the inestimable irene adler . iris thorpe (nightmrholmes) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-04-14 14:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | dr. watson, irene adler |
Who: Iris and Micah
What: Log. Coffee. To start.
Where: Le Croquembouche.
When: Immediately after this.
Warnings: None.
Notes: To be continued.
To say Micah was tired would be an understatement. It was late, and he'd just returned from the coroner's office after his first night on call after being promoted. He was wearing the clothing he'd worn to go dancing with Katya - jeans and a snug, green henley - with a white lab-coat over top of the shirt, Doctor Braden stitched over the pocket in blue thread. He smelled slightly of smoke and chemicals when he walked into the coffee shop, and he had his cellphone to his ear. He was engrossed in a conversation about which cases to lay out for him in the morning, and he tapped his hand on the counter without looking up at the barista.
New York, he was rapidly learning, might not be a battlefield like home was, but the deaths were equally gruesome, more so because of how utterly pointless they all were. At least at home, the fighting was about freedom and independence, and the one-to-one death rate was obscenely low. Here? Here people killed things they loved, and it made no sense to him: children, women, they were all fair game, and there was a tightness in his shoulders and around his eyes, as he stood there detailing instructions regarding a 5-year-old corpse, that he always kept hidden around others.
"Latte, three extra shots, extra sweet," he said; the closest approximation he'd come to a cafe con leche outside of Miami.
Iris was early in her shift at the coffee shop, but it was hour ten of a long day that had started at the library, and she could feel the pressure on the soles of her feet despite the sensible flats she was wearing on the rubber mats cast over the tile floor. An earbud connected to an mp3 player in her pocket was hooked over the apron that went over her shoulder, and beneath it she was sharp in her usual vibrant colors, tonight featuring turquoise and sea green. She saw Micah the moment he came through the door, coming out of the haze she typically used in this job with a hard, jarring impact courtesy of the white coat and the height alone.
She'd known it was only a matter of time before one or the other of her acquaintances in Bellum Letale arrived in the shop on one of her shifts, but she hadn't known how much she wanted to hide the second job and its necessity until that time arrived. She looked desperately around to find someone else to cover for her for five minutes, but she was alone; the other person in the shop had gone off shift at 1 AM, she recalled. Iris squared her shoulders, paused the lecture she was listening to, and started the latte without saying anything, staying behind the espresso machine.
If he was in a hurry, he might not stay long. While the machine ground and hissed, she listened to the conversation and the cadence of his voice, making small observations in her mind and abruptly realizing that she wished she didn't have to.
He finished the call and put the phone in his pocket, and he rubbed a hand tiredly over his face before he leaned against the counter and finally looked at the woman making his coffee. He had to lean forward to see behind the espresso machine, and when he did, he noticed the colors that Iris favored long before he saw her face; his pulse raced, and he wished he'd left the coat at his office. Then he reminded himself that she already knew where he was from, even if she didn't know the particulars, and that she had nothing to gain from exposing anything about him. This was immediately chased by the realization that hiding in such a high publicity position was going to become next to impossible. His social security number and surname were new and squeaky clean, and that was just going to have to be sufficient protection for him (and for the people around him).
He grinned at her then, casual and easy. "The librarian moonlights as a barista, but she only keeps instant in the house?" he asked.
Iris smiled back. It was a good smile, one she used to set a mark at ease with a slight quirk of her lips, a little good will, a little humor, a little taste of recognition that every human liked to see in another. "Hello, Micah." The single word in every language that any human most likes to hear is his own name. Greetings and mood are set by such things, the shift of weight in his direction, the lean of her body to one side just so she could see him better. "You look very nice in your coat." Cat's smile. "Long night?" As if it was perfectly natural for the librarian to moonlight as a barista, and she need not address such an obvious question.
The smile was good, but Micah already distrusted Iris' smiles. Everything about her, he thought, was a costume; her smiles, her words, her clothing, even her blank canvas of an apartment. And any smile that was so carefully crafted in its perfection, like something made on an assembly line, had to be false. "Iris," he chided softly, casually, dimpled innocence. "I know you listened to the call, and I know you've filed the information about it and the coat in your back pocket for a later date, just like I've filed away that you have a second job, which means you're short on funds." He paused, walked around behind the counter of the empty shop, and he nudged her away from the espresso machine. "Who is going to share their theories first? Me or you, mamita?" he asked, giving her an entertained grin; with Iris, he knew he was going to get an intellectual workout, and that's exactly what he needed to forget the horrors of tonight's crime scene, which had been too much like home for comfort.
She watched him come around the edge of the counter with a sense of alarm deep under her sternum that she endeavored to hide. She didn't retreat from the machine until he was almost in front of it, but when she did she put three steps and a sink between them so she could go back to rinsing and disinfecting the tools of her current trade. "I don't file anything on you," she said, in a patent lie that made her feel better since it approached truth on the physical side of things; i.e. that she did not have physical files on anything or anyone. "Theories on what?" she asked, looking over her shoulder as if she was not watching every move he made and wondering what it might mean. She did not feel like a mamita just at that moment.
He could feel her gaze on him, but he didn't turn to face her. Instead, he busied himself making the espresso exactly as he liked it, stronger than normal. He had become accustomed to espresso machines in Washington D.C., and even if they didn't taste quite like home, they tasted close enough, if he was the one driving them. He slipped off the coat as he worked, and he threw it on the counter beside Iris with a casual, casual smile. He hummed a salsa tune while he warmed the milk (no froth yet, please), and then he over-sweetened the entire affair and frothed just the top. He held it out for her to taste, his hip propped against the counter as he looked at her full-on. "Theories on my coat. Or want mine on your coffee job first?" he asked, adding. "Your brain is a filing cabinet, mamita. It counts," he said.
"You already told me you worked at the hospital," Iris countered, with a flourish of her metaphorical rapier and a soft innocent smile. She rolled up her sleeves so she could plunge her hands in the dishwater, pushing them up over the elbow as she set out the last of the cups and shook the water off of her hands and found a towel instead of using her apron, which was appropriately splashed with mocha and coffee. "You can tell me about my job, if you want." She took the cup and lifted it for a sip, not because she wanted coffee, but because she was trying to hide the tension around her eyes. She was tired, and when she was tired she made mistakes.
"No, I didn't," he clarified, taking his own cup of coffee and not hiding the look of pleasure that crossed his face as he drank. "And you know that," he said, with absolutely certainty, putting the cup on the counter. He was about to continue on with his observations, when a man and woman entered the shop. He asked them what they wanted, before Iris even had a chance to make it to the main counter. The order was simple, just doppio espressos with two sugars, and he set about to making them, for all the world as if he worked there. He chatted with them as he worked, giving them easy smiles; it was clear he liked people, enjoyed talking with them, being around them. His inviting grin inspired confidences and made them open with him as well, and by the time he handed them their drinks, they'd told him all about their evening at the movies and walk through the park, and when the couple left, he turned back to Iris. It was an unguarded look that he cast her way; there, it said, something else about me.
Iris pulled at her apron as Micah's attention was busy elsewhere. If someone who knew better came in, this could get her into a lot of trouble. She cast her mind back as Micah bantered about the late/early hour with the couple, thinking of the people that knew better. The likelihood that any of them would show up was small to none. She didn't resent his presence, and if his enjoyment wasn't so obvious, she would suspect him of trying to get something out of her in exchange for his help. Her surprise that he was so casual was obvious because she was trying not to show it--and, largely, failing, as she kept pushing her hair back when it wasn't sweeping forward. "You like making coffee. Are you sure you're in the right profession?" It was a little tease, and she put her hips back against the metal counter, taking the weight off the heels of her feet as long as she could before being forced to shift again.
Her surprise was, in fact, very obvious. It made him smile, simply because it meant she hadn't managed to read him completely yet, and that entertained him. She was good, he knew, and he had no false illusions about being better than her, not in this. His skills at hiding his true intentions were born of need, not as a profession, and he had failed at it when it counted. It wasn't a prideful thing for him, but her surprise still made him smile. "I like people, and I like good coffee," he admitted, when the shop was empty once again. "You didn't grow up with a lot of people around, did you?" he asked. "At least not a lot of people you liked," he corrected. He knew it might be a sore subject, but it was late, and he was too tired to be careful about where he poked and prodded. He wanted to know more about her, and in the mood he was in, he wasn't afraid of showing it.
Iris turned around, picked up the red-checked towel that she had found for her hands, and moved toward the edge of the counter, thinking vaguely about tidying up tables or some such thing. The shop was empty, the tables did much need the attention. "Maybe it's a little hard for you to believe, but I wasn't always such a pleasant person to be around," she said, smiling a little at him. "Not like you. It's an effort to make myself liked." She offered a little wink at the last word, which she allowed him to interpret as he chose. She realized that it must have been a very long night for him indeed, and it was better if he was here making coffee than on the phone talking about dead bodies.
He leaned against the counter and watched her, even as he sipped his drink, making no move to help her clean, much preferring the view from where he was, thank you very much. "I've never had trouble making myself liked. Mami said it was my smile and the dimples, for which I had no one to thank but her," he explained, a wistful smile (one that he normally would have covered) on his lips. "It's been a long night," he admitted a moment later, knowing she'd listened to his call and not bothering to hide it. "I logically understand why people kill; don't get me wrong. I know the psychology behind it, and I know patterns and signs and MOs. But I can't understand it, not beyond the science of it. I don't understand how, for example, you could hurt a child that you love. Yes, yes, yo se que es el cerebro. Imbalances and sectors that control this and that, which can suffer from countless things with names impossible to explain. But tonight, nights like this, I wonder if that's all shit we've dreamed up to make ourselves feel better about what other people do," he said, aware he was rambling and too tired to care. He gave her the dimpled smile then, careful, "and that's just what you wanted to hear, wasn't it?"
Iris stopped what she was doing when he trailed off the topic of her and began speaking about himself. In most conversations, with most people, this was the way it usually went. People liked talking about themselves, it was what made the most sense to them, what they found to be most relevant. Micah was controlled, self-aware, skilled at hiding himself in the way that most people learned from training, necessity, or both. For him to reveal quite so much made her sit up and take more notice of what was happening. "Some people are broken on the inside. Anyone that can hurt a child is not whole where they should be whole, and you can't try to understand a person like that, Micah. They are not meant to be understood." She looked down at the table, pushed the towel over it, and righted the card that offered the weekly specials.
He wanted to tell her that it didn't happen where he came from, but that would be a lie. It just didn't happen on the battlefield, which is where he spent his time. His hand automatically went to the small of his back, where a gun had been tucked for more years than he cared to remember. The range would make him feel better, he knew, and he wondered if he could still get in there tonight. "Is that an excuse too?" he asked her. He'd noticed, of course, how she paid attention when he'd started talking, and he laughed at himself, wondering if she'd caught the movement of his hand as well. "I don't think I'm allowed to talk to you when I'm tired anymore," he said, but he smiled at her as he said it. She distracted him, and that wasn't an easy thing to do.
She caught it. She stiffened up when he put his hand back where she couldn't see it, her whole spine went wire tight and she dropped the towel into the front of her apron pocket to cover it. She did not want to move back toward him, but it was a lot better than repeating the mistake and retreating. "That depends. Do you feel better than when you walked in?" She smiled, touched the counter as she rounded it. "I take credit for the caffeine, too."
He caught the covering, if not the stiffening, and he shook his head at her, after her comment about the coffee. The tactic, advancing when she should retreat, spoke to a tactic he was very familiar with. "Come on, mamita. You aren't scared of me?" he asked, gaze very clear on hers.
She stopped, blinked. This was a change. "You don't want to answer?" There was a new caution she didn't want to indulge.
"I feel better than when I walked in," he admitted. "You don't want to admit you're scared of me?" he asked, not breaking her gaze, not really letting her break his. Tit for tat.
"Not you," she said, giving him a look and, for once, truth for truth. "Not just you. You're... hurt by it?" She honestly didn't know.
"No," then, "maybe," then, "no, not hurt. Angry." He paused a moment and watched her. "Not at you, and whatever made you this way. I'd expect anyone to worry about a possible weapon, though. That isn't what I meant," his hazel eyes exceptionally honest.
"Then--" she cast a glance at the door over her shoulder, found it still empty, only the coffee shop radio playing soft acoustic guitars under her words, "--then what do you mean?"
He gave her a look, his eyes narrowing with intent, and then he took two very intentional, very slow steps toward her, waiting to see how she reacted to it.
She retreated. One step only before she realized what he was doing, and stopped. Irritation flickered over her features, the only thing she actually allowed through. "That," she said, putting on a show of comprehension. "You don't... need to be angry. It is like your murderer. It's not to be understood, or worth your anger." She picked up the towel again, but didn't do anything with it, just held it over her palms. She had enough anger for the two of them, she was sure, and she was better at hiding that than the fear.
"I'll decide who deserves my anger," he said with utter confidence in his decision to hate whoever had made her back up the way she just did. There were certain things he couldn't forgive, and making a woman scared like this, it was high on the list. "Not understanding and not tolerating, they aren't the same thing," he continued. He missed deaths that stood for something, which he realized was completely foolish, because no death really stood for anything. But at least no one involved on a battlefield was innocent - not like a woman, not like a child.
Iris was not innocent. She wondered if knowing that she was a victim obscured that for him. That bothered her in a way no guise really had, and she found herself wishing she could correct that, though she didn't know why. There were more benefits here if he was convinced she needed defending against the world. Such a person could be an effective tool, a shield, really, against elements or people that usually stood themselves against her. Eliot understood that, which is probably why he was so consistently angry at her about this particular relationship. Probably a good amount of protectiveness over his Watson, too. It was not misplaced. The only reason she didn't use that, she was sure, was because she didn't need to. She was under no direct threat here, not even from Warren Eliot, if he was to believed.
Iris put down the towel and rubbed an eyebrow with the heel of her right hand. "Just let it go, Micah."
Oh, Micah didn't think for one instant that she'd use it against him; in fact, he was counting on her liking him too much to divulge anything about him. The only exception he made there was Eliot, because he thought she'd divulge pretty much anything to that man. And he was under no delusion that she was innocent. But her crimes, whatever they were, weren't any excuse for causing the fear he'd seen in her eyes. "Iris, you don't really think I'll agree to that, do you?" he asked, letting his gaze go completely harmless, as if he didn't have a serious bone in his body.
"Do you shoot?" he asked, still with that same harmless smile, almost as if he was asking if she liked chocolate. Harmless.
She glared at him. For a moment there, she really, truly, glared at him. She dropped her hand, put her eyes up, and gave him a glare that was just irritated at that little harmless smirk. Damn him, anyway. She was trying to help him get rid of emotional energy that he did not need to spend. It wasn't like she tried to help people very often. "I have before. I don't like doing it." The gaze went cool. "Where have you been that you needed to shoot people, I wonder?"
"Every boy hunts with their father, don't they?" he asked casually. "It helps burn off tension," he explained, grinning a moment later, the smile intentionally dirty-male, "when other things just won't cut it."
He was very intentionally pedaling back into the territory that made her uncomfortable, but it was an intentional move, one intended to show he didn't pity her, didn't think she couldn't handle it, didn't consider the knowledge he had something that made her appear weaker. "What time does this place close?" he asked her, giving her a look that said he'd understand if she was too scared to go with him, of course.
Iris ground her teeth. "And every boy hunts with a weapon he keeps in the small of his back," she shot back, giving away far too much of her analytical abilities with the comment. He already knew anyway, didn't he? Infuriating man. Almost as bad as Eliot. Involuntarily, she turned her eyes up toward the faintly glowing wall clock. "It doesn't. Someone else comes at three." It was ten 'til. She hesitated. "I can't go from here. I have to... go home first." She had to drop off the tracker, because wherever they were going, it wouldn't be her usual movement habit, and she did not need any red flags just then. She gave him a sharp sideways look. "Where are we going?"
We. He smiled. Gotcha. "I have to pick up my hunting rifle anyway," he said, wondering what was at home that was so important. It wasn't Eliot, he didn't think, because that man was completely repressed. Someone she called into, someone who she checked on? No. Someone who checked on her? Maybe. He walked around the back of the counter, and he grabbed the lab coat, though he didn't slip it on. The beeper at his waist was plenty to tie him to his new life, without letting everyone see what he was. It struck him how completely idiotic that sounded, but Micah had no interest in the glory a medical degree seemed to bring in this country. He did what he did because he loved it, because it was important. Not for women or money. He grinned at her. "I bet you're a perfect shot."
She snorted. "I'm not shooting anything. I said I'd come. Only because I'm not tired enough to sleep." This was probably not true, but now her pride was involved, so she couldn't let it go. "I'll meet you in the lobby at about 3:30," she said, sighing a little. She had been outmaneuvered somewhere, despite who had come out of this with more information about the other, and she never liked being outmaneuvered. Again, it was a question of pride. "Go on." She flipped her hand at him as if sweeping him out the door.
He laughed, and he did as she ordered without even the slightest hint of argument. He did, however, press his cheek to hers, his hand on her waist for a lingering moment, in a goodbye that was completely Cuban. He whistled as the door closed behind him, and he let his thoughts wander on the short walk back to the building. He was trying to concentrate on murders and mysteries, but his mind kept wanting to settle on his tale, on Eliot and on Iris.