Micah Castro Braden // Doctor Watson, I presume (acatalyst) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-06-01 22:39:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | dr. watson, irene adler |
Who: Iris and Micah
What: A (not great) dream (Completed log)
Where: Dreamscape
When: After Trenton's imprisonment
Warnings: Here there be angst
Micah had waited until Trenton was safely in Joanie’s constructed cell in the catacombs to go upstairs to shower. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep, even when he fell onto the couch in an exhausted sprawl of limbs, waiting for an e-mail confirming his rental of 206. The shirt he’d been intending to slip on was draped across his chest, and his legs were covered in track pants that were rumpled and straight from the laundry basket.
He didn’t wake when the e-mail landed in his inbox. By then, he was already dreaming of a beach at home, swaying lazily in a hammock, the sun shining brightly down on his closed eyelids.
Iris liked beaches. They were expensive, most of the time, and about as spontaneous as you could be while still being incredibly beautiful 99% of the time. It was a bit of nature that tended to cost money, and that had inherent value to Iris. She pretended that value was a little closer to home than the warm sun that beat down on her back and shoulders, but she was lingering as she skirted the edge of the water--squishing the sand through her toes. She wore a bathing suit of bright green design, and orange slashes of bird of paradise spread over the fabric, standing out under the pleasantly yellow sarong that went from shoulder to hop. There was a gentle breeze to cool the effect of the sun, and she was enjoying herself as she bent down to pick up little pebbles and shells that amused her.
She shaded her eyes as she neared the man in the hammock, smiling because he barely fit its length.
Barely was an understatement, and as she walked one of his legs slipped off the hammock fabric, causing him to open his eyes. She blocked the sun as she approached him, and even in the dream he recognized her. “Mamita,” he said, not adding anything else to the endearment. He reached out a hand, the dream giving familiarity and certainty in a way the waking world did not, and he touched her wrist, fingers closing lightly as he drew her forward, closer, wanting to see her without the halo of sunlight obstructing her features.
She hadn’t been in the water yet, and her skin was sun-warm and dark. She’d pulled her hair up but not well enough for the breeze to ignore it, and she smiled as she drifted nearer, answering the gentle pull without resistance. The bathing suit made her eyes like the water, very blue, and she smelled like coconut oil and herself. “Pretty place for a nap.” Her other hand was full of her little collection from the beach. “Were you dreaming?”
He shifted on the hammock, pulling her against it in a silent command to lie down beside him. “No,” he said, because he hadn’t been; he’d been listening. The sound of the water sliding against the rough sand was soothing, and it reminded him of home in a way that only sugarcane did. “Show me what you found,” he encouraged, seeing her hand was full of things. “Dejame ver.”
“I don’t think that’s going to hold me too,” she said, smiling, but she fell beside him nevertheless, making the hammock swing and the palms sway. Sitting up a little at his shoulder for comfort, oil-soft skin sliding easily over his, she opened her palm. There were little pebbles and shells, but they were carved from diamonds, and there were soft, irregular blue pearls speckling the little mound of gems. She stirred them with a forefinger, gently. “Aren’t they pretty?”
He’d never seen anything like that on this beach, and their presence made him realize maybe this wasn’t real. But the realization was gone as quickly as it came, and he picked up one of the blue pearls and held it up to the sun. “Bella,” she said, but he was looking at her when he said it, not at the gem between his fingertips. “Is this what you want?” he asked, looking back at the smooth, blue surface of the jewel. Somehow, he knew that question was important in some fundamental way. What she wanted was important; it was something he needed to know.
She turned her head to meet his eyes, slightly puzzled that his enthusiasm wasn’t the same as hers. “I found them.” The corners of her mouth lifted up, and she turned her chin away to indicate where her footsteps disappeared backward the way she had come. “There.” When she settled back, taking her weight off her shoulders and pressing back into the hammock sleepily, she gave him a soft, winning smile. “I can keep them, can’t I?” She knew it was his beach, the way you just knew things in dreams.
“You can have anything of mine you want,” he said, and he knew somehow that he meant beyond this hammock and this beach and the stones in her hand. He put the blue pearl back with the others, and he closed her fingers on them.
Her expression glowed happily as she closed her fingers over the gems a little tighter, and then leaned over the hammock to let them fall gently into a pile of their own. They turned back to broken shells and soft white-green pebbles as soon as they left her fingers, and that didn’t seem to bother her. She rolled back up into the hammock, letting it swing with a faint, happy burble, like children make.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked, realizing a moment later that he had no idea what he was asking her. Again, it was something important, but he didn’t know why.
Her expression visibly wilted, going overcast as even some of the vivid blue faded from her eyes. “Why do you keep asking? Just pretend for a little while.” She shifted a little against him, and then away, and then against. The hammock swung gently from side to side, answering the momentum.
He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and he cupped her cheek, letting himself be lulled by the rocking of the hammock and her warmth against his side. “I want more than pretend, mamita,” he told her finally, and it was a serious sentence. He turned on his side, intending to pull her to him more, and with the movement his large frame overturned the hammock and sent them both sprawling onto the sun-warmed sand below.
Iris let out a little squeal of surprise and rolled a couple feet away, recovering from the impact and then laughing until she was breathless. “I told you you were too big!”
The fall and her squeal of laughter made him forget the seriousness of the previous moment, and he crawled over to her on his hands and knees. He stopped when he had crawled over her, sand falling on her from his arms, and he grinned. “I didn’t listen,” he said, all dimpled smiles, and he ducked his head and kissed her without warning.
Iris blinked under the assault of falling sand, and she was still laughing a little up at him when he blocked out the sunlight. The kiss surprised her, and she didn’t respond for a quick, heart-stopping moment, but then she did, with the same humor and enthusiasm she had for the hammock and her pearls. The sand cooled underneath them and the sun lost its heat with an abruptness that would have been obvious--but her eyes were closed and she was winding her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.
The change in temperature wasn’t something he realized immediately. In fact, her hands on the nape of his neck made him even slower to catch the chill that was quickly building around them. Once he did realize it, he pulled back from the kiss in a way that said he knew the press of his lips was the reason for the change. It wasn’t precisely a conscious realization, but it was a realization all the same. He moved back, sat on his heels, and he looked at her for a second, before reaching out a hand to help her up. “Ven. We can walk, and I won’t touch you,” he offered, purely on instinct.
She was far more reluctant than he to let the kiss go. As soon as he was far enough back to focus on her face, her expression was one of hurt and regret. She sat up slowly, and then looked up at the sky. “Sorry.” Licking her lips, she pressed them together. “It was so pretty out.” The end of a sigh put her hand in his, but her previous mood was too far for her to reach.
He pulled her to his side, tucked her safely against his warmth and under his arm, and he led her to the water’s edge. “Mamita, the sun will come back out. It’s as tenacious as I am,” he said honestly. It was his way of saying he wouldn’t give up, not anymore than the bright sun that was fighting its way through the clouds as he finished the sentiment.
Her arm went around his waist, and she seemed very warm and small as she did. “It’ll just go cold again.” Indeed, it seemed to have more difficulty returning to its former radiance. Iris didn’t seem surprised by this. She looked up once, but not again. She hesitated at the edge of the water, pulling back. “You’re not going in, are you?” Squinting out over the endless blue.
Micah was home in the water as he was on the sand, but something in her tone said no was the appropriate answer to her question. He walked around in front of her, and he put his hands on her shoulders, blocking out the sun and the cool air, and he looked down at her. “Iris,” he said, using her name for the first time in this place. “I’m not going anywhere. No matter how you try to scare me away. Entiendes?”
It got chill again, this time in the form of a gust of wind from over the water. She brought her hands up and brushed them up his forearms. “I’m not trying to be scary,” she said, honestly. “How come you never pick up the rocks on the beach?” she asked, innocuous, the question just coming to her as she looked up at him. Blinking, she laughed abruptly. “I’m not making much sense...” She was much less lucid than she usually was. It was hard to tell if it was her, if it was the beach, or if it was the cold.
He smiled when she touched him, and it was a simple smile of pleasure. “I never pick up rocks because I already have what I’m looking for,” he told her, and he brushed both his hands over her cheeks, pushing back the hair that was blowing loose in the chill. He wasn’t accustomed to the cold, but it didn’t surprise him. He just didn’t know how to protect her from it. He had no shirt, and no cover to offer by the water. So, he did the only thing he could, he took her hand and he led her away from the ocean of blue and past the hammock, where the dream changed into one long, endless field of green waving in the chill.
Iris took his answer and chewed on it as they walked. The yellow sarong and the bathing suit changed into one of her long skirts and white blouses, strangely indeterminate in color and clearly not defined by the environment. Her feet were bare and the hem of the skirt brushed over the ground and slid back and forth with the plants as they walked. Her hand was very warm in his as she walked close, but it was the only warm thing. Abruptly she said, “Have you seen Moriarty when you’re asleep?”
The question surprised him, but he wasn’t confused by it, and he pulled her warmly against his side when she asked. “No,” he said honestly. “I only see you and my parents,” he admitted. “You see him,” he added, because he knew she did.
“No,” she said, fingers tightening. “Not yet.” She turned her head to look over the green.
He stopped, and he tugged her down into the safe, tall grasses. They were warm around them, sway-safe, and he’d hidden in them as a child. He sat on the warm ground, and he pulled her hand, wanting her to sit with him. “Why does he scare you?”
She nestled into the curve of his arm without hesitating to see if he offered it. She pressed her cheek into his chest and brought her knees up close. “He is smart. He is grasping. He will find a way to get what he wants.” She shuddered a little, so close that the tremor moved through him too. “We are in the way. Maybe. Unless we are the way.”
Micah shook his head, and he nestled her closer, the tremor making him wrap both his arms around her and bent knees. She was tiny in the span of his arms, and he felt like if he could just keep her there, she’d be safe. “Why don’t you let me protect you?” he asked, sounding worried for her, but not afraid.
“You can’t,” she said, contradicting how close she was and how much better it felt when he put his arms around her. “But I know you’d try. For Eliot, too. And then you’d just get hurt, for no reason.”
“I can,” he insisted, his arms remaining tight and close around her. “Just because I failed once, it doesn’t mean I’ll fail again,” he insisted. He wasn’t going to let anything to happen to her, whether she allowed him to watch out for her or not.
She tipped her chin up to his face, concerned. “It’s not failure.” She pressed her fingers to the line of his jaw, reassuring. “You try too hard.” It was affectionate.
“I failed,” he repeated, because he had. He didn’t know how, not right then, but he knew he had. “I won’t fail with you,” he added a moment later, the details of his prior failure teasing and eluding him. “He’s smart, but he’s not invincible.” He knew this. No. Watson knew it.
Iris was getting more and more concerned at the way this conversation was going. The more distracted she was, the warmer it got, until they were nearly caught in his bright noonday sun the way it should be. She didn’t appear to notice, watching his eyes, frowning. “I don’t want you to get hurt protecting me,” she said, sounding deliberate, earnest. “It will be easier for me to deal with him if you let it be.”
“Us, mamita. Not you. Not me. We deal with it together,” he said, one arm slipping free and shifting higher, wrapping around her shoulders, offering even more warmth and security. “You aren’t dealing with this alone. No importa cuanto peleas.”
She smiled at him. “No. Not you. Sorry.” It was a different kind of sorry, a ‘better luck next time’ kind of apology.
“Yes. Me,” he insisted, though he kissed her hair to soften the harshness of the words.
“You can’t the way I can.” She laughed at him.
“I can,” he insisted. “We can do this all day, mamita,” he insisted, and he cupped her cheeks. “Dejame hacerlo. Why do you want to do this alone?”
Her hand took the back of his knuckles and peeled his palm away so she could give it a small kiss in the center of his hand. “I just told you.”
“But if I refuse to listen, isn’t it better if we do this together?” he asked, trying to logic with her, watching her press the kiss to the center of his hand.
She let him go, and made as if to rise to her feet, careful not to step on her skirts. It was still warm, and smelled of baking soil so close to the ground. “It doesn’t matter if you listen.” It wasn’t a tease, yet it was wistful fondness. “My decision.”
He didn’t stand, completely comfortable to let her tower over him. “Mamita, I get a decision too. I’ve made mine. Acuérdate.”
“You don’t have everything you need to make a decision.” Though she didn’t raise her arms, her fingers ghosted over his jaw, and she turned away in a random direction, shifting with the grass.
“Watson says it’s as much his problem as it is yours,” he said, though he’d be hard-pressed to explain the statement if she demanded an explanation. He reached out for her skirt, let his hand ghost along the soft fabric, and then he slid his palm down to her calf.
She didn’t have any shoes, and she looked back and lifted on heel to give it a little playful shake free. “How do you know what Watson says?” she asked, gently.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, because he didn’t. “I just know.” It wasn’t much to go on, not much at all, actually, but it was all he had. “And then there’s me,” he said, more insistent. He didn’t know, in that moment, how he differentiated from Watson or his waking self, but he knew he wanted to keep her with him, keep her safe.
“Neither of you,” Iris said, firmly. “You take it too much to heart. It’s not the same as here.” And, like a switch flipping, they were back in 206. It looked very odd in the dream, 206 the way Iris dreamed it. The walls were gray, not white; the window was bigger and wider and bluer; the living room smaller. There were no bookshelves, and the carpet was far more lush underfoot. It smelled like brewing coffee, though there was none in sight.
The new location, while not as familiar or as safe as the field of swaying green, was still somewhere Micah felt they belonged. He reached out for her as he climbed to his feet, and he took her hand and pulled her close as he looked around, making sure everything was safe. The coffee smell was comforting, and smelled more him than her, and he loosened his grip. “Here isn’t you,” he said knowingly.
“It’s us,” she admitted, looking the slightest bit guilty for using it as a distraction. “But it’s nice anyway?” The contact and the embrace brought the cold back, and it smelled of air conditioning, though there was none on that floor. She disentangled herself, but gently.
He watched her disentangle herself, and he let his arms fall at his side. “I don’t know what you want,” he admitted.
“I can’t have the things I want,” she said, almost cheerful, in an attempt to reassure. “You worry too much about me.”
“You won’t answer,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
The cheer vanished like quicksilver, as fast as it had come, as much a fabrication as their surroundings. “I want to be like I was before. I want to be able to have who I want and go where I want. I want to feel like I can be safe even if I’m somewhere I’ve never been.” She swallowed, threw him a challenge in the gray eyes, and said, “You asked.”
The challenge, rather than bothering him, made him smile. There she was, he thought, somehow knowing all the cheer wasn’t true, even though he didn’t know the basis for the belief. “We are changing, mamita,” he told her. “I’m not who I was a year ago either. We change.”
She tipped her head. “That is supposed to make me feel better?”
“No,” he said honestly. “Es la verdad, y nadamas.”
She shook her head at him. “You should go home,” she suggested. “We have work.” She looked at the overlarge window, the one that figured so prominently in this apartment.
He knew the window was out of place, though he didn’t know why or how, and he reached a hand out to her. “Ven aqui, and then I’ll go,” he told her.
“Why?” She was uneasy, though she had not been at the beginning, on the beach. It was a strange thing, the way reality edged in and out. Distracted by the advent of the chill again, like ice, she gave a little wave of her hand, frustrated. “See? I can’t do anything about it. I couldn’t a year ago, either.”
He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he reached for her and tugged her to him, wrapping his arms around her like he’d done in the grass earlier, warm and safe.
He was warm, and she was warm, but the room only got colder--until she was gone.