Micah Castro Braden // Doctor Watson, I presume (acatalyst) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-04-26 17:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | dr. watson, irene adler |
Who: Micah and Iris
What: Complete log (Nightmares)
Where: 206
When: After a visit to R1, backdated a few days (vague timeline is GO)
Warnings: Possibly triggery nightmares, sexual assault, mature discussions
Micah had tricked Iris into helping him care for the woman in R1, but that didn't mean Iris had liked it. She left the rooftop apartment that night like she always did, tense and desperate to leave the enclosed space, and Micah was loathe to let her be alone tonight.
"My fire escape or yours?"
Her conversation with Ella had not been especially productive. "If I say that I don't want to talk right now, are you going to accept that?" Iris asked, testily, already moving off down the hallway and itching to be out of there. To her, R1 was not large at all--the air there was over-warm and thick with a desperation that made her skin crawl.
"I'm not going to make you talk, Iris. If I say I don't want either of us to be alone right now, are you going to accept that?" he asked. He wasn't testy, but he was also glad to be out of R1. There were more things broken in that apartment than just Ella's body and mind, and Micah didn't have a ready solution; Micah hated not having a ready solution.
"Mine." She had moved the camera pointed in the alley to obscure it. "And I need a smoke so bring one." Abruptly, she veered to one side, got in the elevator, and pushed the button. It started to clam up with her inside.
He let her go, let her have her privacy to the second floor, and he took his time making it back to 202. He showered, wanting the smell of the morgue and R1 off his skin, and he threw on a pair of track pants and an undershirt, taking off the bracelet at his wrist and grabbing a silver case of Cuban cigarettes (the engraving on the silver matching that on the lighter) and two Hatueys. He climbed over onto Iris' balcony, and he tried the window, assuming she would have already unlatched it for him. The sun hadn't started to set yet, and the sky was a golden red behind him, but he didn't feel any of its warmth against his back and shoulders.
Iris had showered too, and she looked clean and sharp in a black jacket contrasted with pale turquoise. She'd done something to her wet hair to sweep it up off her neck, some braid that twisted up and looked more complex than it must be, considering the amount of intervening time. The moment he darkened the window she pushed it open, and rather than allowing him in, stepped onto the metal grating beside him. That musk was very light, almost undetectable under clean soap and tap water. She was a mirror, unreadable.
Looking down at the offerings, she said, "I don't have any food in the house, or I would have brought something to trade." Even smile.
"I don't think we need food. Just beer, quiet and something to smoke," he said. He let his gaze skate over her appearance; clean and not touched by the horrors of the building, and he wished for tranquility (which almost made him laugh, since he normally found tranquility intolerable). He held out the cigarette case to her, and he propped the beers on the window ledge as he reached for his lighter from his pocket.
Iris was accustomed to being looked at wherever she went, but just this once, she wished he wouldn't. Instead of replying, she reached over and plucked a cigarette from the case, sighing. "I said I wasn't going to go back to these. In London you couldn't walk out of a pub without tripping over ten blokes with a smoke. Though Paris is worse." Slight smile. "Eliot is trying to quit. I think he sneaks them."
"Eliot needs to sneak more than cigarettes," Micah said, but there was a laugh in his voice when he said it, no ire in sight. He lit his lighter and he blocked the flame from the wind and waited for her to light the cigarette. "You'll have to tell me what you think of those," he said. He considered reaching into his pocket and looking up the word she'd just used on his cellphone (an old habit), but he decided it wasn't worth it right now. "Blokes?" he asked, almost sounding like he was asking about them, rather than asking what they were. In the back of his mind, he was playing the fact that she'd been in England in his mind.
It was a good tactic and it worked. "Just guys," she said, dismissively. She held her hand out for the lighter; she didn't have one. "But it was a good reason at the time." Iris was bemused at her youthful follies in that arena. Or maybe she was just in the mood to be amused, and not bitter.
He handed her the lighter, the crest engraved on the silver ornate and matching the one on the cigarette case. "What was the reason?" he asked, taking a drag off his own cigarette and reaching back for a beer. He popped the top on the edge of the fire escape railing, and he leaned his elbows on the edge as he looked out at the city.
She recognized the crest as the one that had been on the top of the message delivered at the gun range. It took her some time, but she remembered it from one of the books she had read. She lit the cigarette and took a long drag that she certainly did not regret. Smoke curled out of her nose. "It's so unhealthy that it tastes better." She slumped over the railing with her back to the alley. "I just smoked because everyone else was, of course. What other reason is there?"
"Nicotine is addicting?" he asked with a grin and chug of his beer. "I like cigars better than cigarettes, but the general idea is the same," he told her. "Are you worried?" he asked a second later. He didn't offer a segue or explanation about what he was talking about; he didn't think she'd need it. "How was the woman on the roof?" he asked, without waiting for her reply to his previous questions, rambling as the thoughts entered his mind. His words weren't planned or thought out in advance, and it was obvious that he was just thinking aloud. "The man on the roof needs a very good psychiatrist. Why were you in England?"
If the last question sounded more important than the others, well, it wasn't intentional.
"The man on the roof needs a goddamn miracle." She flicked ash into the alley, watching it fall. "I was in England to learn. It's a decent place for that." She didn't get to the woman, but she was thinking about her. "Her name's Ella," she added, distractedly.
"Maybe the woman will count as a miracle," Micah said. He wanted to ask precisely what someone went to England to learn, but the distraction in Iris' voice made him forgo the question in favor of her emotions. "Did it bring back memories, seeing her?" he asked. Ella hadn't acted like a rape victim, where Iris most definitely did; but assault was assault, and he had no notion of how bad Iris' had been. He made sure to keep his gaze out on the city, on the horizon, and he took another sip of the beer, so she didn't feel like his attention was too focused on her.
"She asked." Iris reached back for a beer for herself. She hadn't had a drink in quite a while, and while she had no desire for alcohol, the smoke was fire, the beer cooled it. "She kept asking. She didn't want to be alone in it." She shrugged a little, leaving the cigarette pressed between her lips while she divested bottle of cap with a bare palm. It hissed. "I don't blame her. She's been through hell."
"Have you?" he asked, simple and straightforward; no play of words or tricks to make her confess.
She turned to look at him, her profile smooth brown shadow in the fire of the sinking sun that crept down the alleyway. "Have I what?"
"Been through hell," he said, and he tossed his cigarette over the edge of the fire escape, and he ran his fingertip along the shell of her ear.
She went defensive immediately, jerking her head out of reach. "Why, does that turn you on?"
He let his hand fall, and he gave her a look that was confused one second and angry the next. "You don't believe that for one second, Iris," he finally said, because he didn't believe for one second that she did. His jaw was taut, and the muscles in his arms had gone tense.
"Well I don't know," she snapped back, angry too. "You keep coming around, I don't know what you want." Irene wasn't pleased, but there was not much of Irene in Iris just then, despite cigarette and bottle.
He gave her a look that was exceptionally hurt (if she was trying to hurt him, she'd succeeded, and it was obvious). "I want to fuck you? Is that what you think?" he asked, finishing off his beer and setting the empty bottle on the ledge. "I don't tell people I fuck the things I've told you, Iris," he said bluntly.
Then he waited a second, and he climbed over the edge of the railing, ready to make his way back to 202 in the same way he'd come (all so she wouldn't worry about anyone seeing him, thank you very much).
Iris didn't have anything to say. Her anger was abruptly gone, and a moment before when the thought had come to her, she had felt justified in the theory enough to use it as an accusation, but now she realized the mistake enough to have no words to defend it. She didn't stop him from leaving, thinking it better that she didn't somehow dig herself deeper into the hole of her own making. "I told you I wasn't the one for this." She moved from the railing, sliding down to the floor of the escape and putting her feet down on the first step so her elbows could protect her knees. A cloud of smoke expanded upward from her mouth when she tipped her chin up.
He stopped when he heard her voice, and he looked back at her from the other side of the railing. "You are the one for this," he said with certainty. "You're just trying to push me away, and I can't let you walk all over me, or you'll never respect me, mamita," he said, and he gave her a look that was still a little angry, and a lot tired of the building and the day that had just passed. He crouched down on the edge of the escape, and he reached through the bars for her fingers. "You aren't alone, and you aren't going to be alone. You can push all you want, and you can piss me off, but I'm not getting lost."
She smiled a little through the smoke. Her voice sounded a bit thick. "I think I did a good job pissing you off just now."
"Si, mamita," he admitted, tugging on her fingers slightly and grinning at her through the metal bars. "You did. It won't be so easy next time."
Her fingers tightened briefly about his, a short but blood-inhibiting cling. She let him go almost at once, because she needed to swipe her fingers over one eye before it spilled over. "I don't really think that. I did a minute ago, but only then."
He grasped one of the railing bars when she let go of his hand, and he watched her stop the tear from falling, his fingers tightening on the metal to keep from touching her just then. "I know, Iris," he said, voice thick with unvoiced emotion.
"It's not much the same, anyway, with her and me. It just happened to her, and no matter what anybody says it was probably just random violence thanks to some random psycho just waiting for a reason. I was--I was on a job. So it was different. I don't think I helped her much." She hissed out more smoke, the last breath of it, and dropped the stub into his empty bottle, almost regretfully.
His gaze was sharp and riveted on her face, and he didn't even look down when she dropped the stub into the bottle. "Did your job find out what you were doing?" he asked. He almost regretted it when he asked, but his anger had gotten the best of him, and he'd immediately wondered if it was punishment for finding out what she was doing. He didn't want to ask if that was the job, because his blood rolled at the very thought of her intentionally putting herself in that sort of danger.
"He's called a mark." Micah was naive in some ways. Iris liked that. Most of the people she knew and knew well, they were not the kind of people that had to ask questions about the nature of the job. "You know, that's the kicker." She grinned, a bit skull-like, out into the alleyway. "He never did. Still hasn't, as far as I know."
"A mark," Micah repeated, and he would have gone on about the ridiculousness of that word choice, but the confession about the 'mark' stole his attention completely in the next second. "Then he was just a sick fucker?" he asked, sounding very American in that moment. His teeth were clenched in anger, his jaw tight, and his eyes intense and angry.
"Yep," she said, matching the Americanism easily. "Well." She chewed on nothing for a moment, eyes vacant, and focused on the ashen taste at the back of her mouth. "His brother was worse." She tipped the beer up, took a good swallow, and left it in her mouth a moment to see if it helped with the aftertaste of the cigarette. She used to like that taste. Funny.
His eyes flared with anger which he did not voice, because he wanted her to keep talking, and he suspected anger would shut her down. "How was his brother involved?" he asked, the ire slipping think into words touched with his natural accent for just a instant.
Iris turned her head and gave him a sideways look to try to assess his expression. "You--" she stopped. She was going to ask him to confirm his promise that he wouldn't tell Eliot, but she felt (in that brief moment after the first word left her lips) that she would be doing him another disservice, so instead she covered it by looking away again. "I wasn't an idiot about it. You don't do this kind of thing without, you know--" she swirled what was left of her beer around the bottle, "--some background. I was good with the mark, but I missed the brother. Not a nice guy. They had their own little badger game going, in a way." She paused to see if he knew what that meant, eyes dark in the graying light.
The phrase was unfamiliar, but he hesitated before admitting as much. "If you'd known the mark was dangerous," he asked, "would you have passed the job over?" He asked because he wanted to know how much danger she generally put herself in; no, he needed to know. He hadn't determined yet if Iris was foolish with her safety yet. She seemed utterly capable, but yet she'd been hurt; it conflicted, and it made it hard to come up with a solid theory.
Iris laughed, but it was a dull sound compared to her usual bell-like amusement. "Fuck yes. You don't go after people with a history of violence, it's like playing Russian roulette." The irony of that statement made her blink.
"What is a badger game?" he finally asked, shifting on his feet on the ledge, but not moving. Being eye-to-eye like this with her was something new, and he was loathe to stand up and tower over her again while she was being open with him.
"It's a sex con. It's not hard, lot of hookers play it. You can do short and just rob the guy, or you can go long and blackmail him. But you have to hook him first, and my mark, well." She rocked her head hard to one side and brought the beer up again. "Apparently he was the hook. It's kind of embarrassing for a player to get played, you know?" She could use another beer, but she didn't ask him for one.
It took him a full minute to comprehend exactly what she was saying, and once he did he swung over the railing and was on her side almost immediately. He crouched in front of her, close enough to see her eyelashes now, and he stared at her. "You are worth more than any stupid job. ¿Me escuchas?" he said, and his jaw clenched as he spoke with anger that was barely contained. "How did you get into this?"
She stared at him. "I wasn't playing the badger. I haven't done that since I was a real stupid kid." She reached up and patted his cheek, a barely perceptible brush of palm against his jaw. "And you're right; it's not worth it. It's usually the hook that gets screwed, too. Literally." She left it unsaid, but typically the badger game had more than one player. "This was a scam. Traditional but effective. The old ones usually are."
Her reassurances didn't make him feel any better, and the confession that she'd been doing this since she was a kid only made his jaw clench tighter. He didn't ask where her family was, because he suspected the response would only make him lose his temper, which would lead to her being scared again. She'd had a hard enough night, having to deal with the mess upstairs, and he'd seen how the scene yesterday had affected her. In the end, he rubbed his cheek against her palm, making the contact more solid. "When?" he asked, looking into her eyes in the rapidly darkening night.
"When what? This job?" She stopped, blinking to buy herself a bit of time to count up the months. "Must have been... end of '07."
He reached out a hand and he pushed a strand of hair back from her cheek, one that had been blown free by the breeze. "I want you to tell me something that wasn't a job; something in your life, mamita."
She looked surprised. "Why?"
"Because I'm a stupid man; humor me," he said, letting his thumb trace over her cheek as he waited, and not explaining that he was trying to figure out if her entire life was defined in jobs and marks.
She stared a moment longer, then tipped her chin down so that she could prop her now empty bottle against the grate. "I can't think of anything." Not anything that wasn't Eliot, anyway. She didn't say that.
"Your family?" he finally asked, fingers sliding under her chin when she tipped it down.
"None." Not entirely true, but the spirit of it was. Iris had not thought of her blood relatives in some time, and she frowned a little. "That must bother you." She perceived the importance of his family in his life, though they were not there to play an active role, even she knew that.
"It doesn't bother me; I've gotten used to that" here. He did wish it was different for her, that it had been different for her, but he didn't say that either. "Families aren't always blood relation, Iris," he said, because he believed it to be true. The look he gave her said she was firmly in the family column at this point, whether she liked it or not. He trusted she was observant enough to understand what that meant to him.
She frowned at him. "I'm not real big on the family spirit." Hadn't she just told the man that she tricked people and stole everything they were worth as soon as they gave her their trust? What was he looking at her like that for? Where was the sense of self-preservation, here?
Micah expected bad guys to look like bad guys, not like women who had been hurt and had so many cracks in their wall that he was torn between wanting to crawl inside and patch up the holes. He chucked her under the chin with the back of his fingers lightly, and he grinned at her. "We'll work on that."
She painted him with a blatantly skeptical look, but didn't argue. "You're an odd man, Micah. Don't you know that this is the part where you play it safe and go home?"
"Let me sleep on that couch," he said looking over her shoulder. He didn't say that he was worried about her door, about how easy the window would be to break, about the murder and attacks. He just gave her a dimpled, harmless, lazy smile.
Unconsciously, she looked over her shoulder at it, following his gaze, then back at him. "Why?"
"Would you believe I'm too tired to climb back to my own fire escape?" he asked, gracing her with the same harmless smile, the one that made everyone he'd ever met trust him.
"No." The fact that she wanted to trust him made her suspicious. She narrowed her eyes. "Quit conning me."
"I don't trust your door frame," he finally said, after thinking it over. He stood, and he walked to her window, and he waited. "New door frame tomorrow, me on your couch tonight."
"I think we'd both hear it if someone broke through my door frame, Micah." She attempted to scoff.
He crossed his arms, and he didn't budge. Micah could be exceptionally stubborn when pushed, and he knew she could be as well, but he was counting on her to give in out of sheer frustration, rather than any true worry about her own safety. That idea didn't bother him; he was worried about her, though he wouldn't say it. No matter how she tried to hide it, this thing with Ella had hit her hard (she had almost cried on the fire escape), and he wasn't going to leave her alone in a building with murderers and rapists on the loose. He'd get her a new frame and have an alarm installed in the morning, and he'd get in touch with Eliot. In the meantime, he was either going to sleep on her couch or on her fire escape, the choice was hers.
Iris sighed and rubbed under one ear. She knew that look. "Fine. I owe you for the beer." She stood up, dusted her pants off, though it was too dark to see anything, and picked up the bottles. Inside, she dropped the bottles into a sack on the counter (there wasn't a trash can) and looked from him to the couch again. "You're not going to fit on that," she said, shaking her head.
He climbed into the apartment, and he waited for her to put the bottles into the sack before walking up to her. He put his hands on her shoulders slowly (not wanting to startle her), and he turned her toward the bedroom and nudged her toward the door, letting go a second later. "Stop worrying and get some sleep," he said, suspecting she hadn't gotten much sleep with all the chaos the day before.
He was right, though she suspected the same of him. She paused at the mouth of the hallway, looking back at him, chewing on some thought while she decided whether or not to voice it. After this had run its course, she said, carefully, "Just stay out here, alright? Even if you hear--anything. Sometimes I don't sleep well, but I'll... I'll wake up on my own." There wasn't a lock on the bedroom door, or she would have come up with something else, some excuse to keep him out. She was supposed to be keeping track of the nightmares and how often they came, but Iris had trouble ingraining a habit of writing things down, it was counter to her profession in every way. There had been a lot today, and she found there were flare-ups when things happened to bring any of it back to the surface, and the last thing she needed was Micah breaking her door down. Or hearing anything. She hoped there wouldn't be anything to hear, but she wasn't sure. Some of that uncertainty was showing up through the fatigue, and she was watching him nervously, shifting her weight.
Nightmares. Micah was no more surprised to hear about Iris having them than he had been to hear the woman upstairs was having them. Whenever someone suppressed their fears and memories in their waking lives, the mind had a way of bringing them out during sleep. That Iris still had them, however, was troubling, and it made him mourn for the fact that she hadn't gotten the treatment she'd needed in time. If she had regular nightmares, then all of the circumstances of the past few days would (no doubt) make them worse, and it just made his certainty that he'd done the right thing in insisting to stay the night more concrete. "I'll stay out here," he told her - and he would. It would be impossibly hard, but he would do it, just because waking her would probably terrify her. She didn't trust him enough for that; not yet.
Unmistakeably relieved, she smiled her gratitude, and disappeared down the hall past the painting hanging on the wall.
He watched her go, and he listened to her bedroom door close. He doused the lights in the living room, and he stretched out on the couch (which was really too small for him), but he didn't close his eyes. He listened.
There wasn't much in the way of sound after the lights went out. She drew the blinds; a drawer closed; the bed creaked. The walls were like paper, but her breathing was too soft to carry down the hall the way the shifting of the support beams did. She must have fallen asleep at once because the bed made no more sounds. The apartment was deathly quiet for about three hours before something rose through it. It was a very soft sound, but the cadence was Iris' voice, impossible to make out otherwise. The intonation was that of a question. Thirty seconds later, she sat up in the bed, and the mattress slid over the cheap support. Silence again. The next interruption came sooner, forty-five minutes at most, and this time there was no chance of conversation, just a long gasp that ended when she sat up again, so hard that the bed frame tapped against the wall. Silence. She curled up again, but the sound was slight, the bedspread being pulled back, the voice of the building as it redistributed its weight over the first floor.
He woke up immediately when he heard the soft cadence of Iris' voice. He had been sleeping lightly (intentionally), and any noise coming from her room would have roused him. He couldn't make out her words, only the intonation of a question, and he didn't move closer, despite very much wanting to. He waited, stone-still, and he heard her sit up (awake, he assumed). When the silence resumed, his mind remained noisy with thoughts and suppositions, and then he heard the gasp. He silently put his feet on the floor (a hard task for a man his size), and he turned toward her door, watching it carefully and listening to the bedspread being pulled back. He'd promised he wouldn't go in and wake her, and he'd known when he'd made the promise that it would be a challenging one to keep. He hoped the next sound that came from the bedroom wasn't more worrisome than a gasp.
Sleep came again, though she knew it probably would have been better to fight it off. The nightmares were shadows of emotion rather than anything like functioning narrative. Figures, voices, threats that she knew were coming without knowing why. Endless rooms with nothing but doors yet nowhere to run. Bare walls with no cover, opulence that smelled like carpet cleaner and silk, faces in the dark. More time passed, but not nearly enough. She tried to talk him into leaving, told him she did not want to stay. She called him John. He doesn't listen, and the soft persuasions become increasingly desperate.
John.
He filed the name away, even as he moved from the couch and closer to her door, where he leaned beside it, against the thin wall of the apartment, his arms crossed. He was close enough to hear now, close enough to give into the desire to wake her. He doesn't. He just clenched his teeth and rolled his hands into fists and felt impotent. Quiet and impotent.
Inevitable. She says another name, different this time, in a harsh sob of absolute terror. It sounds like "Alex" but there's an odd accent on it, and the rest is too soft to make out. Silence returns, total and absolute. Moments before this becomes too much to bear, there's the sounds of an abrupt struggle, a hard rending tear of tangled material, and a hard thud as she falls onto the floor in a burst of blinding confusion and pain.
He moved even before she hit the floor, but when he heard the thud he stopped himself just outside the door. He stood so close that she could see the tips of his feet, if she looked, and his breathing was hard enough to carry in the apartment once silence re-settled on the darkness. He reached out for the doorknob, and he touched the metal, closed his fingers around it, and then he let it go. He moved his hand back, but he did not move away.
No more struggles. She picked herself up, but the bed didn't creak again. So close, it was just the soft sound of her labored breathing, and then, higher pitched but still very faint, sobbing.
He put his hand on the wood, and he didn't hide the sound his fingers made against the rough, uneven surface. He wasn't sure if he was trying to reassure her, or trying to reassure herself, and he was unbelievably sorry he'd made the promise he had. He wanted nothing more that to shove the door open, to grab her to him and assure her that it was going to be okay, that everything was going to be okay.
She must have heard the noise because she gasped and stifled the sobs into silence. Nothing.
He didn't move away. He had no intention of moving away. If he had to stay there all night, he would. His shadow remained under the door, and his hand remained on the wood.
Quick movements that got farther from the door, the brush of her feet on cheap carpet, a sob she didn't manage to suppress.
He had all he could take. He knocked and spoke as he opened the door. "Iris," he said firmly, "mamita." He spoke in Spanish, counting on the fact that whoever she was frightened of wasn't hispanic. "Mamita, soy yo. Miguelito. No te voy hacer nada, mamita. Ven aqui," he coaxed, not really thinking she would understand and listen; only hoping that the language and his voice was the right combination of familiarity and difference to make her panic subside.
The bed clothes were twisted and spread over the floor opposite the door. Iris was a movement in the dark, and to her he was much the same. She rose from where she'd crouched, back to the wall, in one slow materialization. She had left the jacket somewhere, but the turquoise stood out against her pale skin in the dim light, where the thin pajama pants were gray and only served to wash out her the ghostly lines that marked the edge of her body. She went to him, a little mechanically, and when she pressed her body to his her skin was slick with a cold sweat.
"Iris?" he asked quietly, not yet winding his arms around her as he wanted to do. He wasn't certain how conscious she was that he was himself and not Alex or John.
"Shhh." Her hands were shaking against his chest--her whole body was trembling, and she seemed strangely small in a way she had not been before. The musk of her skin was impossibly thick, as if the fear and the sweat just made it stronger, and when she could literally be no closer, she put her hands under his shirt and pressed him back toward the bed.
He closed his hands around her wrists, and he pulled them out from under his shirt. He wanted her touch - oh, Dios, did he want her touch. But not like this. "Iris, mamita, look up at me."
She choked on her fear, a high, desperate noise, and pushed him back again. "No, you don't have to. Please. I can--" With a hard jerk, she freed one of her arms, and pushed it under his shirt again.
He pulled her wrist again, gentle but firm, and he tugged her out into the light of the living room and out of the dark bedroom. "Iris, vamos hacer cafe, anda?" he said, looking at her carefully now that he could see her fear-damped features better. He pushed her hair off her forehead, and he nudged her toward the kitchen. "Vamos."
As soon as he rejected the advance and took hold of her again, she absolutely panicked. She started to struggle in earnest, retreat back into the bedroom, and rather than screaming, she stifled further sound until she was practically gasping for breath.
He stopped when she panicked. "Voy a la cocina," he told her, keeping his voice firmly non-threatening. He did as he said he would. He went into the kitchen and set about making instant coffee, making a careful amount of noise that would carry to the bedroom throughout, and singing a Spanish salsa tune slowly, also loud enough for her to hear. He noticed the emptiness of the refrigerator, made a mental note, and raised his voice just a touch as he sang.
She had just gotten to the doorway of the bedroom, eyes deer-wide, when he let her go and she looked back. Her expression wavered when she saw him in the light. "Micah?" She wasn't sure whether or not she should keep retreating. The sounds were different, as was his voice, and after a few minutes, she appeared in the hallway. Her eyes were hollow and dark-rimmed. "Micah?"
He set the two cups of coffee on the counter, and he stepped out from around it. He heard the recognition in her voice, and his heart ached for the hollow, dark-rimmed look of her eyes. "Ven," he said softly, holding one hand out, his voice safe and warm in the new-found still of the apartment. He looked worried, and he didn't bother trying to hide that from her as he held his hand out.
"I'm sorry." She wasn't looking right at him when she said it, and as she drifted out into the living room, she hugged herself close. She came close, but not too close. "That was bad. Sorry."
He opened his arms to her, and he waited. His expression said he would keep waiting, if he needed to. He wasn't going to walk out on her, or on this.
She shook her head a little, and came nearer, but not into the embrace. "I can't. Sorry." She realized that she kept apologizing. "It doesn't make me feel safe, like that. Nothing does." Her eyes asked him to understand.
He let his arms drop, and the helplessness he felt showed on his face. "Toma un poco de cafe entonces," he said, reverting to the safety of Spanish, and motioning to the kitchen. "Are you more comfortable around Eliot?" he asked abruptly, his mind already thinking ahead.
"Eliot doesn't want me." She didn't have to hesitate to think about it. "Every time I'm around men, I just can't... it's hard to relax. Eliot doesn't look at me that way, so I don't have to worry. See?" She wasn't trying to hurt him, but she didn't know another answer except for an honest one.
"And you knew him before," Micah suggested, as if that changed her comfort with Eliot in some indescribable way. "He does want you; he's just fucking insane," he said with certainty, and he took a sip of his coffee, and he watched her pensively over the rim.
Her smile was a sickly shadow. "No, he doesn't. Your romanticism gets the better of you." She took a coffee mug and looked down at it.
Micah scoffed. "I've never been called a romantic, and I know Eliot. I don't know how I know Eliot, but I do." He said it with unarguable certainty. If fact, he was so certain that he fully intended to contact the man after the moon and talk to him about getting Iris to agree to a more secure apartment. He didn't like the fact that the second floor was so accessible from outside, and the lack of food in her refrigerator (combined with her multiple jobs) had added up to her having a financial problem. They'd have to tread lightly, but luckily for Eliot, Micah was smarter than he was (or so he thought).
"I think I've known him longer." She raised her eyebrows at him, but she didn't have the energy to be especially argumentative, so she just said it.
He grinned. "You're biased."
"In whose favor?" She almost smiled again.
"Against yourself," he said over his cup, catching the almost-smile that tugged at her lips. Asi mismo, mamita.
"Maybe. I overestimated myself pretty badly a little while ago and things didn't turn out so well." She put her elbows on the counter, shoulders loose, and lifted her cup.
"I pushed you," he admitted. "I won't do it again," he said, and the seriousness and intensity of his gaze let her know that he meant it. It was as good as an apology and just as heartfelt. He wouldn't assume she was as strong as she pretended to be in the future. It had been a mistake, and he wouldn't be repeating it. "Stay away from the woman on the roof. I'll take care of her from here. I'll get someone to come talk to her."
"Give me some credit." She was rubbing her neck again. "I could have left. You can't order me around, doctor."
He just smiled, a slow and warm smile that was as infuriating as it was dimpled.
She narrowed her eyes at him, then sobered. "He didn't rape her. He tortured her and scared the hell out of her, which is what he wanted, not sex."
His smile faded as fast as it had come. "And he's still out there, and you don't do that to someone without being obsessively fixated on them. I don't want you around her. I'll find someone else," someone who I won't worry about..
"You send someone else in there she'll run screaming."
"I don't think so. I think she'll stay calm so that he'll stay calm." Micah leaned his elbows on the counter, and his voice turned emotive. "When you love someone, you protect them at any cost," he said. "And sometimes that means pretending nothing is wrong for their sake," he said, and he said it like a man with experience in the subject matter. "And sometimes that fucks them up worse in the end."
"You see this as a solution?" she asked, watching his face.
"No," he said, and it took him a minute to come down from the simple, two-letter word. "I just don't think she'll run screaming," he said, and he rubbed his eyes. "He needs help too. That's all I'm saying."
"A man like that doesn't need anyone's help," she said, dismissively. "When he wants help, he'll pay for it."
"You don't like him," he said. "Why? Who does he remind you of?"
"Nobody. Old money." She shrugged. "He'll sort himself out."
Micah added that to his mental file about her likes and dislikes, and he wondered if she liked any men (he suspected he and Eliot were exceptions). "Want to tell me about your father?" he asked. It was random and unexpected, and she usually responded well to that. He started cleaning up the coffee mugs, and he thought about the empty refrigerator again, but didn't mention it. His thoughts went back to the man on the roof and Iris' prejudices, and he hoped she said something about her father that either validated or disproved his theories on the amount of money her family had while she was growing up. She was tired; she might let it slip.
She hated it when he jumped subjects like that, and he was right about how tired she was. "Not much to tell, I didn't know him." She looked over the counter at the kitchen and wondered if he'd been through any of it. Probably. Oh well, there was only so much she could hide, after all. "Want to tell me about yours?" She suspected that might be a better story. God knew she was tired of thinking about herself.
"My parents were completely good," he said, pulling the cigarette case from his pocket and lighting one without asking her if he could smoke inside, needing to busy his hands. He slid the case across to her, in case she wanted one also, and he took a drag. "Selfless and loving, and all that stuff you think parents should be, but so many aren't." He looked up at her. "Your mother?" Confession for confession.
She was pleased to hear this about his parents, and it was obvious. She was transparent this way, in the hollow of the night, and much of her emotions were bare where they had been hidden before. She was thoughtful. "How did you know they were? What were they like?" Then, nodding a little with a small smile, "I'll tell you about mine after."
"How did I know they were good?" he asked, grabbing one of the clean cups to ash in. "Because they didn't talk about it, and they didn't preach about it. They lived it." He gave her a soft laugh. "They gave up everything that matters to us Americans, and they never felt sorry and never looked back, just because they believed in something." His expression said that belief hadn't turned out so well, but he didn't say it. That wasn't what this was about. He forced a smile. "Your mother?"
Iris had never known anybody that believed in anything that much. She tilted her head, fascinated by the concept, but didn't push farther. "My mother was..." she hesitated. "Distracted. She really wasn't equipped to handle herself, much less us." She shrugged. "You can't smoke in front of me like that." She held out a hand for the case. She was going to get hooked again, she just knew it. Then again, maybe she'd never stopped being hooked.
Instead of pushing the case the remainder of the way toward her, he put out his cigarette, gave her a dimpled grin, and busied himself by flipping the lighter over repeatedly in his hand. "Us? I'm an only child. You have brothers or sisters?" he asked, surprised. For some reason he thought she'd grown up alone in the world. She hadn't struck him as someone with siblings, and the fact that he'd come to the wrong conclusion flashed on his face for a moment, disappointment with himself for jumping to unproven conclusions.
Iris' expression soured as she realized that she'd let that slip without any knowledge at all of doing so. Her instincts were absolutely going to hell. She'd been out of the game too long and here she was, sitting at her own counter at one in the morning and trying to fend off a well-meaning boy with some kind of insurrectionist paramilitary background. She might as well write a biography. "No, I don't. My sister died a long time ago." She was frustrated that he wouldn't give her a cigarette, and took her hand back without arguing about it.
He watched her hand retract, and then he looked up at her face. "How?" The question held just a hint of danger, a hint of the realization that he might hate what she said, that it might just be another reason for him to want to protect her. It was all there in those three letters, just as it was emblazoned across his expressive features. Estoy esperando.
"An accident, on the highway." The walls came up, and her eyes went down. It was a lot more complicated that, and there was more, but she was fighting off more tremors and she was not going to tell him all of it. "It was a long time ago. I haven't thought about it for a long time."
He watched every last bit of her reaction. The way her body tensed, and the way her eyes dropped, and it told him everything her words didn't. He didn't think she was lying to him, not precisely; he thought there was something behind the accident, something that caused it, perhaps. But he could tell now when he had pushed too far, which he couldn't just a few days back. He held out the cigarette case to her, and he popped the silver lid with deft, strong fingers.
"You're cruel sometimes." She took one but smiled at him as she did it, fully aware that this might be something like a reward for good, communicative behavior. That was only going to work so far... but she wanted a cigarette. She rolled it in between her first two fingers, and stared thoughtfully at the ends of her nails. "I think she was... eight. No, nine."
"How old were you?"
The gray eyes glistened. "Twelve."
He lit another cigarette, more to distract her with the movement of his hands than because he really needed the smoke. "Your mami?"
"Probably drank herself into a grave. I haven't checked." Iris was good, very good, but she was also at the end of her limits. She watched his hands, and then the curl of smoke, and then held out a hand again for the lighter. If she had known how much he was directing this conversation, she probably would have refused to say another word. Once she got it, she turned it over in her hand a moment, admiring the crest again. "I guess that's not fair. She was pretty torn up when she found out, as I recall." She didn't sound sympathetic. "Like I said, she wasn't equipped to deal."
He wanted to ask what an eight-year-old and twelve-year-old were doing away from their mother in the first place. He wanted to ask why the woman had found out, as if she had no idea what her daughters were up to. It made him angry, and the anger was strong enough that it showed in the flare of his nostrils and the curve of his fingers on the lighter. Micah had always planned for a family - at least he had before everything fell apart. The thought that a mother could... could what? He couldn't even find sufficient words for the accusation, not in English, not in Spanish. Not in his mind. "Was she young?" he finally asked, even though that wouldn't be enough of an excuse.
Sitting across from Iris right now, nothing would ever be enough of an excuse.
That was an odd question. She had to think about it. "I don't know. She seemed old enough to me, but I was twelve, so..." she shrugged. "Everybody was old. She was probably around thirty-five, maybe forty."
His jaw clenched, and he wanted to hurt a woman in a way he'd never wanted to before. He stubbed out his cigarette, taking his time over the action, using it as a way to calm his temper. "My mother was in her mid-thirties when I was born," he said, an unthinking comment apropos of nothing. "My father was older, in his 40s."
She nodded, but she couldn't be any more aware of her emotional environment right now, and she drew back a little through the smoke. "What's wrong?" She didn't understand the source of his anger, and looked a little alarmed at it.
"I always wanted children," he admitted, looking up into her eyes. "and I'm angry at your mother." Blunt and simple, but honest, without a doubt.
She softened. Without her usual walls and control, it was infinitely more obvious. Her chin came down and her eyes went vulnerable while her mouth relaxed from that hard line. "It's not so bad. It's not like she beat us, or anything. We were alright. You'd be a good father." All in one breath, to make him feel better, and for no other.
"Maybe I would have been," he said, and he put the cigarette case in his pocket. "How long have you been on your own?" he asked. He wasn't intentionally pairing confessions with questions; it was subconscious at best right now. He wasn't intentionally giving her small details to paint a larger picture either, but like her, he was tired and stressed and worried. He didn't know how to keep her safe, and it was becoming increasingly important to him.
Iris was truly disturbed that he thought such a thing, but she couldn't think of a way to say it wasn't true without ending the conversation completely or turning it aside. "Are you asking me who I work with?" She smiled a little, as if this was an absurd thing to ask. God, that cigarette smoke made her bones warm. She imagined her nerves steadying.
The question made him laugh, a low and rumbling thing of a laugh. "I was asking when you left home, Iris," he said. "But alright, who do you work with?" he asked, tapping the lighter against the counter top.
"Twelve." Smoothly. "I was twelve. She died, and I left. And don't pry in my work, Micah. It's rude." Her hands had stopped shaking.
He grinned. "Because I was prying initially, was I?" He didn't think about a twelve year old left alone in the world, without her mother or her sister. He couldn't think about that right now.
He was going to need to stop by the shooting range today.
"You always pry." It was a scold. She was pleased he wasn't angry anymore, as if she had something to do with it.
"Sit on the damn couch with me and be quiet, and I'll stop," he said, and he rubbed his eyes again. "For now," he added with a grin.
She sobered so quickly. "I've kept you up. You should go home."
He yawned, not bothering to hide it, and he straightened, grabbing her hand as he rounded the counter and walked past her. It was a slow thing, his fingers sliding into hers, intended to be non-threatening, and he tugged her toward the couch. "We each get an arm. They make fantastic pillows."
She slid off the chair after him, fighting off her own yawn just because he'd yawned where she could see. Her resistance was automatic but slight. "What if... what if I wake you up again?"
"Then we'll wake up, and when we get tired again, we'll go back to sleep," he said with a smile in his voice. "Bring us blankets, mujer," he said with a grin that was all trouble, and he pointed toward the bedroom as he flopped down on his side of the couch, letting go her hand.
"I don't have... there's just the one on the bed." It wasn't on the bed right at that moment, but... "You really don't fit on that. You can take the bed." She looked down the hallway.
He tipped his head against the back of the couch. "Bring the blanket, Iris, y para de ser tan niña. Ven," he coaxed, trying not to laugh and almost failing.
Iris did not find anything funny. "You're going to have back problems."
He did laugh then, a warm, rich thing of a sound. "Iris, just go get the damn blanket and get back here."
She went and got it. But only because she couldn't think of an alternative. It was the white comforter from the bed, and once she got to the couch, she wound herself up in it and sat down.
When she came back, he reached out and turned off the light, and he waited for her to settle more on the other side of the couch. He could still see her clearly with the softer kitchen light behind them, and it cast a halo around her. As he looked at her, he imagined her, twelve years old, scared and alone, and he had to swallow down the combination of anger and emotion that welled up inside him. He cleared his throat, and he shifted, his legs almost touching hers as he stretched out. "You know I'm going to take care of you, don't you?" he asked, his voice soft and thick in the semi-dark.
She'd curled up against her end, back against the edge and head tucked in. She answered sleepily. "I don't need 'taking care of'." She pulled her legs in, heels sliding past his shin.
He smiled in the dark, and he watched her pull her legs in, the movement catching his attention in the shadows. He looked up at her face (or what he could see of it) a moment later. He didn't tell her that he thought she was wrong, that she'd needed someone taking care of her for a very long time. He tipped his head back again, using the back of the couch as a pillow, and he reached an arm across the back, fingertips extending to almost where she was. "Go to sleep, Iris," he said, the smile audible in his voice.
She didn't argue because she already was.