Who: Iris and Micah--and later, a cameo by everyone's favorite hacker, Russell. What: Discussions. More verbal chess. Flirting. Where: #202 When: Immediately after this. Warnings: None. Notes: Completed
PART III
"I'm aware of that. I think maybe it was the guns that gave it away," she said, with a kind of resigned sarcasm that was designed to put the walls back where they belonged. The way he kept glancing over at her made her uncomfortable, and rather than wasting the energy hiding it, she let herself expel the tension the way her muscles were inclined: a slightly more uncertain step, a tense curve to her spine, an occasional glance his way, or whichever way he directed his attention. "You know, in witness protection you're supposed to change everything you do, so there's no connection to your former life. If you're hiding, going to a gun range is probably not the best way to go about it." They were in the lobby, and her voice was lowered, even, perfectly pitched for casual conversation but impossible to hear by anyone that wasn't at their elbows.
"I'm not in witness protection," he said honestly, still holding the door open for her, leaning against it as she stepped into the lobby and giving her a smile that was honestly entertained, the first smile of its kind since they left the shooting range. "I knew you'd try to figure it out," he told her. "You don't listen, Iris. Have you ever listened?" he asked, and the look he gave her when he asked was all pride and fondness; she was impressive, and he wasn't worried about letting her know that he thought so.
She looked briefly insulted. "I'm trying to help, that's all." She lifted an eyebrow. "Not very well, I assume." Iris didn't try to help people very often. In fact, so often as to be never. She made a little hmph noise through her nose and turned one shoulder so she could look back at him over the high collar. "I'm just saying that if you're trying to hide that's how you do it. Stop being you." Dangerous ground. Why was it always dangerous ground?!
"I'm not going to be anything other than what I am, Iris. I tried, and it wasn't any way to live, and it didn't keep anyone safe," he said in a moment of complete honestly, unguarded in a way that was brought about only by exhaustion and the realization that his past had followed him across the ocean and thousands of miles. He looked at her, and he shook his head. "You shouldn't have stopped being you, either, whenever it happened. You aren't any happier for it, and you're still terrified of everything," he said. Honesty at dawn.
She stiffened. She wasn't terrified of everything, and she wanted to argue. Instead she reigned that impulse back, and with a visible effort, replied, "To each his own, I suppose." She tilted her head. "Are you going to leave now that it's reached this point?" The message went up in smoke, but it still had come, and had come specifically to him, at some place he visited habitually. Whatever he was hiding from had found him, she assumed.
"No," he told her honestly. "I'm not running away," he said. He refused to live his life that way. He had tried taking the coward's way and hiding, and it hadn't done a damn bit of good, and he wasn't going to do it again. He would actively keep her safe, if he needed to, but he was done with being a coward. The entire time his mind was racing with thoughts, his body was tensing to go along with them. Tense, angry, fingers clutching into fists at his side. That there was more to all of this than he was admitting was obvious, and even an exhausted woman could see it. The exhaustion showed in his eyes, and the worry lines there became more visible as the memories took over for a moment.
"Then it--they--come here. Are you prepared for that?" She didn't need to drop her eyes to his hands to see the tension there, and maybe this was a push he didn't need... but she was sure that all that tension had to go somewhere, and if she didn't push now, then he might wrap it all up again. If that happened, then maybe one day she would find he was gone. Or worse, a body.
"They wouldn't. It isn't like that," he argued, really argued. The vision of his parents' bodies played a loop in his mind, and he took a calming breath, a very controlled thing. "The man who found me, he isn't with the people who want me dead," he told her, unthinking.
Then he went completely and utterly calm for one, long, long, never-ending moment. And then he exploded.
"Fuck," he cursed, dragging a hand through his hair and letting the door close.
The whites of Iris' eyes gleamed around the cool green for a brief moment. Dead. Well, that was something. Ex-military meant pretty serious, and she'd suspected, but it was something else to hear him confirm it. Iris let her tongue roll over her bottom lip for a moment, and then she said, softly, "If that man found you, then others can too." If the man was a messenger, that meant at least three people--the sender, the guard, and the messenger--knew where Micah was and that he habitually went to that range. That gave them a distance radius, a general schedule, possibly more.
He didn't address what she said. Hell, he pretended he didn't even hear her as he stormed past her and up the stairs.
"Micah!"
He stopped, but he didn't turn, and even from where she was standing she could see his muscles tense, his shoulders straighten, almost as if he was waiting for another verbal blow.
She didn't want him to storm off and refuse to talk to her. More oddness, another reversal she didn't know what to do with. She made the inquiry tentative as she drifted toward the foot of the stairs, lifting her chin up to watch his back. "If it's not like that, then what's it like?"
"We can't talk about this out here," he said, then he continued up the stairs to the second floor. He expected her to follow, but he didn't look to see if she was actually doing so. He didn't even stop a moment to consider which apartment. Instead, he walked straight to his, unlocked and pushed open the door and left it swinging open for her. He went to a cigar box. and he pulled one out and clipped the end, lighting it within seconds of entering the apartment and shucking his jacket off.
Iris hesitated. She looked around the empty lobby, taking a long breath of the still air. She kept her eyes from moving where she knew the cameras were hidden, but she felt the eyes, and resented them, not for the first time. Letting a display of hurt cross her features, Iris moved up the stairs after Micah. She walked right past his open door without looking in, stepped into 206 and shut her door hard enough for it to slam.
Five minutes later she tapped on Micah's living room window. She wore a dark gray jacket zipped up over the distinctive green shirt and the hood drawn over her distinctive auburn hair, and she moved quickly through the fire escape as if the bars were so many ropes in a playground. "I thought it better if we didn't make our continued acquaintance so obvious," she said, equivocally. "There are cameras in the building, and at the end of every hall, but the one pointing at the alley doesn't have very good night vision and there's a blindspot on this side."
"Not security?" He'd seen the cameras, and he hadn't worried about them, thinking them standard security issue. Security devices didn't exist in the world he came from, so his knowledge was limited. Still, he wasn't surprised she had canvased every machine. She probably had the transmission feeding into her apartment. All of this ran through his mind as he went and shut the door, locked it, and went to pour himself a drink.
Drink in hand, he sprawled on the sofa, knees spread wide, and he took a long drag from the cigar and set the glass on his knee.
"You're scared?" he asked, gaze intent on her. The answer, it was obvious, was important; the question not merely a curious one.
"Micah, I've had people after me my entire life. If I'm scared, I don't think I'm any more scared than I was this morning." That wasn't quite true. She was more scared for him than she had been that morning, but she certainly wasn't going to tell him that. "No, those cameras aren't installed like security, if a building like this could afford it. I assumed they were initially, something like an amateur job the landlord set up, but now I'm not so sure. It's better to assume you're watched in this building." She pulled the hood back, ran a hand through her thick hair, and pulled the zipper down a few inches so her neck could breathe. Something at the edge of her mouth flickered when she took her first breath of the cigar smoke, something closer to amusement than anything else. She didn't open the window or loosen the shade she'd just obscured her entrance with.
"Explain the smile," he said, and he pointed at her with the cigar when he said it. He didn't say anything else immediately, just that, though his eyes followed every movement as she slipped the hood back.
"Your place smells like Cuban cigars. Has since I first got here. It lingers." The smile became real and warm and curved. She sat down.
"I like them. The street vendors sell them in Washington," he said, expression completely straight. He waited for her to try and contradict him, and he took a sip of the drink.
She smiled still. "I like my picture of Havana. I hung it."
"Diversion tactic," he said, not even blinking.
"Micah," she said, with a soft scolding in her tone. "Your English is so perfect it is almost without accent. Your Spanish, however, is fairly distinctive. You are trained in firearms tactics that are not United States law enforcement nor typical military, and if you were in the intelligence service we would be having an entirely different conversation. Do you want to talk about this, or should I go back out your window?"
"Threats?" he asked, and he didn't sound as if he was worried that she would really go. Instead, he decided he needed a real diversion tactic, and he put the cigar in the ashtray beside the couch, and he put the drink aside as well. He reached into his shirt, and he pulled out the badge, which was encased safely in a transparent, plastic pocket and hanging on a lanyard that boasted itself as belonging to the County Police Department.
He tossed it at her easily, knowing she'd understand the difference between the coroner's division of the police and any detective unit (that might be interested in her work). "You're looking in the wrong places," he said, for all the world sounding 100% honest. He wanted her off the scent of the Cubans that badly.
It was not going to work. She looked down at the badge, pulled it out and tipped it toward the light with a practiced turn of her wrist. It was real, as far as she could tell. Iris had a lot of experience with fakes, good and bad. She frowned a moment at it, and then lifted her chin. "Ah. I thought you smelled like formaldehyde once, and I'm glad you didn't lose a patient tonight." She offered it out back to him rather than throwing it. "Yet you're medically field trained, I think. How is Mr. Marion after the mess in #601, by the way?"
"I don't remember seeing you in the room for that," he said reaching out a hand and taking the badge back from her. "And since you didn't mention the actual victims, then I'm going to assume you're fishing," he told her. Then his eyes went pinpoint-clear, and a smile tugged up the corners of his mouth. "Would you believe that's all Watson's influence?" he asked. "The shooting, the field training?" He looked as if he meant it.
"Dear Watson," she said, softly, in a very different voice. Then, a moment later, she blinked and refocused. "You answered the forum post that asked for help. Watson is a crack shot, but he isn't trained the way you were trained; he too was military, and didn't have access to the firearms that we do. I'm sure he is a help, however."
He was still concentrating on the tone, the different voice, when she continued on. He was concentrating on it so much that he didn't defend his abilities, as he was sure she intended him to do. He scooted closer to her instead, and he looked at her, stared. "Did you do that intentionally?" he asked, the need for an honest answer very clear in the question.
She blinked. "What?" She looked uncertain for the first time. Maybe she had pushed too much with her observations, and he resented it. Resentment was not going to get her anywhere, and it would be foolish to court it right now. She was in up to her neck on this one already.
"The way you said Dear Watson," he said. "It didn't sound like you."
"It didn't?" She smiled, but it wavered.
He shook his head. "Do you remember saying it?" he asked, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. She could be playing games with him, but he didn't think she would; not with Irene. It was a hunch, but it felt like the right one.
"I... yes. But I didn't intend to say it." Flickers of alarm were making her eyes darker as she tried to figure out what just happened. "I always intend what I say." Her breath hitched once, and her gaze abruptly sharpened. "You're changing the subject," she cautioned.
"This isn't a tactic," he said, inflection validating his words. "Has anything like that happened before, Iris?" he asked, a demand as much as a question.
"I don't know," she snapped back, a little defensively. She didn't want to talk about her relationship with Irene. Neither did Irene, point of fact.
He put his hands up when she snapped, the posturing one of surrender. "Alright. Calmate, mamita," he said, but his gaze on her said he was still interested in what had just happened, and that he wasn't going to let it drop permanently. He could check with Eliot, he supposed, and she if he'd experienced anything similar. Of course, the taciturn man would just think at him, then grace him with monosyllabic answers.
She had her composure back in seconds. "So it's unlikely to be Watson," she said, firmly returning to where they had been before Irene derailed the conversation.
"He was an expert shot. I already knew how to hunt, he just lent me his skill, and his field medical experience," he argued, his harmless smile settling back on his lips. "I have medical training to fall back on."
"And he speaks Spanish with your accent, does he?"
"An oversight in the novels."
Silence. Iris sat back in her chair, unimpressed with his defenses, yet unsmiling. She was going to see if he broke the silence, and what he broke it with. How desperate was he to change her mind?
He didn't break the silence; not with words. He draped an arm over the back of the couch, and he watched her. She'd squirm before he talked, he decided.
Iris didn't squirm. She just waited, staring back, blinking occasionally, but not too often. She thought about other things while she waited for her opponent to speak; she thought about Irene and wondered at her influence, and the influence that she, Iris, might have on her.
So that's how she was going to play it? He stood, after about ten minutes, and he walked into the bedroom and pulled off his shirt as he went. A moment later, the water started running in the bathroom, and he could be heard humming a salsa tune under his breath.
Infuriating man. Nice back. Iris sighed, leaned forward in her chair, and picked up the glass he'd been drinking. She ran the edge under her nose for a moment, tasted it with the edge of her tongue, waited a moment, and then leaned back again to take a serious swallow. She would have refused a drink if he'd offered her one, but she could safely take his.
The drink tasted of coke, white rum and lime, and the glass was tall and distinctive. Had Micah seen her, he would have assumed she was trying to place the drink's origin. Iris, he had decided, did nothing without a reason. He had this itching desire to make her react, unfortunately, and it was all her own fault. Luckily, he was splashing water on his face and changing into a pair of track pants (no shirt), and when he walked out to the couch he had remembered to slip the chain he normally kept tucked in his shirt with his Santeria saints off.
Discarding clothing was cheating in this game, but Iris cheated too, so she supposed she couldn't fault him for doing the same. She wasn't going to fault his torso either, which was very impressive, especially for someone who worked as a coroner. Careful not to give him too much ammunition even if she did linger a little longer than she should have, Iris put his glass to her lips again. "Por Cuba Libre?" she asked, tipping it slightly toward him.
He needed sleep. He was getting sloppy.
"Bartender in Washington. Brother of the street vendor who sold me the cigars," he said, and he managed to keep a straight face. In the back of his mind, however, he was plotting. He had to get one up on her before the next time they saw one another; pride demanded it.
Iris grinned against the edge of the glass. She was laughing at him, silently, while enjoying his drink and sitting in his living room, probably with more metaphorical cards than she had any right to have.
He perched his hip on the arm of the couch beside her, and he gave her a look that was knowing and sure. "You aren't going to use it against me, Thorpe, and we both know it. Whether it's true or not."
"Of course not. I just said I was trying to help. You are the one being stubborn." She looked pleased as punch to be able to call him stubborn, and not the other way around. At least she did not shy away from his presence (gunpowder and tap water and male) or the now substantial height difference. She was still enjoying his drink, and took another generous sip.
"That's strong," he warned, because it was. After what had just happened at the shooting range, he'd been liberal with the rum. He reached out a hand, and he almost touched her hair, but he pulled his hand back at the last minute. "Your help, mamita, is not needed," he said, and it was all male arrogance and certainty, the desire to protect fair maiden lost in there somewhere too.
"Oh," she said, as if she hadn't known that until he'd just taken the trouble to show her. "So you're just going to go on as you have until something else happens like tonight?" she asked, all innocence and rum and lime.
"No. I'm going to meet the person who sent the messenger, and I'm going see what the hell they want. Based on that, I'll determine what happens next," he explained, sounding for all the world like it was the most logical of conclusions, as if Iris should have come to it herself, a smile tugging up the corners of his lips.
"And what they want, you think you'll just be able to give it to them, and they'll go away," she said, using the exact same tone he did, sipping again. "Like your professional opinion on a random body, maybe, or a few drinks mixed." She lifted the glass and shook it so the ice cubes tinkled against the glass.
"I worked with them."
"Oh!" An innocent lift of her brows, so innocent that maybe this pattern of innocence meant the opposite. "So you'll just be a little while reminiscing about the past, and they'll be on their way." She smiled, but leeched all the sweetness out of it, so it was just a gesture. Her command of her facial expressions was absolutely astonishing, frightening, a ruthless Shakespearean quality she used for her own stage.
He rolled his eyes at her. "They aren't the ones I'm worried about," he said, and he pushed away from the couch and picked up the cigar, pacing over to the window and looking out at the crisp morning light. "Why does it matter to you, Iris?" he asked, not looking back as he waited for her reply.
"If the paperboy delivered something to my secret address, I think I'd be right in wondering who else might find it," she said, a little peevishly, to his back as he moved away. She was starting to see some eerie Eliot similarities, and it made her testy. "It doesn't have to," she said, finally, standing. She set the glass gently back down where it wouldn't leave a ring on the furniture. "I'll just let you handle it, then, since you're so good at subterfuge." It was too bright outside for her to get away with the window again, even in shadow. Hell.
"Iris," he said, voice heavy and thick with caution. "I'm just asking why." He turned to look at her. "Because I don't want your ass to get yourself mixed into something this serious just because you're nosy and curious and can't leave well enough alone. If it's something more than that, fine. But I'm too complicated to be a fucking whim."
"You don't seem concerned about following your whims when it comes to being nosy about my business," Iris said, in a smooth voice so even that it might as well have been silk. "I'm tired. I have two shifts tomorrow--today--and I'm going home."
"Your business isn't deadly." A pause. "Is it?"
Iris didn't say anything. She didn't move toward the door, either. She just stood there.
"Is it?" he repeated.
"Not for you." She turned, this time, pulling the lock of hair that curled behind her ear back, wondering how much of this she was going to regret later. "Get some sleep before you answer anything."
"For you?" he insisted, adding. "You can't leave right now. You can have the bedroom." His tone said not to argue with him, not now, not as tense as he was.
Blink. "I can't stay. I won't sleep here. I just need to get around the camera problem." Like building-wide surveillance and broad daylight was just a slight inconvenience to overcome.
He watched her be stubborn, listened to her be stubborn, and then he ignored all that stubbornness. He walked to where she was, put his hands on her shoulders from behind, and he walked her to the bedroom door. "Go to sleep, Iris," he said, and then he turned and walked to the couch and stretched out on it. Mujeres. He was fully aware that she might just leave, and he wasn't going to stop her if she did, dammit.
Iris didn't much like being maneuvered into position physically any more than she did metaphorically. She went in because she'd need him to cooperate with her if she wanted to get around the cameras, she couldn't scale the building in broad daylight, and she'd been up for fourteen hours on six hours sleep. She shut the door, dropped her coat inches from where it opened against the wall so she'd have both a delay and a warning if anyone tried to open it, and then looked around. Micah didn't have any troubles about settling in, that was clear. Everything was color and decorations and measurements, all of it masculine and all of it very busy and full. She toed off the slip-on tennis shoes and curled up on the side of the bed with a view of the door, fairly convinced sleep would be impossible, but a few minutes later she settled into a light, energy-conserving sleep. Enough to function on when she woke, but not enough to make her dead to the world. Iris wanted very much to stay alive. That was the point.
He listened until he heard her stop moving, and he imagined he could hear her breathing slowing into sleep, even from his spot on the couch. He laughed at that, because it was completely ridiculous, and he knew it, and then he rolled over and tried to find sleep. It didn't come for hours, and it came on the heels of memory after memory after memory of war and home; and even when it came, it was light and restless.
Iris woke up five hours later. The sun had moved, and she found a clock, and she had a late shift, and she was in a strange bed. She uncurled quickly, landing on cat feet and looking around the bedroom she correctly identified as Micah's even before the sweet tobacco smell sank in and her heart stopped pounding. It was quiet and still, and she stood there until she had her breathing under control, and then she went and found her jacket. She looked the hinges over at the door, and then, shaking her head, she let it squeak as she ghosted out into the hallway.
He was awake.
He'd been awake since she'd shifted on the mattress in his bedroom. He'd learned to sleep with one proverbial eye open, had Micah, and by the time she ghosted into the hallway he was sitting up on the couch, arms crossed, watching her with an entertained smile on his face. "Dormistes bien, mamita?" he asked, the sense of victory he felt that she'd trusted him enough to sleep at all read all cheshire cat on his features, and he didn't try to hide it. "Me vas hacer desayuno?"
"Bien." She gave him a smile, but she manufactured it, because a second later, it disappeared entirely. She narrowed her eyes at him. "No. Can I use your phone?" It was designed to put a cap on any of that male ego he might be imagining since she had slept in his bed (there was a bet somewhere in that she felt she lost, though she hadn't put money on anything). The worst part was that she'd actually slept, which she would never have done if she had sufficient guard up.
He laughed as he stood, scratching the center of his bare chest in a move that was intimately male and thoughtless. He walked past her, and he tugged his track pants up past the vee of one hip as he padded into the kitchen and started pulling out the makings of breakfast. See, Micah could cook. He put on a cafetera of Cuban coffee, the stainless steel contraption bubbling within minutes on the stove, and he quickly whipped up two omlettes, loaded with veggies and ham, before even pointing her back toward the bedroom. "Front pocket of the jeans on the dresser," he told her, setting the plates on the counter and leaning on the surface.
Iris was fully aware of her recently acquired issues with sexuality, and she had actually had done quite a bit of therapy on it. Just because everything was all tangled up with fear and panic and repression--a really ugly combination, if her therapist was to be believed (they had a gift for the obvious)--it didn't mean it all turned off. Iris had forgotten he wasn't clothed properly the last time she'd seen him, and she wasn't prepared for all that arrogant skin and muscle. She stood there for a moment, and she might have missed a few blinks in favor of a stare. She snapped out of it pretty quickly, however, crushing a blush by thinking about ice water, and washing the rest of it away with a mission to locate the phone.
On the way down the hall she silently cursed herself for not searching it for a phone before leaving the room. A younger, sharper Iris would have. She wouldn't have bothered with the formalities. She would have gone out a window, caught the alley camera with a spare shirt or jacket, and been out before anyone could do much more than watch her land on the lid of the dumpster and hop off around the corner. Now here she was, being mocked about breakfast, looking for a phone so she could call in another favor that were probably running dangerously low as it is.
Once she found the phone, she paused, sighed, and punched in a number.
"Hi, do you need me today?" Pause. "Yes, I'm sorry, I... forgot to charge it last night. ...No, it was quiet." Pause. "Okay. You'll call if...? Okay. I'll put it on a charger. Thanks. Goodbye." Another soft sigh. She had no idea how she was going to pay the rent this month.
She dialed Russell's number.
"Bzuh?" He was probably still in bed, the lazy...
"It's me."
"You know what time it is?"
Flatly. "It's one PM EST. Get up."
Some rustling. "Alright," he whined. "What do you want?"
"Secure the line first. I'll wait."
A moment. A slight electronic click. "Okay. Now what do you want?" Iris of the delicious legs wasn't right in front of him, which meant negotiations were going to be choppy. She had to rely on habit, hopefully.
"I need you to take out the second floor camera, the one at the end of the hall. Glitch it, make it look like an accident. Power, signal, whatever you need to do."
"Why?" He sounded suspicious.
Damn. "Can you do it?"
"Of course I can do it!" She heard a little huff at the end, and smiled.
Iris smiled. Negotiation was one of her skills. Derail the conversation and assault Russell's pride, and you could almost always manipulate him into wanting to do a job he was convinced he didn't want to do. Business-like, she responded, "Well, then, give me a time frame."
"How long do you need it down?"
"Thirty seconds. Maybe less."
"When?"
"ASAP."
"What do I get out of this?"
Shit. 'Undying love' probably wasn't going to cut it. "I'll buy you a six pack of that stuff you drink instead of water."
Pause. Iris was guessing he was pretty low on Red Bull. It was mid-week. She waited through the pause. "Fine, we have a deal."
"How long until it goes down?" she repeated.
"Give me... a half-hour. I'll take it down for a minute at 2:32 PM."
Iris looked at her wristwatch. "I have 1:58. 1:59."
They both waited through another minute until they said, "Two" at the same moment, and then Iris hung up on Russell's grumbling as he got out of bed. She ended the call and stared down at the phone in her hand for a moment. Sharp. It was a smartphone, data-based, relatively--no, brand new, with only a few recent numbers on there. She recognized the nearby PD number, and she had no reason to disbelieve the one labeled the Coroner's office. There was one number she didn't recognize, but the prefix made her frown. She memorized it the second time through.
He let her get through her entire conversation without interruption (interesting contact she had there), and he listened to every word (of course), and when she was quiet, he walked to the door of the bedroom with a cortadita of real coffee, and he waited just out of range as she (undoubtedly) went through his phone. "I can write the numbers down for you, if it's easier," he called without rounding the corner, then he leaned in the doorway and held out the cup. "Getting sloppy, Thorpe. I can hear."
"I could do the same," she said, sweetly, dropping the phone on the edge of the bed and turning to face him. She hesitated for a split second--long enough for him to notice, probably, but brief nonetheless--and took the cup. "But I wouldn't bother calling that one back."
"I'm not going to call your contact, Iris," he said. "I'll just call you if I need anything," he said with a grin, and he turned and left the room and went back to the kitchen. "How long do you have?" he called out to her, starting in on his omlette. "Enough time to eat, mamita," he said, and he'd be lying if he didn't want her out where he could see her. The fact that the desire had nothing to do with the fact that he was worried about anything she might discover in his bedroom and everything to do with the fact that she looked sleep tousled was irrelevant.
She was trying to tame her hair with her fingers as she moved down the hallway, without overwhelming success. At least she didn't toss in her sleep, and even the light doze, almost the equivalent of what soldiers and agents used in the field, saw her mostly still in her slight curl at the far edge of the bed. She hadn't even had to do more than straighten the coverlet. "I'm not hungry, but thank you." The food smelled good, and the coffee too, when she touched it to her lips as if taking a drink, but she wasn't going to eat. She had already taken the comfort zone way too far afield, and now she should go home and regroup. She wasn't going to get anything out of him like this.
He just smiled at her. Smiled at her, and very casually talked. "Dormistes bien?" he asked, and the question had a touch of male pride in it. Micah was very much male, and there was something possessive and owning about a woman waking up smelling like his bedsheets. So much so, that he was willing to ignore the fact that had he hadn't shared them with her. Still, he didn't want to scare her, so he laughed quietly as he grabbed a spare shirt from the laundry basket at the entrance of the kitchen and slipped it on. "You could ask, about the number," he said, slight pause between the words. "I could tell you."
It was a blatant attempt to give her back some control, and he didn't hide that either.
She resented the handout, but she hid that with her hunger. She was still tired, tired enough that her eyes were itching, and they kept straying to where they shouldn't go. "You are feeling talkative this morning?" she asked, dryly, raising her eyebrows at the contrast from the night before. She was not going to let that ego of his bother her. It usually didn't; that ego didn't hurt her, and she found it almost quaint, especially when it was unnecessary. Right now she did not want him acting like the conqueror, though. It rankled.
He caught the dryness in her words, and he saw the tiredness in her eyes, and his response was direct. "I'm talkative in the mornings," he said, pausing, adding, "I'm used to big breakfasts with more people around a table than there are chairs," he said. It was true, and the truth of it was in his words. He put his empty plate in the sink, and he put her untouched one in the refrigerator, and he walked past her toward the bedroom. He was late, and he needed a shower. He stopped right beside her, though, his arm almost brushing against her shoulder. "I'm not the enemy, Iris, and we aren't on the battlefield. You don't need to engage me like I'm across the front line from you," he said, and his tone was care-soft, but firm.
Then he walked into the bedroom, then the bathroom, and he began to run the water. That he left her to the apartment was a sign of trust, just as he intended it to be.
Great, now she felt guilty. It was impossible to win. She was too tired. There was too much to process, too much that had happened. He kept changing his mind about whether or not he wanted to talk to her, and she didn't want to keep up, it was scrambling everything. Iris sat down on the couch, glanced at her watch, and then back at the hallway, listening for a change in the sound of the water. When she heard it, she pushed her fingers hard through her hair, massaging her scalp with her fingertips until she felt a little more alert and a little better about the world in general. In the intervening few minutes, she actually dozed off again, curled a little closer to the end of the couch.
By the time he came back into the living room, he was dressed for work in jeans and a cardigan, and he was slipping his labcoat on as he walked toward her. He had shaved, and his hair was damp, and he crouched down in front of her on the couch, his arms on his knees as he looked up at her. "Truce?" he asked her sleeping form quietly.
She woke up when she heard his step on the carpet, and she had time for a few hard blinks and a glance at her watch before he stepped out into the living room. Wan smile in his favor as she pulled her knees out from under her and dropped her feet on the carpet. "Truce."
He didn't move when her feet touched the carpet, and he didn't look away from her face at all. That he wanted to reach out and touch her was evident for just a moment, and then he did stand, and he brushed off his pants unnecessarily. "You'll let yourself out?"
Disoriented, Iris looked at her watch. Again. "Actually, I'll go first. I just need a minute." She rose and drifted around him toward the door, flashing a grin over her shoulder at him. "...Exactly."
He laughed at that, a warm thing, a fond thing. "The ladronita synchronized watches with her contact?" he asked unnecessarily.
"I am going to walk down the hallway to my room," Iris said, looking up through her lashes at him, voice sweet. She slowed her steps at the door to give Russell some leeway. "Gracias por su hospitalidad."
He laughed again, and he just leaned his shoulder against the wall, content to watch her go, even if she was playing coquettish games with him. He found it adorable, though he'd never admit so much to her. He imagined her indignation, and it made him grin. "Go on, mujersita."
She stepped out into the hall, confident Russell had done his job. "One day," she said, as she moved out of view, "I will get tired of you calling me names."