was too tired to even lie properly? “Just tired. Sleep is...” she waved one hand, dismissively. Elusive, was the word she was going for, but it sounded too academic and too breezy. She gave up. She brought her eyes up, and when they moved too fast the faint redness around the edges was more clear than the gray. “I’m sorry about Irene,” she ventured, not knowing where to look.
“What did Irene do?” Micah asked, not understanding what she meant since he hadn’t heard the recording yet. “Watson likes her, and I’m not around when he is, Iris. There’s nothing to apologize for. We’re like night and day, him and me,” he finished, his expression concerned.
Iris tried to smile. “Watson thinks that Holmes and Irene are going to run off and get married like in a fairy tale.”
“Were you on your way to your apartment?” he asked, frowning finally at the time and the fact that she wasn’t at work, then looking at the elevator in confusion and back again. “Why were you in the elevator?”
She threw a faintly nervous glance over her shoulder at the elevator. “...No. I--” She licked her lips, took a breath. “I’m going to move in with Ella. In 905? It didn’t go well with Daniel.” Her mouth twisted. Shocker.
He stared at her for a moment, and then he started shaking his head immediately. “Oh, no. No, mamita, you aren’t. Me entiendes? No. Es peligroso.”
Steadily, into his eyes. “Yes, I am.”
“No.”
“I don’t get to decide where I live?” Now she seemed faintly amused, in a tired way. Like watching a record go around.
“Iris, you don’t know that woman well enough to want to live with her. I’ll talk to Daniel. He’s an idiot, and he’s just going to want her back, and you’re going to be left with an apartment you can’t afford,” Micah argued, nudging her toward her apartment with a hand on her elbow. Logic.
Iris dropped the coffee and jerked her arm back to her chest, pulling herself away so quickly that she only got a few drops on the ripe purple skirt. There wasn’t as much fear as anger in her eyes when she looked up at him, mouth set grim. “I am not a little girl for you to take care of, Micah. Neither is Ella. If she’s going through this much hell to leave the man, I doubt she’s going to go back up there and camp in his hallway. I am going to live where I want to live, just like I did before you came along and just like I’m going to do after you leave.” She tried to find a way past him.
The reaction surprised him as much as the crash of the coffee cup. Micah, who was acting no differently than he ever did around her, had to take a moment to try to understand what had just happened. When she tried to move past him, he gave her room to do so, but he pursued at a calm pace, ignoring the coffee splattered on the legs of his jeans. “Ella isn’t you, Iris,” he said simply, because the only thing he knew so far is that she was looking at the situation between Daniel and Ella the way she would think about it, which wasn’t necessarily the way Ella would. In fact, he was sure it wouldn’t be. Iris was more guarded than Ella, less trusting with older scars. Micah understood that about her, even if she didn’t understand it about herself. And he knew this couldn’t be just about Ella. “What happened?” he asked, calmly.
Iris pushed through the door to 206 with her key, and it was clear she was serious about the moving. There was a box on the kitchen counter with the dishes and the netbook computer, the library books were all gone, and she’d left the (lately repaired) window open to air the place out. She picked up the box and stood there with it until he moved. Her eyes were wet and she was trying to keep the tears in check. “Please move.”
“Iris,” he said, and it was a low, confused pronunciation - more Spanish than English in that confusion. He didn’t understand what the hell had happened, what had changed. “Que paso? Tell me that at least.”
“You’re making this harder than it needs to be. I’m just moving a few floors up.” At least she kept it out of her voice. She took her box down the hall toward the elevator, leaving the door behind open without attempting to find a way back to close it.
“I don’t mean that,” he said, following after her and grabbing the box from her arms. “I mean this, us. Did Watson do something and I don’t remember it? What is it?”
She wouldn’t let him take the box and held on, tugging. “No. Irene--” Stop. Start. “It’s better if there’s some distance. Let go.” Her eyes burned. Why did he have to be there?
“Why?” It was only one word, but he held her gaze when he asked it, and he didn’t let go of the damn box.
“Have it then.” She was talking about the box, and released it, turning her head first and then her shoulders and retreating back to 206, where she shut the door and left him with the damn box and a whole lot of nothing.
Micah watched that closed door for a few minutes, the confusion evident in his face for anyone who walked by him to see. He decided, in the end, to carry the damn box up to 905. If she was moving there, she’d have to return at some point. And so he pushed the elevator button, and he tried to figure out what the hell Irene had done. It had to be Irene. Nothing else had happened other than the moon.
When the elevator door opened onto the ninth floor, Micah could hear voices, and so he slowed down, and he listened.
Ella had come back out after Iris had gone, feeling the need to stand in the center of an empty living room that she had once felt like she belonged in. Now, she just felt like an outsider. She heard Jonathan approach, and vines climbed the walls within seconds and the unexpected interruption. “Oh,” she said, when she saw who was there. He must have followed her from the roof. “You can’t stay here,” she said softly, apologetically. “Iris,” she said, then shrugged a little helplessly.
He couldn’t help but notice the vines, which definitely hadn’t been there the first time he’d been in the apartment. He thought of the smell of greenery in the hall when he’d met Ella earlier, and he nodded. “Of course,” he said, expression tired but otherwise difficult to read. She looked more than a little out of sorts. “Rain check on the coffee?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she added, because she was. He seemed kind enough, and she wasn’t even feeling herself enough to torment him with her opinions about every inconsequential thing on the planet. “You don’t seem very Moriarty to me,” she added, almost an afterthought.
He smiled faintly. “I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment,” he said. “Send me a message if you need anything.” It wasn’t an empty offer. He felt sort of guilty that he’d come to her apartment to help her move and succeeded only in terrifying her roommate and pissing off her ex-boyfriend, even if neither of those things were his fault. He pulled the door shut when he left and stood outside the door for a second, giving himself a moment to stare at the ceiling. None of this was boding well at all for his future in this building. He shook his head and walked toward the elevator.
Micah was leaning against the wall beside the elevator when Jonathan came into view, having heard everything that was just said in 905. “Moriarty,” he said, leaving it at that. Sometimes saying less, Micah knew, was the best way to get more information. Right now? He wanted information. He knew Iris didn’t trust this man, even though he didn’t understand the extent, and while he laid that all at the door of Irene, he wanted to be sure there wasn’t something he was missing.
And he’d been so hoping to get back to his apartment without needing to do this again. “I’m starting to feel like a celebrity in all the wrong ways,” he said, thinking aloud more than anything else. He recognized Micah, though it took him a moment to connect the face to the voice. “Watson, right?”
Micah had met Jonathan once before, but it was soon after his arrival in the United States at a convention that was louder and more crowded than he was accustomed to, and so he’d never taken a true measure of the man. He knew Jonathan’s exploits weren’t as widely known as Eliot’s, and he knew Eliot trusted the man, but that wasn’t enough for him to feel safe with the virtual stranger being around Iris.
Micah nodded, and he didn’t argue the fact that he didn’t know much at all about Watson’s mind. “You know Ella?” he asked, an obviously distrustful question. He’d have to ask Daniel about this (when he punched his nose in for being a fucking idiot).
“Since yesterday,” Jonathan said, glancing back at the hall he’d come from. “I spoke to her on the boards. I was supposed to help her move.” He looked to the box he was carrying. “You’re on moving duty as well,” he said. For Iris, he had to assume. It did make sense that they would know one another.
“No, I stole a box,” Micah said, though he didn’t clarify it any more than that. He shifted the box in his arms, and he rearranged his weight, buying himself time, waiting to see if the silence made Jonathan add anything more.
“I’m not to re-enter the apartment,” Jonathan said, by way of explanation for his own distinct lack of a box, and for the empty room Micah would find when he went to drop his off. “At Iris’ request. Do you know her well?”
That made Micah stand up straighter, shoulders tensing. “Our tales know each other,” he said - not the full truth, but not a lie either. “Why doesn’t she want you there?” He knew she was afraid of Moriarty, but she’d never confused their tales and their true selves before. He was, very obviously, worried.
Obviously Micah knew her better than just being acquainted with her through their tales if he was that tense, but he didn’t point that out. “I met her in a dream a few weeks ago. I think, in light of recent events, she’s decided I’m more of a nightmare.” He didn’t mention the threats that Moriarty had made, because he had promised he wouldn’t. Hopefully the simple threat he presented just by existing would be enough for Micah.
The mention of a dream changed Micah’s demeanor entirely. “Did you fucking hurt her?” he demanded. It was important to get that out of the way first. He dropped the box, and he reached to grab Jonathan by the shirt and shove him against the opposite wall.
Jonathan dodged. He wasn’t entirely sure how he did it, either. He hadn’t expected Micah to jump on him so suddenly, and there was no way he could have anticipated his reaction. But he dodged all the same, pulling back and past Micah’s hands faster than an eye blink, Micah’s fingers missing him by miles.
It was purely instinctual and completely disorienting. He took another step back, then stood still for a moment, brain stumbling over the speed of his own reaction before he could manage to respond. “Fuck no. Absolutely not.” He was still on his guard, waiting to see if Micah would try to grab him again, surprise at whatever had just happened bleeding into his tone and mixing with anger at the suggestion.
Micah was tired of shit not making sense. Jonathan dodging him the way he did made no fucking sense. He listened to the denial, and he stood back and raked a hand through his hair. “How the fuck did you do that?” he asked, and he followed the question up with an immediate demand: “Tell me about the dreams.”
“I have no idea,” he answered honestly, about as confused by it as Micah was. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to test it to see if it would happen again or pretend it hadn’t happened at all. He slid his hands into his pockets. “They were personal. I don’t know if that’s mine to tell.”
Micah was done with this fucking conversation. “Stay the fuck out of that apartment if she doesn’t want you in it,” he said angrily, picking up the box and completely ignoring the fact that Iris didn’t want him there either. To say he wasn’t thinking clearly was an understatement.
He was left staring at the elevator doors as he waited for them to slide open, frustrated to the core. “Right. And I was standing at the elevator so I could take a ride before coming back to terrorize her again.” It wasn’t meant for Micah-it wasn’t meant for anyone, really. He got onto the elevator when it opened, and started trying to figure out how much money he’d be out if he moved, say, tomorrow.
Micah, for his part, left the box in the living room of 905 without saying a word to Ella. Dammit, he had to talk to Daniel. But first, there was Trenton to deal with. Everything else would have to come after.