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[notabricklayer]

It's late afternoon and warm up in the hayloft, the sounds of the animals below muffled to almost indistinction, dust-motes dancing in the ambient light.

It would be a fantastic place for a nap.

It is an even better place to one space-faring doctor to re-make the close acquaintance of a beguiling woman he met in a bar.

Or at least, that's how it would read if it were a romance novel.

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[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He swallows, and looks away. He's never claimed he's dealt well with death, and with the way he fights it, he probably never well.

"I'll hold you to that."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

The moment he looks away, her voice echoes across his thoughts, as if she could reach out and pull him back to her.

Lyonya.

She has to push down a wave of righteous anger, and maybe he can feel the heat of that as well. She tries to keep it out of her voice, and maybe she succeeds.

"It's far more likely that I will lose you -- long before you lose me."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He looks back, a bit hangdog, but also a touch...

Well.

This is something he cannot change. He couldn't for the family he once had. He can't now.

"I'm sorry, Olga. This is... I can't not. It is what I am." He has been fighting death so long, and so hard, it's become personal.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"And this is what I am," she counters, her tone still fierce. There are things far worse than death, in her experience. And she faces them, grinds them back into the dust, binds them in the palm of her hand and sends them back into the abyss.

"Don't waste your time worrying about me." Her tone gentles somewhat. "And if you need to worry, then, know that I was born to a mother just as you were."

That she can walk between the rain drops (and bullets) is completely incidental to that fact.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He lays his hand, palm up, on the table. An apology, perhaps, for the future, some future time that she'll be hurt and he'll be nearly out of his mind.

"Well. We certainly are the pair, aren't we?"

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She looks at his hand, still simmering with indignation. I'd find it hard to be casual.

"I don't know what we are," she says, the same air of cool diffidence returning. Perhaps he recognises it for the truth it hides, the way she uses it to shield herself from other wounds, these more deep and slower to heal than anything that could happen to her physical body.

Eventually, she does lay her fingers across his, just a light touch. Her eyes fall to where they're touching, and her voice is soft, tinged with sorrow.

"I won't be caged again. Not for you or any man."

If that's what he wants from her, then they will both be disappointed.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"I couldn't cage you, darlin'." It's honest, and sad. Not for himself - for her. How could caring and worry be so easily translated into something confining?

His marriage ended because she said he didn't worry enough about her. Didn't care enough. He feels it would be the height of irony if now, at the start of something beautiful, he cares too much.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She meets his gaze, myriad emotions warring behind her dark eyes.

"What I do -- I won't lie to you, it is dangerous. But it is necessary. And it is as much who I am as your calling."

Her hand alights on his palm, her fingers interlacing with his.

"And this," she breathes, letting the warmth of his hand penetrate her skin. "This is -- unexpected."

To say the least.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"You don't have to stop for me. Not any more than you could expect me to transfer to a safe posting, like Starfleet General, or be home for dinner at five every night." This he understands, unfair rules where none could possibly be accepted.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"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.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

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."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"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.