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[notabricklayer]

Morning comes slowly, which is something of a novelty to McCoy - he heads in early, and heads out late, just due to the nature of his work.

The second novelty comes when he wakes up enough to place himself, and there is a warm presence curled up beside him, heavy in the hollow of his shoulder. Memory flares back into existence, and he smiles into the early-morning dark.

He is really not sure how he got to be this lucky. He has no idea why she stayed with him, or even went forward with anything after he over-reacted.

He wonders if she meant what she made him promise.

There's only one way to find out, for certain. Very gently, almost regretfully, he smooths her hair back from her face (so peaceful, so beautiful) and presses a kiss to her brow.

Comments

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He hums, thoughtfully, brushing her hair back, tucking it behind her ear.

"It's a well-honed skill, I'll have you know. People count on my ability to state the obvious, half the time because they're doing their damnedest to ignore it."

Count on, get irritated by, whatever.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She hums, smirks at him, her chin rising just a bit at his touch. She takes a long drag on the cigarette and turns her head slightly to exhale.

"You were right."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Of course I was." He retorts, the drawl purposeful rather than due to stress. "I'm a doctor, after all. It's my job to know these things."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Her eyes narrow, and the hand not holding the cigarette comes up to lay a finger across his lips, her lips twisting in a wry smile.

"Did you want to check my pulse rate again? Hmm?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"You did give me a hell of a scare. Seems I can't ever come in here without acquiring a patient." He sobers, because the list of people that come in here with problems (or who manage to get new problems here) gets longer every time he shows up.

Sometimes he wonders if there's a curse. A 'Dr. McCoy isn't allowed to have down time' curse.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She quirks an eyebrow at him, her hand turning so she can run her knuckle down his jaw.

"So now you're my personal doctor, hmm?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"No." His first loyalty is, has to be, the crew of the starship Enterprise. And as a subset of that, his first priority among the crew is the command crew. Most important of all, his job is to keep Captain Kirk alive, sane, and able to command.

It really doesn't matter what he wants. Not until his tour of duty is done.

"But if I'm here, I'd be mighty displeased if you went to someone else."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She settles back, watching those blue eyes, feeling the tide of loyalty and devotion pouring off him.

"You worry too much, Lyonya. Don't add me to your list."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He smiles, but does not reply. He's fairly sure she'd protest, but she's already on the list. He can't put her as high on that list as he'd want, but... yes. On the list. He's a perfectionist, a detail-obsessed perfectionist. This is, perhaps, why he's gotten to CMO.

Instead, he presses a kiss to her cheek, and shifts to sit up, stretching kinked muscles.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She already knows about the perfectionist part of his personality, and there are bits of her that are aching in the most pleasant way from his attention to detail. Not that she's complaining.

She keeps a hand on him as he moves away, still enjoying the first cigarette of the day.

"What time is it?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

Telekinesis, he decides, would be a great power to have. Then he could grab his tricorder without getting out of bed.

He's fairly sure Spock would have something to say about that reasoning, so it goes on the list of 'things I'm never going to tell the First Officer', a list that gets longer by the day. Shoving that thought aside, he fumbles for the bedside clock.

"Looks like... six hundred hours." He squints at the red numerals, not overly impressed with the technology. "Lazy morning, it seems."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Olga grunts, leaning over to stub out her cigarette before rolling back. She punches her pillow a few times and then snuggles down into the covers, not ready to face the world yet.

"If you wait another hour, hour and a half maybe, I will buy you breakfast."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He slants a sidelong look at her, both amused and, in some not-so-obscure part of him, mildly dismayed. There are rules, learned from his Grandpappy, and he's fairly sure letting her buy breakfast is entirely against them.

He's also sure that if she has her heart set on buying breakfast, he'd be all kinds of a fool to protest. He has noticed that his boxers, and hers, are nowhere to be found.

"I surely have no objections to spending more time here with you." There. That's fair enough, and decidedly true enough.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She's still smirking like the cat who ate the proverbial canary, even though her eyes are closed.

"Such a silver tongued devil you are. No wonder I couldn't resist your charms."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"A regular smooth operator, that's me." He drawls, but she looks comfortable, and honestly, this is going to be one of the few times in the near future he will be able to sleep past the dawn. He feels it's only right to catch up on as much of his sleep debt as possible, and he can only be pleased that she is doing the same.

(She looks much improved over last night, but he suspects another night of downtime would really be necessary for her to catch up entirely - he also knows there's a snowball's chance in hell she'll actually take it)

Following her example, he slides back down under the covers, sighing in contentment as he spoons up behind her. Warmth and the early grey dawn light draw him under again, and he doesn't stir until she does.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She slips back into sleep far more easily than she has in a long time. This time when she wakes, she remembers where she is and who she's with. The sun is higher in the sky, and she finally has to admit, she's awake.

Her hand covers his where it lays flat against her stomach. She turns her head and murmurs. "Shower?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He groggily murmurs something that comes out decidedly unintelligable, and sighs, a long breath of someone who is deeply content where he is, and is dubious of the charms of any other location.

But shower finally adds up with Olga and the combination, he has to admit, is alluring.

"Shower." He agrees, and makes a mental note that after that? Coffee is high up on the list. Mornings aren't meant to be faced without coffee, medical fact.

He is, however, humming 'Oh What a Beautiful Morning' as he works on getting upright again.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Coffee would be wondrous.

She just shakes her head at him, brushing her hair back from her face and giving another languid stretch before sitting up. She doesn't even bother to look for a robe. She just pads over to the side table, looking for some sort of room service menu. Ah, got it.

There's a small pad of paper and a pen, and she scribbles something down, tears off the page, and folds it in two. Her hand slides open a tiny panel on the wall, and pulls out a clear glass cylinder. One little twist, and she's stuffing the note into the cylinder, and putting it back in the wall. Closing the door triggers a little whooshing nose.

That done, she pads off towards the bathroom, giving him an inviting look over her shoulder.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He is not nearly strong enough to refuse an invitation like that. Even if it does take him a few minutes to be completely steady on his feet, and he realizes after trying to stretch it that his left shoulder is turning an impressive shade of purplish black. When he squints down his nose at the injury, he can almost make out the impression of the fist that hit him.

Well damn. Yet another opportunity for Nurse Chapel to scold.

Still, that's for later. For now, there's a beautiful woman who's just gone into that bathroom over there, so that looks like a great place to be. He trails her, all over gooseflesh at the slightly chilly air-conditioned environment.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

The air is already steamy from the hot water pouring down, though she hasn't stepped into the enclosure yet. She turns at the sound of his voice and gets a good look at him in the light.

Her brow furrows immediately.

"What on earth?"

Her hand alights on his shoulder, just above the bruise, turning him so she can get a better look.

"I did not think we had that much fun last night?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"That," He drawls, his voice eminently dry, "Is a gift from one of the patients I left behind in Sickbay. He was aiming for another one of my patients, but my shoulder got in the way. Quite a beauty, isn't it?"

He is very much so reading them all the riot act when he gets back. Again. At volume.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Her hands skim over his skin, and she gives him an arch look.

"Colourful. May I?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He's not sure what she plans on doing, but so far he hasn't had any complaints, so he nods, and shrugs slightly.

"I'm finding there's a fair number of things you may, and quite well too."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

He's learning that her eyes give away the most subtle of her emotions. She narrows her eyes at him, but there's a smile there, too.

Her hand passes over the bruise, and he can feel the skin itch, as if the blood is moving just beneath the surface. She smooths her palm over it again, and again.

"There. Fixed."

The skin is still a little yellow, but dark, ugly blotch has disappeared.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

There's a pause where he wonders if this isn't a trans-culture hitch in the idea of 'kiss and make it better'. Then he realizes it really, truly isn't that sore.

And then, after a moment of twisting to get a good look at it, he realizes that she does actually mean 'fixed' - He would judge that bruise to be a few weeks old, not a few hours.

"Well God-damn." He murmurs, thoughtfully, as he continues to eye his shoulder.

(He'd be lying if he said there wasn't some part of him that immediately cut and run with the implications of this and what could be done on the Starship level, someone who doesn't need instruments or even a partially functioning Sickbay to heal. But she has her own problems. She's not here to fix his. Except, evidently, those having to do with bruised shoulders.)