Work Text:
When she meets him for the first time, she is standing behind the counter of the small café at the corner and wondering whether she should now spit inconspicuously into the cappuccino of the guest right in front of her. When people mob her on a whim and nag her about the consistency of the cake, she can get really annoyed. And Felicity isn't the type to put up with much. But her boss is standing next to her, giving her a warning look, so she refrains from that little bit of parenting.
The next guest is at least nice. Confident, polite and friendly. Yet he looks as if Michelangelo himself had chiseled him out of a block of marble. Tall, slim, with black curls, a perfectly modulated jaw, a straight nose and expressive eyes with eyelashes like those in a mascara ad. On the other side, next to her, stands her boss: short, bald, beer belly and flat feet. Nature has a strange sense of humor.
The guest wants coffee, black, nothing else. She watches, fascinated, how his Adam's apple is bopping up and down as he swallows. He finishes his drink, hands her the empty cup, smiles, and walks back out the door with a slightly springy gait. Quite cool, this guy.
The second time she sees him, he orders coffee again, again black, types a message into his cell phone and makes a phone call shortly after. He seems confident and relaxed. The boss says he comes in more often. Now she can’t wait to go to work the next day.
The third time she sees him, he offers her a job. He obviously has overheard her asking her boss if he knew of an extra job where she could clean, babysit or feed cats by the hour. Medical school in London is expensive and support from home is scarce. Therefore she has to look after herself. He responded by handing her the empty coffee cup and a piece of paper with his number on it. When she hears the hourly wage, she happily agrees. Okay, not just because of the hourly wage.
When she enters his apartment for the first time, he is not at home. Instead, his girlfriend is there to show her where the cleaning stuff is and what needs to be done in the three-bedroom apartment. The girlfriend is cheerful, nice and pretty as a picture, and Felicity is annoyed to find her likable as well. She can't help but wonder what children of these two beautiful people would look like, and she thinks that good genes are often allocated rather unfairly. The friend, whose name is Sarah, is small and petite with silky black hair and large hazel eyes. She measures probably 5''4 and about 100 pounds. Tops.
Felicity can keep up with small and petite, but her hair is the color of a copper cauldron and, depending on the day, the dimensions of an exploded broom. Her eyes are an undefined mix of blue and green, and when a few extra freckles settle on her skin, she's brown.
She remembers where the vacuum cleaner is, the cleaning rags and the bucket, but primarily she thinks about how she'd really like a coffee right now from that little machine that is placed on the kitchen counter. She has forgotten how often the potted plants need water the same minute she walks back out the door.
Nevertheless, in addition to university and her job at the café, she rides her bike the ten minutes once a week to the old apartment in the middle of Soho, climbs the stairs up to the fourth floor, and really has no idea what she's doing here. Compared to her apartment, that she is sharing with two male fellow students and which is locates in probably the most run-down building in the neighborhood, this apartment is a gem. A sparkling clean jewel.
She vacuums a few lost hairs from her black-haired employers, cleans the bathroom and fluffs the cushions on the couch in the living room. In the bedroom, she folds a few clothes, that are carelessly tossed over the back of an armchair, puts some CDs, DVDs, and books back into the shelf, and blows the dust off the three abstract sculptures the girlfriend has placed in the hallway. Felicity likes the colorful statues, even though she has no idea what they are supposed to represent. Secretly, she calls them Huey, Dewey and Louie. Otherwise, she takes the money that is always put on the counter, along with something to drink, some cookies or cake.
She knows by now that they both work as actors, but they don't make much fuss about their jobs. Every now and then, there are scripts lying around complete with some handwritten notes. But since Felicity doesn't have a TV and almost never spends money on movies, she has no idea what they're actually playing. Out of curiosity, however, she googled them once, and when the first picture that pops up on the results page is his naked torso, wearing only a scythe, she knows she'd better not tell anyone that she's currently cleaning Aidan Turner's house.
At least one of them reads Nick Hornby, another one Stieg Larsson, they own "The good wife" and "The Sopranos" on DVD, and at least one of them likes Nick Cave. Her shower gel smells like coconut, his is kind of spicey with a hint of lemon. She's on birth control pills, and Felicity thinks she'd better not smoke the Gauloises that are lying in the kitchen then. Vascular occlusions in the veins are a bitch. He or she takes magnesium, either for muscle spasms or for better nerves, one seems to have migraines and one of them has hay fever. The refrigerator is full of fruits, vegetables and stuff that says "organic" on it, which she never buys for herself thanks on her tight budget. Besides water, they drink French red wine and Irish whiskey, neither of which goes well with the migraines. There are pencil drawings on the walls, which totally resemble black-and-white photographs, they seem so real. And then there are real photos of happy, laughing people, on which the two of them can sometimes be seen, in a good mood, somehow totally relaxed and very much in love.
She hardly ever sees them in the flesh. Only once Aidan does surprise her, just when she is sinking into the huge plush armchair in the living room and begins to learn the various manifestations of encephalitis. Previously she has declared the apartment clean, the vacuum cleaner still at her feet. She blushes and explains that Billy and Jack are the noisiest roommates in the world and she has to study for a very important exam on Monday. He laughs, waves it off, and says she's welcome to come here to study anytime. He and Sarah are hardly ever here anyway, he says. Then he makes her a coffee from the cute machine, black with just the right amount of crema, asks if he's bothering her, and sits down on the couch with a script in his hand. She watches him chew on his pen, sees his biceps showing under his T-shirt, the veins of his well-trained forearm. Fascinated, she watches his chest expand with each breath, the thorax with its easy-to-see large pectoral muscle, and she's so busy memorizing his anatomy that she completely forgets what she is supposed to know on Monday.
The next time she sees him again, he is yelling to get the hell out of here. She is terrified and about to turn back immediately when she sees Sarah standing in the doorway, her eyes puffy and red. "If I leave now, I won't come back", Sarah says so quietly and sadly that it chokes Felicity's throat. "Go!" he says hoarsely. And once again louder, "Go!" Then he actually watches her as she turns around and leaves the apartment.
"You ass!!" Felicity is yelling too, but only in her mind, "What have you done to her? Just go after her and apologize!" but when she looks at him, she's no longer sure who actually hurt whom.
His face is white as a sheet and he has his hands on the tabletop. He is trying hard to bring his breathing back under control. Dyspnea, she thinks involuntarily. He is breathing too fast, but the air isn’t really reaching his lungs. She sees his carotid artery pulsing, way too fast. Tachycardia because of distress, it flashes through her mind, because she is now almost sleeping between her books during exam period. Then she sees how violently he swallows and how his fingers claw into the tabletop. But she has no idea what "desperate attempt not to cry" means in Latin.
When she returns for the next time, Sarah is gone – and with her everything that made the apartment a home. Even the giant plush armchair is missing. What remains is a bare dwelling with a disorganized chaos of books, CDs and clothes and a deranged resident. Only the coffee machine remains. The refrigerator contains only milk and shriveling apples. Instead, there are empty wine bottles on the kitchen shelf and an ashtray overflowing on the desk.
Without comment, she removes all the traces left behind by lovesickness. She wonders if sometimes you can measure pain in percent alcohol by volume. Journalists who never get tired of pestering him claim to know that he is single again, but that he and Sarah are still good friends. "He's back on the market, ladies," Felicity reads on the Internet, while thinking about the shadow that's haunting his three empty rooms. She doubts the "ladies" would want him with bags under his eyes and a hangover.
She would like to comfort him but doesn't know how an if that is even possible. She would like to give closeness, but he remains distant. She doesn’t dare to get too close, after all she is only a little student who sells coffee and cleans his place. She hasn't even admitted to herself that she would like to be more.
Then suddenly he left. Said he was going to go filming. Now and then he’d be there on weekends, but she should still drop by the apartment sometimes. Felicity empties the mailbox and has nothing else to do. Even the potted plants have moved out with Sarah. Nevertheless, she is always drawn there to study because it is quiet and there is nothing to distract her. But maybe it's also because, despite everything, he is somehow present all the time.
When she studies anatomy, she sees his body with her inner eye. Then she remembers exactly where the trapezius muscle attaches to the back, she can trace oblique and straight abdominal muscles, and she can imagine how the heart muscle with its four chambers contracts in a regular rhythm. What his heartbeat sounds like, she does not know. She knows which internal organs are protected by twelve pairs of ribs, but she refuses picturing herself to trace them with her fingers. In between, she reads what the Internet currently claims to know about him and is honestly appalled by the nonsense that the various media write off from each other. Small harmless remarks that become big revelations, photos that are interpreted for pages, even if they only capture a split second. In between, again and again, there are pictures with fans.
At some point, photos emerge that show him with a woman he is kissing and with whom he is walking down the streets of London smiling and holding hands. The photos are shot with probably the biggest telephoto lens the camera industry has to offer, and with a blatant audacity. Although it gives her a fierce sting to see him with another woman again, it hurts her that he is not even allowed to fall in love in peace. Love is tender, love is sensitive and terribly fragile. Love needs space and intimacy, not the brutal eye of a photographer whose lens penetrates areas that are none of his business.
On a Saturday morning, early at six, when she is entering his apartment bringing a donut and thick books with her, he is there too – asleep on the couch. He's lying on his side, his head at an angle he'll regret later, a black curl dancing on his forehead. His hand is on his cell phone, the TV is flickering, and she wonders how long he's been lying there like that. She looks at the relaxed features, the boyish face, the long eyelashes and the thick brows with the small scar across the right one. She's about to sneak back out when he stirs. "Sarah?"
Oh. Of all the names in the world, she certainly wasn't expecting that one.
"No, sorry, ... actually, it's me."
"Oh, you? Hi..." He rubs his tired face. For a few brief seconds she still sees confusion, then he smiles and it's like the sun just came up.
"Stay there," he says, yawning and stretching his limbs. He gets a second donut, makes coffee and sits with her. They eat breakfast, and he asks her about her studies and what she wants to do with when she’s graduated.
He shakes his head when she says that she wants to become a surgeon and that she scrubs in on surgeries whenever she can. "Everyone has their hobbies," he says a bit amused, stating that he'd rather have a wisdom tooth pulled without anesthesia than watch someone being cut open. Then he reaches out for her book and says, "Show me. I’m going to quiz you." She impresses him with her knowledge, but also with how much there is to learn about the human body and its shortcomings.
He’s laughing when she tells him that even as a teenager she used to cut open bananas with a kitchen knife and sew them back up with her mother's sewing kit. Meanwhile, she and two fellow students practice on plucked chicken, which they then turn into soup or fricassee. He jokingly calls her "a little weirdo". Then he asks her how a pneumothorax has to be diagnosed and treated.
She is at ease and relaxed as she sits here on his couch, learning and laughing, listening and talking. It's a bit like he's her big brother, except that there are some pictures in her head that are anything but brotherly. She wonders what all those fans would be tweeting, facebooking and instagramming if they knew he was sitting here on the sofa with a little student, studying for her exam. She herself knows least of all what to make of it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
She has is just winning against Billy at Jenga for the third time when it happens. You shouldn't play a game that involves a steady hand with a surgeon-to be. The next morning she has to be at the university first, and when she comes to the café later, her boss tells her about it. He's like Facebook on legs and knows his regulars better than any Twitter channel. When he tells her that Aidan was injured the night before in a rampant crowd of fans, he sees how pale she suddenly becomes and knows. He sends her home, knowing full well she's not going home.
She is aware that she's crossing boundaries, but she doesn't bother ringing the bell or knocking. Only when she's already standing in the doorway it does occur to her that maybe the woman he's already kissed once in front of the camera would be with him.
She isn't. He is alone. Lying on the sofa, asleep.
Except for a tightly bandaged wrist, nothing is visible at first glance. At second glance she sees the pale face and the curls still sticky from the blood. Laceration to the back of the head, she thinks. He won't be able to wash his hair for a while. Concussion? Probably. Should he be alone then? She gently shakes his shoulder, watches him struggle back to consciousness. "Hey," she says softly, surprised he's not surprised to see her.
She stays – without many words. He allows it – without many words. She makes tea and soup. She helps him up when the bruises on his spine won't let him lie down. She's there when he vomits between his knees again in the afternoon and wordlessly hands him some pain pills at him when his head is killing him.
He calls it an “incident” and declares himself fine again in an interview only after a week. When she cautiously tries to get to the bottom of the facts, he shrugges it off and laughs it all away. A stupid accident, nothing more. He himself doesn't know why he lost his balance on the stairs of the small Deli. There had been a bit too many people. But nobody wanted that to happen. She could almost believe his smile, even though his eyes, which are usually so bright, are no longer laughing. But his hands, which constantly have to hold on to something to hide their trembling, reveal so much more.
She knows that the fear will eventually catch up with him, because the fear is always faster. He doesn't know it and runs away. First to Dublin to his family. His family is supposed to protect him and shield him from the fear. But even his family can't keep the world at bay. The world that always wants more, that constantly requires bits and pieces of Aidan Turner. Ireland is not far enough, Dublin too small.
Felicity gets the next e-mail from Los Angeles. He is visiting some friends, staying at their farm with lots of dogs and horses, and asks if she could keep looking after his mail, please …? He doesn't tell her how he is doing, but he sends a photo showing him on a horseback, smiling. A horse doesn't want autographs, after all.
After that, Felicity doesn't hear anything for a long time, and even the Internet seems to have grown bored with him and his bare chest. Maybe Los Angeles really is what he needs. Maybe not everyone needs to face their inner demons. Maybe sometimes you do manage to outrun your fear.
Unfortunately, the celebrity business doesn't work that way. Behind every movie, behind every show, there's a massive PR machine, and every tweet and photo that pops up showing the lead actor helps to make it more popular. The production company he works for needs him back now. He needs to make sure the world remembers him and his show. Therefore he has to give interviews, attend press conferences, do photo shoots and show up at certain events. He needs to promote his work so that as many people as possible turn on the TV when he’s flickering across their screen again. Because even when the director calls it a wrap, his job is far from done.
He texts her that he will be back in London three days from now and asks her to stock the fridge a little bit. She’ll find some money in the tea tin. She writes that she is pleased and asks if he is well. He answers that she should not forget about the coffee. Sometimes, she thinks, fear doesn't need to follow you. It simply needs to wait patiently.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
When someone being in Los Angeles says “in three days”, when will he be in London then? Well? Does the clock go forward or backward from west to east? She never really managed calculating time differences, and because she's just had exams again and her colleague in the café has thrown cappuccino and apron at the boss's feet, she has way too much on her mind to think about the details. At some point, she buys what she thinks is important, even though she knows that Aidan probably won't have any use for the family pack of Snickers. For a moment, she considers putting flowers on the table – as a little welcome gift, but she thinks flowers for a man are silly. Besides, she's afraid that flowers really do say more than words, and she doesn't want them to spill the beans. If she can't shut up her excitedly pounding heart, her uncontrollably irrational brain, and the hundred thousand butterflies in her stomach, she at least wants the plants around her to shut up. Instead, she packs another bottle of red wine into the shopping basket. Red wine doesn't talk.
She has probably miscalculated. Didn't calculate three days from west to east correctly, because when she enters the apartment to fill the fridge and clean up the traces from studying, he's already there. She sees the jacket, the shoes and the dropped bag in the hallway and is annoyed that she is late again. Although, she doesn't even get how much too late she is. It's not until she runs into the kitchen and peers behind the counter that she curses her internal clock, that is constantly too slow, and the chaos in her head.
The first thing she registers is his trembling body. Half sitting, half lying in a puddle of brown coffee and red blood, he is shaking as much as if he had spent the night in the refrigerator. Scattered around him are the shards of a cup. Eyes wide, he stares at his injured hand, not really realizing what he's looking at. Shock, Felicity thinks, and it doesn't even take her a millisecond to react. The chaos in her head has given way to a structured to-do list. She wraps his hand in a clean kitchen towel so he doesn't spill blood all over the place, then pulls him up with a strong grip and leads him into the living room to the couch. Just because she's small doesn't mean she should be underestimated.
She pulls the towel apart and looks at the wound, all the while talking soothingly to him. She says silly words like to a screaming baby or a frightened cat because she knows it doesn't matter at all what she says – the calming sound of a human voice will do the trick. The cut is deep, the edges ragged, the skin around it scalded, and gushing blood makes it difficult for her to see. "This is going to need stitches," she states matter-of-factly. "Do you trust me?", she asks. He knows what she means and nods almost imperceptibly. "Good, I'll be right back." But before she rides home with her bike to get her medicine bag, she covers him with a blanket. "Stay put and don't do anything stupid, okay?"
She pedals as fast as she can. When she returns, he's still lying there exactly as she left him, only a shade paler, the towel a shade redder and wetter. She cleans the wound, disinfects it and stitches it up. She doesn't care if it's a chicken or the heel of a hand, what's important is her steady hand and that she puts the layers of skin together properly. When she's done and the hand is wrapped neatly, she pulls the blanket up a little bit more and gets him another sweater because he's still shivering and cold. She wipes up the mess, puts away the groceries, and makes new coffee, but she doesn't ask. She doesn't need to ask, either, because she's long known that the fear has found him again. It has been waiting for him here in his apartment in Soho, sneaky and patient. In front of the coffee machine, of all places. "You need help, Aidan," so she simply states, "You can't do this alone."
He opens his mouth to object, but the only thing she hears is a suppressed sob. He shakes his head, again and again, and finally he tells her to leave. He wants to be alone. She nods, wanting to respect his wish, but when his head drops to the side and his eyes fall shut, she follows her instinct after all. Gently, she strokes his unruly curls, leaving a hint of a kiss on his forehead. She leaves her hand on his cheek. She wants to protect him and stand in front of him, steady and strong, between him and fear. But she knows she's only a runt and the fear will be flashing past her.
Instead, before she leaves, she pulls out her cell phone, scrolls through her contacts and writes a certain number on a piece of paper. "Help with PTSD" she writes on it and carefully presses the note into his uninjured hand. Damned professionalism, she thinks as she pulls the door shut. She would have preferred to lie down with him, just to give the fear her middle finger.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Weeks pass until she sees him again. Weeks in which she hasn’t seen or heard anyhing from him except for a few meaningless text messages. She has kept cleaning his place, but he has never been there. Only a pack of pills lying on the bathroom shelf and the professional business card sticking on the refrigerator next to her handwritten note tell her that he did, in fact, call the number. That's all she knows – and she's careful not to ask.
Then out of the blue he is standing right in front of her, just like that, in the café, where she is still working. He orders coffee, black, and his laugh is no longer just on his lips, but makes his whole face light up. It takes 43 muscles for a person to laugh, and Felicity is sure there are many more when it comes to Aidan Turner. He beams at her, she beams back, he hands her a five pound note and a piece of paper she knows quite well. On the front is the psychologist's phone number, and on the back, in Aidan's sloppy handwriting, "Will you go out with me?"
She knows right away that she wants to answer "tonight at eight," but just at that moment the guy whose cappuccino is just running out of the machine starts complaining again. What's all this flirting about? He's been waiting ages for his coffee.
Their eyes meet and Aidan's eyes sparkle. She sees his left eyebrow twitch a bit, the corners of his mouth twinkling in a diabolical grin, and she is certain that she can make out a barely visible nod. She turns to get the cappuccino and remains standing with her back to the customer just a tiny moment longer than necessary. When she turns back, she smiles the sweetest smile she is able to, hands him his cup and says, "My apologies, Sir. But as a little compensation, there's extra foam for you today."