Micah Callaghan is (apracticalman) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-31 23:54:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | greg lestrade, mycroft holmes |
Who: Micah & Noah
What: Talking to jamming
Where: Micah's apartment at the Willows
When: Recent!
Warnings/Rating: None
Noah was rather in a good mood as he rode the taxi to the Willows. He was only midway into his conversation with the mysterious girl from the party, but he’d faith he could overcome her reluctance. He was nervous, too, of this there was no doubt, but he felt certain their connection from the party was real, and he had no intention of backing off. The entire affair had returned the confidence he’d lost - given the incident with Vivienne the previous week - and now it seemed like a far off memory, as the other memories of bullying in his life did. Therefore, it was a rather cheerful Noah, one dressed in denim and layers of blue and white, that knocked on Micah’s door at eight pm. He had a flute in his pocket, a guitar strung over his shoulder and Mycroft’s favorite umbrella in his grasp. He crossed one foot over the other, the stance entirely Mycroft, and he leaned on the umbrella as he waited for Micah to answer the door and usher him inside the flat.
Micah hadn’t left his flat since the Masquerade, needing time to think, to figure out what in the world had happened at that party. It would have been nice, Micah thought, to be able to simply brush it aside as a one-off occurrence, but the marks left behind made that nearly impossible. He had bandaged them heavily, a swathe of gauze around his upper arm to hide the gouges that saw no inclination to fill in, his shoulder just as bandaged to hide to deep ‘X’ that was carved into his very person. Constant reminders of what he had been, and the questions of why he had been that way filling his head.
Micah glanced up from his keyboard at the sound of the knock on his door. Noah. No one else was to be stopping by, and anyone else he would have likely slammed the door in their face. Grabbing his cane, Micah made his way over to the door, leaning heavily on the wooden stick as he opened it up, arched brows and intense eyes taking in the stance Noah had adopted as he waited. It wasn’t one that he knew, but it was one that the voice in his head was familiar with. “Noah,” Micah said by way of greeting, pulling the door further open and gesturing him in with his free hand. He was dressed for comfort in dark blue athletic pants, his sleeveless shirt doing nothing to hide the bandages for it wasn’t shame he felt in them, just confusion.
Micah had mentioned a sore arm, but Noah hadn’t been expecting bandages and, in his mind, Mycroft was even more surprised. “What happened?” he asked, pushing past Micah and letting the guitar slip off his back and onto the floor, where he leaned it against a wall. The umbrella followed suit, and he immediately reached a hand toward a bandaged arm without thinking, guided by Mycroft’s concern, rather than his own. Noah was not the type of boy to reach out and touch someone and, really, neither was Mycroft, but these were extenuating circumstances. “Was it something at the party?” he asked, because he couldn’t imagine it being otherwise. “Have you been to a doctor?” The questions came rather quickly, all one after the other, and Noah finally went quiet to await responses.
As Noah pushed in, Micah shut the door behind him, blinking in surprise when the boy advanced on him without even pausing. It wasn’t that he was someone who avoided contact with others, but it was unexpected, especially after the events at the party. “No, I haven’t been to the doctor,” he responded, meeting Noah’s gaze for a moment before he pulled away, gesturing him towards the beat up couch that served as the only seating place other than the stool at his keyboard. The apartment was spacious but barren, only a few personal effects here and there to give the white room with brown carpeting any sort of life.
Sitting, Micah sat his cane off to the side, fingers clasping together between his knees, kneading his hands before he forced himself to relax, giving another look back towards Noah. “Yes, it was the party. No doctor, because it was just a curious scar. I’m still trying to figure out what happened. It was a strange evening.” A faint smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, a breath released. “Your own? The party, I mean.”
“Honestly,” was Noah’s response to Micah’s explanation, and it was all Mycroft - the tone, the neat way he rolled his eyes, and the unimpressed little smile that followed the solitary word. Then, in an instant, the boy was back again, and he sat beside Micah and looked over at him. “May I see it?” he asked of the curious scar, and he smiled a moment later, his cheeks going faintly red against pale white. “I met a girl. She was lovely,” he said plainly and he added, with a crinkle of his nose, “but I’m having trouble getting her to agree to give me the time of day now it’s over.”
The look Micah gave him at that ‘honestly’ was a roll of his eyes but it was slightly bemused even as he started to unwind the gauze he had employed to cover the mark left behind on his arm by the stranger with the knife. “Give her some time,” he offered as he worked. “It was an overwhelming evening, and perhaps she just needs a bit of time to digest all that happened. I doubt she’s alone in feeling that way.” The gauze was unwound and put aside, revealing the neat marks on his bicep, the missing chunks of flesh, square and even, neat and tidy in their making. They were healed over, no raw flesh, but white and textured by scar tissue.
“But it wasn’t a bad experience,” Noah began, explaining his encounter with the girl he’d met. “She was delightful. We danced, and she wasn’t afraid of anything, Micah. Can you even imagine it? A life with no fear whatsoever?” It was obvious, given the tone of his voice, that Noah rather couldn’t imagine such a life, but he was still drawn to it like moth to flame. “I might not be the king she expects, and that worries me, but not enough to hide from her.” It was, perhaps, an unusually bold stance for the boy with the dark hair that fell with messy abandon into his eyes, but it was as it was. All further dialog about the girl was halted, however, when he saw the strange marks on Micah’s arm. He reached out a pale, musician’s hand, and he tugged Micah’s arm forward at the elbow. “But these are scars,” he said, obviously and unnecessarily. “Did the injuries themselves happen during the evening?”
Micah was relieved, pleased, that Noah had had a pleasant evening. Whatever had happened to upset him in the days prior was not something he wanted to see happen again. Knowing that the evening had gone well, that he spoke of it with such fondness and life in his voice, it was a good thing. “Just give it time, Noah,” Micah advised, shifting slightly as Noah reached for his arm, offering it to him with little resistance. “She’ll come around soon, I would imagine. If the evening was as you said, there’s no reason that she shouldn’t. All good things take time, I’ve been told.” The smile that had pulled his lips faded as Noah examined the marks, giving a short nod of response.
“They did. This, and another one. I was-” He paused at that, glancing off to the side, feeling self-conscious at what had happened. “I was made of wood, it seems. No blood, just marks left behind.”
Noah’s expression turned determined. Jam sessions forgotten, the little boy left behind tell. “Tell me everything you recall about the assailant, about the evening,” he said in a voice that was too even, too calmly composed to be his own. Oh, it sounded like the hopeful boy with the childish smile, but the tempo was wrong, the tenor. And, certainly, Noah’s voice held no control like this one did, as if the speaker knew he had power to wield. “And, do be thorough.” He was examining the wound, scarred over as it was, cataloguing information about the weapon used and how long it would have likely taken. Certainly, he was not emotion bubbling over, but his lips pulled into a tight and unhappy line. The pretty girl from the evening was, very obviously, pushed aside for this threat.
Even if Micah didn’t recognize who the voice belonged to, the owner of that tone, Lestrade did. It was easy to nod his head in understanding as those musician’s fingers examined his arm, his eyes closing as he let out a sigh, reaching up with his free hand to rub at the bridge of his nose, then his eyes. “We were all in costume, Mycroft,” he said, his voice holding the tiniest bit of exasperation. “I can be as thorough as my reports, but none of us were ourselves that night, and you know that as well as I do. And you might as well know about the other, as well.” He reached up to pull the collar of his shirt down, fingers tugging at the bandage he had laid over the carved letter, giving the other man a long look after the bandage was tossed to the side. “It was dark, I was not myself, and he had a very sharp knife. I think he would have done more had I the ability to bleed that night. What more do you want?” The last words were snapped, teeth clacking together over the last consonant.
“Yes, are you quite done?” Noah asked, even as the too-intelligent eyes took in the details of the new wound. “We were not in costume. We were representations of our deeper selves or, perhaps, or what we wish we were. Either way, it’s dangerous, wouldn’t you say?” he asked, and the question was posed in a way that said he’d already decided on the response, this man controlling Noah’s boyish mouth. “If there is to be a report, yes, I’d like it on my desk come morning. This, coupled with the fact that John Watson was bleeding all over his journal and brother’s rather unusual absence concerns me.” He moved away from the injuries which, after being catalogued, were no longer dangerous. “I’m sure you see the connection points, Detective Inspector. My brother attempted to warn of us a threat.” Here he pressed thoughtful fingers to his lips. Thinking, evidently. “I can’t do anything here, I’m afraid.”
“Representations that I am trying hard not to think too much on, thank you,” Micah replied sharply, and it was uncertain who was speaking there. Letting his collar fall back into place, Micah settled back into the beat up couch, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as though he could rub the stress away with just a moment’s massage. “I’m assuming he’s in Paris, through the door of the group who lives there. What he thinks he’s going to find there, I don’t know. I don’t think there is anything to find, if you ask me. It’s a mess, and one I’m not fond of being involved in.” He glanced over towards the other man, giving him a long look before he simply closed his eyes. “We’ve got enough to deal with, don’t we?”
Noah frowned Mycroft’s frown. “There’s no empirical evidence to suggest we were through the Paris door.” It was no secret that Mycroft had been concerned about Sherlock’s mental state since the incident with Irene Adler, and the situation with Moriarty had only exacerbated it. He sighed, and he rubbed his face. “We’ll need to ensure he isn’t compensating again,” he said, because Lestrade would understand. He’d no idea if Doctor Watson was even alive or dead, and he spent most of his time through the door (a few hours each day) taking care of Her Majesty’s business. This was all inconvenient. “We’ll need to go through,” he said, and it sounded very much like an order, and then Noah was back, all youth and concern and an accompanying frown. “I hate it when he does that.”
It was something he ought to be used to, the Detective Inspector, but the rattling off of bits and pieces of information was enough to have him pursing his lips in an expression that was more than a little exasperated. “Through the Paris door, I assume,” he said, but then it was Noah he was speaking to and Micah lifted his gaze to the ceiling for a moment, reaching over to grab up the ball of gauze that had covered his arm. “Give me a hand, if you don’t mind,” he asked, holding the wad out to Noah.
“Does he do it often? Take over like that with little warning?” Because Lestrade, eager as he was to have voice in conversations, was not one to simply take over, something Micah was quite thankful for. It was one thing to have someone else living in your brain, quite another to lose control to them on a regular basis.
“Not very often,” Noah admitted, taking the gauze, but not moving to do anything with it yet. “He’s not as bad as I thought at the beginning,” he admitted, though he didn’t understand Mycroft any better than he had then. “I think he wants good things, though, and I suppose I rather could have ended up with someone very terrible,” he conceded, because it was true. And, truthfully, after that first visit to the hotel, Mycroft had been tolerable. It was nothing like Cory’s Arthur, for example, and Noah was willing to accept the terse opinions and mental eye-rolling. “You don’t need this,” he said a second later, holding up the gauze. “Those are healed over, and covering them won’t make them go away, you see.”
“There are worse options than him, I suppose. Perhaps we should be grateful for the luck that we didn’t get worse.” Micah, himself, was grateful that the only thing wandering around in his head was the Detective Inspector; it seemed people had some interesting characters wandering around, those that killed and those that were simply bad. There was still a bit of resentment from Lestrade, however, at his reluctance to cross over. It would come in time, he knew, but not yet. Noah’s next words drew his attention once more, sharp blue eyes giving him a long look before he reached out to take the gauze from him. “I’m quite aware that they are healed and not going away. I don’t want to look at them, though. It just makes me think of that night and how I felt. So if you won’t help me I’m quite able to do it myself, just not as easily.”
Noah still held the gauze between his fingers, and he did not hand it over. “A long sleeve shirt, then,” he suggested calmly, thinking it a bad idea to encourage the hiding of scars that were, likely, never leaving. He did not push for additional specifics of the evening in question, though Mycroft wanted details. Noah would leave that to Elias, who was certain to get more out of Micah than he, himself was. It was times like these that he felt quite young, and he didn’t like it at all. Micah and Elias seemed much more capable than he, and it was with a huff that he stood, gauze in hand, and made his way over to his guitar case. Crouching, he opened the case, and he plucked at the strings before pulling the instrument out.
“A long sleeve shirt hides them from the view of others, not from myself,” Micah countered, though it was all the argument he gave when he saw that there was no move to offer the gauze back to him, his jaw set in a tight line. He had to calm himself from lashing out, a deep breath taken in and released, for Noah was not the cause of his anger, and it would not be fair to take it out on him, though it would be hypocritical after his words to the other earlier about nearly the same thing.
Watching Noah take the guitar out of its case, Micah made no move for a moment, seeming to spend a few moments gauging what it was he wanted to do. Finally, he stood, and without aid of the cane, he moved over towards his keyboard set-up, sitting down heavily on the stool moments later, one hand idly rubbing his hip as he spun on the stool to look back towards the other man. “What are you in the mood for?” he asked, his brows lifted and blue eyes wide.
Noah had been half expecting an argument about the gauze, and he was happy when it didn’t come. “Something soothing,” he suggested, picking up the guitar and sliding the strap over his shoulder walking toward the keyboard. He changed his mind halfway across the room, however, and he shook his head as he tucked the pick out from between the strings and strummed. “Something angry.” Yes, perhaps that might work. “We’ll need a fourth,” he said of the band that was, apparently, back on. “Can you find someone?” He strummed once more.
“I found a third, didn’t I?” Micah asked as he turned back towards the keyboard, practised and learned fingers resting against the keys for a long while, touching, changing positions, before finally settling somewhere that seemed to suit what he had in mind. “I’ll ask around. Advertise again, perhaps, and we can see what we’ll find. It would be good to have someone in percussion.” A faint smile pulled at the corner of his lips before he let his fingers move across the keys, producing discordant chords that thrummed and sang, just as Noah had requested. He played with his eyes closed, head bent over the keys slightly, and it was likely the most relaxed anyone would ever see the man any more. “Do tell me if you can’t keep up and I’ll slow it down,” he offered, a joke threaded through the words.
Noah laughed, a happy youthful sound. Despite Mycroft’s concerns about Lestrade, Noah was still high on the lovely, dark-haired girl from the party, and he joined in after a few measures with improvised chords that showcased the fact that, when it was all said and done, he was a truly talented musician - youth notwithstanding. He dropped back onto the ratty couch, foot propped on the arm, and he lost himself in the music. Time enough to worry about Moriarty lately, he thought, youthful and innocent as he was.