notabricklayer | (no subject)

She laughs, a dry sound under her breath, and squeezes his hand, a long steady grip.

(Has it been so long since she's had someone to hold onto?)

"Ask," she repeats, looking up at him again, her expression open, vulnerable.

He returns her hold, the tension he hadn't known he was letting into his shoulders falling away. He was worried - worried that she would bolt, leaving him alone again.

"What do you wish I'd ordered for dinner?" He shies away from more serious topics for the moment.

She leans back, not letting go of his hand.

"There is no good way to answer that question," she says, one eyebrow rising in a way that might remind him of a certain Vulcan. And since he seems to have run out of questions, she'll take the next one.

"What was her name?"

Olga let fear guide her path once, an age and a day ago. Never again.

Once, there was only one 'she' that could be referred to like that. Sure, he had the normal run of girlfriends before marrying, but only she'd done him that kind of damage.

Then there was Nancy.

"Susan." It hadn't been Nancy that hurt him, only the memory of her used against him. "We met in college - I was pre-med, she was in liberal arts. She could never understand why I spent so much time at the hospital, even after my residency was over."

He doesn't regret the time they had together. He does regret they had a daughter - neither of them were ready to be parents, and now he will not get to see her grow up.

She listens, her head tilting just a bit at the revelation. It's not a surprise, she thinks, not as accomplished as he is in bed. Still, a name has power.

"Where is she now?"

"Georgia. She has a graphics art studio there, does work for local businesses." He explains. "Or at least, she did. She doesn't talk to me anymore."

All information gets passed through a lawyer. He hasn't had direct communication with his ex or his daughter for years - he hadn't seen the divorce coming, and she'd gotten a very good lawyer. He hadn't had a chance in hell.

There's a short hum at this. She feels the sense of loss washing over him, and another puzzle piece slots into place. She's beginning to get a true sense of him.

"What a foolish woman," she says. "To let you get away."

She squeezes his hand again, gesturing with her chin to the approaching wait rat.

"I don't know about that." He knows already that he was a horrible husband, and he never got the chance to be a good father. But he goes quiet when the waitrat comes over - he's telling her these things - they aren't things he shares with anyone who comes along.

But supper does smell good.

She's standing by the time the rat arrives with the two big bags of food.

"There's enough here to feed an army," she deadpans, stuffing a hand in her pocket and thumbing through a wad of dirty paper bills, ignoring any objections he might have.

"Here. There'd better be cigarettes in there as well." The rat nods. It knows which side its bread is buttered on. "Spaseba," she murmurs, pressing the bills into its paw.

"Come on. I'm starving."

He snags the bottle off the table - vodka might not be the correct drink for Southern cooking, but there's no call to waste it.

"How exactly am I supposed to shower you with gifts if you keep picking up the tab?" He asks, packing the vodka away into one of the bags and picking them up, ignoring her objections in turn.

She smirks at him over the tops of the bags.

She leans in close and murmurs against his ear. "Get creative."

She pulls back and heads for the stairs, using the time to smoke one last cigarette before they hit the room, glancing back over her shoulder at him, green eyes glittering again.

Oh, a challenge is it? He'll see if he can't rise to that.

The door swings open easily with the key they find in one of the bags, but McCoy stops short of the threshold, staring with wide eyes.

He knows this place. Or one just like it, years ago, before he started taking starship appointments. There was an apartment in San Francisco, two blocks from Starfleet General, that had become something like home over the years he spent there. It was a positively ancient Victorian, retrofitted ten, twenty times since it was made, one of the many period houses still surviving in that eclectic city. The floors creaked on especially cold and foggy mornings, the air conditioning was fairly non-existent in the worst of the summer heat, but it had views that couldn't be beat, and a quirky character and charm no modern high-rise could hope to match.

Olga's eyes go wide, and she whistles, long and low. She walks in, spinning on one heel to take in the details.

"Oh Lyonya. Is this your doing?"

She's prowling a little, looking in all the nooks and crannies, like a small child searching for hidden presents on Christmas morning.

"Not consciously." He admits, ruining a chance to appear super-sneaky with the gift-giving thing. He's still too stunned to be that opportunistic. "The Bar must have found my residence files." Or read his mind, which is a decidedly more unnerving option that he prefers not to think about.

"There should be a hallway to the right - bathroom, bedroom, study, bizarrely drafty linen closet." He goes left, and finds the kitchen he knew would be there, the keys rattling into the bowl that could be the twin of the one he kept on the counter once, years ago.

She disappears down the hallway and comes back a few moments later, her eyebrows high, the corners of her mouth drawn down in that odd little not-smile.

"Impressive."

She joins him in the kitchen, moulding herself behind him, her hands resting on his hips as he unpacks their dinner.

"Makes my place in Istanbul look like even more of a shit hole."

"Hopefully," McCoy notes, sighing happily at the smell of freshly-baked biscuits, "My neighbors and their dogs have not migrated over as well. Victorian-era houses might be well-designed, but they are a little thin on soundproofing."

Meaning McCoy comes by his grumpy honestly, and acquired frequent practice here.

She reaches around him to steal a biscuit, and retreats to check out the view.

"More the pity for them, hmm?" she drawls, sending another look his way.

Tragically, they're still in Milliways, so there's no views of the California coastline, but the mountains in the distance aren't bad at all.

"Well, they won't get to meet you, which is a tragedy for them." His quick glance up, in between setting out the food and figuring out where the utensils have been stashed, is guileless.

She shoves the biscuit in her mouth as she strips off her jacket and throws it on the couch. Her boots follow behind with a thunk, and then she's squatting down in front of the fire place.

It looks like a fireplace, but the there's some sort of unit in the firebox. She peers back at him, chewing for a moment, before asking,

"Did they outlaw fire where you are from?"

"Hmm?" He snags a slice of watermelon for himself before meandering over, honestly appreciating the view.

Not the one out the window.

"Oh, that. You can thank increased safety regulations for that particular gem - in a place as closely packed as San Francisco, it's amazing how quickly real fireplaces can be outlawed with a good campaign slogan and a few scary pictures." There didn't used to be a ban, but a few years before he moved across-country, a fair amount of the Tenderloin had gone up in smoke thanks to an ancient (and, frankly, ill-kept) fireplace. After that, those who defended the charm of a real fire quickly lost out to those who didn't want the same happening in their neighborhood.
"You can still get a fire, it just has an automatic fire suppression system built-in in case it goes longer than you set it for, or the sensors think it's gotten out of control." He spent a long two months wrestling with this machine, trying to make it do better than a candle's worth of flame for longer than ten minutes.

The cursing was very inventive.

She's already down on her hands and knees, poking at the thing. Where Olga comes from, this much metal would be ripped out and sold for scrap in two shakes of a lamb's tail. She mumbles something around the second half of the biscuit, and she's giving as much attention to the screws bolting the thing in place as she is to the controls.

He isn't laughing. Honestly, he isn't. But that's really only because he's very well trained to keep a good poker face in a pinch. He can't quite stop the almost childish glee that lights up his eyes as he watches her combat the thing.

"So, ah... would you like some help there, or should I just leave you two alone?" He asks, unable to help himself. Perhaps he'd be safer back in the ktichen?

It takes her a few moments, but she finishes the biscuit and manages to get something flame-like to appear in the top of the unit. She sits back on her haunches and gives him a mock glare.

"You ever been in Moscow in February, hmm?

"Can't say that ever came up as a choice vacation site." He points out, "They don't let Southern boys up there, blood's too damn thin."

This is also known as 'McCoy doesn't so much approve of Russian Winters'.

"Well, this," she gestures to the pathetic little ornamental flame, "wouldn't keep your coffee liquid, much less keep you warm enough." She gets up again, brushing her hands off on the seat of her trousers. "If it gets cold, I may have to 'fix' it."

Russians have a very different meaning for the word 'fix' in these situations. One hopes the Loompas are understanding about these things.