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[notabricklayer]

The lights of their apartment come up in the way he is used to lights coming on the way he is used to lights coming on - smoothing increasing from dark to light with barely a hitch inbetween. The apartment is the same as before - a naturally quirky Victorian that's slightly stark thanks to the driven surgeon who had made this his home once upon a time.

He always meant to take time off, decorate the place a little more elaborately, set it up to be more of a home than a place to collapse after long shifts. Maybe now's time.

But right now he can do something about these damned boots. Some day he is going to both fund and write a paper outlining the evils of these boots, and he'll stuff it down the throats of every lazy ass on the Starfleet Surgeon General's board.

Comments

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

One hopes he doesn't listen carefully - actual gears grinding would freak him out, just a little. Possibly more than the trick she pulled downstairs. His universe isn't big on robots, yet.

He does get the impression she's thinking about something, though.

"Yes, Olya?" He asks, lazily tracing patterns on the exposed skin under his hand.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She licks her lips, trying to think of just how to phrase the question.

"They always show the cosmonauts, floating around in space. In the capsule, I mean." She's seen footage of the ISS. "Do people fuck like that? In your star ship?"

Olga has never been one to mince words.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

His first reaction, which he successfully keeps to himself, is to laugh. That question, though less crudely phrased, shows up a lot when the young public are invited to ask questions of the Enterprise crew.

The second is to imagine that particular situation with Olga and himself.

It is... a very good image. Sometimes that good imagination is a blessing.

"I'm sure folk do, they just generally don't inform me of the specifics unless they get into trouble of some sort. Forming that sort of personal relationship on board ship tends to get tricky."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She chews on that answer for a moment. And then her brow knits again.

"How many people aboard your ship, anyway?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Four hundred and thirty souls, including yours truly. She's one of the larger classes of starships in the fleet. And the finest, if the chief engineer is correct." McCoy drawls, and while he's sure there's some pencil-pushers in Star Fleet Command who would gladly court-martial him right now for even mentioning that much, he hardly thinks Olga is going to try and take over the ship.

Or that she'd need such simple information to do so.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Her eyebrows rise, even as she frowns.

"That is -- more people than were in the village where I was born. That is a small city's worth."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Well. Four hundred and twenty-five, until the middle of the next month, when we rendezvous with the Lexington." He amends, using actual count rather than crew complement. "We do better than most."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She blinks, grey eyes knowing the reason for the recalculation.

"Is this your usual levels of attrition or are you at war?"

He would cringe to know the rates at which the Light and Dark gnaw at each other.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Most ships of the line lose ten percent of their crew complement within the first three months." His tone is flat, a recitation of details he hates with every fiber of his being. "Ships that patrol the Romulan and Klingon Neutral Zones are more likely to be destroyed entirely. Ships on exploration missions, understandably, tend to be the most lethal."

Olga gets one guess as to what the Enterprise is up to.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

If she couldn't taste his disgust with the words, if she couldn't read the pull of his emotions beneath this words, his ability to reel off those statistics with such a cool demeanour would send a chill down her spine.

But no. He is not Gesar.

He is something entirely different.

She lays her head back on his chest, her fingertips idly stroking the fabric. "So your ship -- is not at war. But others are."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"The Federation is not at war, officially." His voice is dry, unimpressed. "But there are quite a number of species that either don't know, or don't care."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

That gets a dry chuckle.

"Just as we are 'officially' under Truce. And have been for five hundred years. Still, the Opposition moves."

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Suppose it does, darlin'." He is not some super-enlightened being of the future. He grew up on a human-centric planet, and the rest of the universe is a wild adventure. But he also is decidedly against unnecessary violence - regardless of species involved.

And he definitely doesn't understand why there needs to be an Opposition. Surely they've gotten beyond that by now.

Except, apparently, they haven't. Which is a very depressing thought.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She's quite content to rest here on his chest, and he can feel each part of her body giving up its burden of stress. Her thighs, her back, her shoulders. Her neck is the last to go, and a proud neck it is, too.

She's still a bit on the stiff side, but just being here is doing her a world of good, he can tell.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

He doesn't mind being used as a pillow - not at all. He's glad she feels she can relax around him (or on him, whichever).

It also makes him wonder if, perhaps, he could convince her to let him help with that stress, sometimes.

It's a very distracting thought. Intergalactic conflict gets tabled for the time being.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She feels his smirk.

"What are you thinking, Lyonya?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"I'm thinking that you're still too tense." He informs her, matching her earlier bluntness. "There are knots on top of knots, darlin'."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She quirks an eyebrow, shifts just enough that she can peer at him with one eye.

"Don't suppose this place has a bath tub big enough for two?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

Not quite what he had in mind, but it's also a very nice mental image.
"Don't think I ever tried it with two." He muses, cheerfully. "Perhaps two close together."

He shifts a hand up to rub over her shoulder, gently, feeling the muscles underneath. Gently, because the sort of massage that actually does some good shouldn't be unleashed on someone without permission. Not if you don't want to get hit in the face, anyway.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"We should try that. A good long soak and then... mmmph."

There were words. They were nice words. But whatever he's doing makes it very hard to speak, at least with any hope of coherence.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

Oh really? McCoy raises an eyebrow, and decides peremptorily that this requires further experimentation. He's never had any doubt her job is stressful - she was hunting vampires for God's sake.

She'll do better if she can go back relaxed.

So he presses harder, just a bit, pushing at the tenseness she has built up in that shoulder.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

She melts. Well, as much as she can melt, considering she was already pretty melted to begin with.

After a few moments, she holds up a finger.

"If I run back to the bar for oil, could I coax you into a proper rub down?"

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Let's let the rats run. They gave us those handy-dandy tubes for a reason." Then he can get some other things too, and she won't have to go away.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"I like the way you think," she drawls, leaning up to steal a kiss, languid and soft.

[notabricklayer.livejournal.com]

"Mmmm. Now. Hold that thought." She is making it hard to move away, but there's a massage to think about (and he can think of an oiled Olya for a very long time). He does manage to disentangle himself, and heads to the kitchen to hunt up the pad of paper and a pencil.

His handwriting lives down to the stereotype, we're afraid. But he feels it's clear enough in this case. The note is folded and sent off, and he starts gathering other things they'll need... like water. Now, she might be a vodka gal, but water is important.

No, the doctor part never really does switch off. And sometimes he doesn't try.