Title: Hotter Than July
Rating: PG-13, but R later on...
Disclaimer: The ER characters do not belong to me, neither do any products, song lyrics or literary quotations mentioned.
Summary: Warm weather, flirtation and a few lessons to be learned. Luby. Sort of AU, sort of not.
Reviews: As always, I love to know what you think. This is probably the most serious bit so far, so if you think it is out of place and could do with a serious re-write, I might be up to the challenge!! Thanks.
Author's note: Just want to say a quick thank you to everyone over the last week or so who has put up with my nagging insecurities about my writing, you all know who you are. This fic would not survive without you, I am indebted to you all. Oh and apologies if this part seems a little OOC, I was writing in August 2002, helplessly caught in post-World Cup fever. Yes, I'm an incurable soccer nut!!
Endless metres of thick black industrial cable snaked their way through the short grass, they were the veins and arteries carrying buzzes of electricity to the hastily concocted sound system on the lawn. Music pierced the air with a sharp, pure clarity, blending rather elegantly with a thousand tones of speech, laughter and whispers.
"Are you alright?" Mo asked cautiously, though rather loudly, as his huge headphones distorted his outward perceptions of sound. His question was directed at a quiet Abby, who was patiently sitting on his record case, one eye watching him at work as he spun disc after disc; the other concentrating on another scene. Intrigued, he trailed his vision off in the direction of her eyeline to see what was so interesting.
He smiled to himself as he saw what he now believed, after a few experiences, to be a familiar scene in this garden. Luka was surrounded by a swarm of attractive women who were buzzing about like excited schoolgirls. Abby quickly noted that Mo was now seeing what she was, and said rapidly, with a vibrant injection of humour, "Have I just walked into the Miss America pageant by mistake?" Inside, she knew it was just a vague attempt to suppress the effervescence of jealousy that she felt creeping across her with a damning heat, intense even in the gentle shade. Mo pulled his headphones off his ears down to the back of his neck, then replied sincerely.
"They're all front," he said, trying to liven her mood even more.
"Thanks, I can see that." She replied sharply, misunderstanding him.
Mo laughed vigorously, slapped his mixing desk and shook his head.
"No!! What I meant was, it's all a game. A few years ago, you girls woulda probably complained that a guy only wanted to get you into bed. Now it's all the other way around. I mean, look at them, they're like freakin' vultures!" He pointed to accentuate his point, then added slowly, cautiously, "Any guy with half a brain can see through it."
As she conceded that Luka did in fact have more than half a brain, Mo's quest in making her feel better had succeeded. She liked him, he was original, he told things how they were, something invigorating in a world so filled with falsities and staged pieces of rhetoric.
"You wanna play soccer with us later?" He asked because he really felt as if she were drifting, shying away from the eclectic crowd. In all truth, she preferred one on one conversations and furthermore, Mo was distracting her from that whole other wall of intrigue that had been permeating her thoughts recently. Besides, why should she partake when half of the fun was in the effortless watching?
"No, I'm just gonna sit here and be voyeuristic." "What's going to be the secret of your success?"
She expected a little consideration on the question, but often, Mo found himself not needing to deliberate. "I've lived in a lot of places, I go wherever the music takes me, so I know people from all over the world." He paused, as if for effect. "In my team, diversity will equal unity." He slid the last few inches of Coke in his glass into his mouth.
"That's a very refreshing attitude. Most people wouldn't give a shit."
He grinned at her positive analysis. "You live and you learn. You may have only known me for a little while, but you'll quickly learn that I'm not like most people." He enhanced the importance of saying "most people" by making quote marks around his words with his fingers. Abby nodded, agreeing with him entirely.
"I sure as hell don't know any other guy over thirty who owns so many children's board games." She said, brightly, not an ounce of criticism in her voice.
"You're tellin' me that you don't wanna play Twister, huh?" He asked, incredulously. She laughed and he continued. "I like to have fun. It's not rocket science. We're all just kids inside." "In some of us, the child never dies." She nodded thoughtfully, wondering which segments of her childhood were worth hanging onto, worth carrying into her adult life. Considering that everybody was pieced together from shattered fragments of the past, from bursts of energy, influenced by the shadowy demons that had lurked so menacingly, there were far too many people who had known far too much anguish. Becoming clearer on the mellow, meltingly warm horizon was one of those very people, as Luka had finally broken free from the shackles of adoration.
Mo greeted him with a churlish grin." Any requests?"
"I thought you were the only one who chose the songs," he replied, knowing very well that he was dealing with a man who was very possessive about his playlist.
"Oh, I'm bein' gracious, just for today. What's the matter with you, are your fan club gettin' itchy backs?" Abby rolled her eyes, unsure whether to be disgusted or amused.
"Nothing. I'm just here for my pre-match instructions," he replied, with a crafty smile, wondering why Mo had perceived his mood as an unhappy one.
Mo slapped his mixing desk in amusement, this time a little harder, sending an irritating thud to vibrate the air. He mused for a few seconds then spoke.
"OK. Let's get one thing straight: you ain't Alen Boksic. You're not here to score goals. Not that he scores that many these days, that guy seems to spend half the game sitting on his butt. You will be wearing the shirt of Italy, so I want less Thierry Henry, more Francesco Totti. It shouldn't be too hard." After listening, Luka nodded in a somewhat non-committal fashion, knowing inside that he had little energy to pretend he was one of the world's greatest soccer players. He decided to switch to something that required little effort and something that, in his workplace, he was well accustomed to, if not always willing to partake in: idle gossip, the very thing that had drifted effortlessly past his ears for the past half an hour or so.
"Did you hear about Natalya?" Natalya was the international superstar that every party begged for, an almost Olympic Russian athlete.
"That she's having an affair with her coach? Damn, I thought I was the only one who knew about that," Mo said, somewhat disappointed that his information was no longer privileged.
"She wasn't exactly being quiet about it." Luka's tone, however, was not one of admiration.
"The woman has no shame." "See what I mean?" Mo turned quickly to Abby, who was lost in deliberation of her subjects, attempting to reinforce his earlier point, then turned back to explain. "We were just having a conversation about faithless women."
"Maybe she doesn't have anything else to believe in," he replied thoughtfully, and rather sadly, before adding, "Do you want anything?" Mo was the kind of person whose appetite for most things was insatiable. Always showing his selflessness, Mo raised his eyebrows at Abby as if to ask her the very same question. She felt rendered slightly incapable of speech, feeling as if she should not interrupt and instead shook her head lightly. After a quick smile, Mo replied. "Tell Remy to get me some more Coke." Luka nodded, then slowly paced away, sunlight trickling down his back like a tropical rainstorm.
In watching him leave, Abby caught a more than insightful glimpse of the rest of the partygoers. Most of them were already dizzy with the hedonistic rush of food, wine and laughter. Their hands clutched eagerly at bottles, cans and wine glasses the way that a frightened child would hold its mother's hand. Mo, however, was more likely to be experiencing a caffeine high as he had consumed countless litres of Coke. Shifting towards him, still sitting on the case, she met his dark eyes with a questioning gaze. Fuelled by her own experiences with the ever-tempting demon that was alcohol, she gently asked, nodding towards the tumultuous crowd, "How come you're not wasted like the rest of them?" She was surprised that his ongoing frivolity was not substance-aided.
Mo was tempted to give her one of the reasons, that he simply thought it was a little pathetic to rely on synthetic substances to enjoy yourself, or simply to say, "What are you, Sherlock Holmes?" But something in her expression seemed to be begging and pleading for a simple, straight explanation.
"I don't drink because they tell me it doesn't go so well with the AZT." Inside, Mo prepared himself for her eyes to be glazed with pity, with what he called "the poor bastard's dying" look but he saw none of this. Instead, Abby was left dumbfounded, shocked and saddened by the mind-numbing cruelty of the world. How could such vibrancy be overshadowed by such misfortune? The sadness almost seemed palpable in the sticky air, a deathly silence was as powerful and quenching as the dry heat. Mo smiled at her ruefully, then found his words.
"C'mon, don't tell me you've never seen a guy with HIV before." His hand gently levered another record onto the spinning turntable of the world, the stylus slipping sadly into another groove of life as sound once again perforated the misty ozone between them. She did not know what to say, more lost for words than ever before. I'm sorry was no compensation. She knew he did not want or need a bucketful of drowning pity. He smiled a grin as perfect as a rainbow.
"Don't sweat it. We're all just victims of circumstance. From the day our parents got horny til they carry us out in a box." She laughed at his hopeful, hopeless, fateful philosophy, but the relief was short-lived as she felt painstakingly angry with anything and everything. This was not how things were meant to happen. Mo took on board the sorrowful expression on her face.
"Hey, will you do me a favour?" He asked slowly, cautiously, considering that she may have been feeling many differing emotions colliding within her head.
"Sure, " Abby replied, knowing somewhere in her heart that she was the one who had nothing to lose.
"Go plant me a cherry tree," he replied, radiating a smile as he dug deep inside his pocket and then gently placed the dry, cracked cherry stone into her warm hand. The sun darted out from behind a solitary white cloud and a beautiful, blood-warm heat prevailed.
*****
General mayhem descended in the air when the much-awaited contest began. Red, orange, yellow, ochre and twists of an alien vermilion wrapped together in the flamed, plumed sky, wisps of puffy cloud stretched in the heat haze. The diversity that Mo had talked about in his team was evident. Natalya, the adulterous pole-vault champion, was playing extremely well in high heels, taking every opportunity to graze them against the bare shins of her unwitting opponents. Her best facet, though, was her throw-ins, able to decapitate any man, woman, child or beast at twenty paces. Simon, Mo's Swedish friend, who was a peaceful, high-flying accountant, was doing an excellent job as winger, his curl of dizzy blond hair merging along with the not-so traitorous blue and yellow kit of his home country. And then there was Luka. As he moved towards his opponents with the ball, they flooded away in opposite directions as if he was Moses parting the Red Sea. But, with the score tightly poised at 2-2, with the first to three as the winner, he was finally cornered.
The ball was at his feet, his back to the makeshift "goal", his arms being illegally held back by some guy simply known as "Butch". After a good twenty minutes of fierce competition in a still humid, overflowing garden, he was not in the mood to turn and leave Butch for dead. As appealing as it may have been, as Butch's huge, greasy hands felt sticky and frankly unappealing against his hot skin, he was certain he would not have the energy. Why the hell do I get myself in these situations? He wondered, but knew deep inside that he would go home with a smile. OK, he thought, you're wearing the shirt of one of the world's greatest footballing nations, so what would the professionals do? Suddenly, he knew the answer, as his brain, sleeping under the influence of pure adrenaline, shifted up a gear. Deftly, he backheeled the ball through Butch's clammy, sausage-shaped legs, where, as he had predicted, an eager Mo was hungrily awaiting the pass.
"Sweet!" Mo yelled, in acknowledgement of the perfect pass. Without an ounce of hesitation, he skipped past the last defender, the grass bouncing underneath his feet. With little deliberation, he thundered a left-foot shot past the dozing goalkeeper into the imaginary net. Enraptured with delight, as, forfeits aside, he was a sore loser, he yanked the yellow shirt over his head and threw it on the ground, infused with a sense of victory which buzzed in his bones. Yelling his happiness, he ran, the ground flying away beneath his feet. All eyes knew his destination. Flinging both hands into the air, with a final yelp of triumph, he hurled himself, still half-clothed, into the cool azure blue of the unsuspecting pool. As his frame displaced molecules of pure H2O, his skin caressed by the silky-smooth chlorinous water; he was a man more alive than dying.
Rating: PG-13, but R later on...
Disclaimer: The ER characters do not belong to me, neither do any products, song lyrics or literary quotations mentioned.
Summary: Warm weather, flirtation and a few lessons to be learned. Luby. Sort of AU, sort of not.
Reviews: As always, I love to know what you think. This is probably the most serious bit so far, so if you think it is out of place and could do with a serious re-write, I might be up to the challenge!! Thanks.
Author's note: Just want to say a quick thank you to everyone over the last week or so who has put up with my nagging insecurities about my writing, you all know who you are. This fic would not survive without you, I am indebted to you all. Oh and apologies if this part seems a little OOC, I was writing in August 2002, helplessly caught in post-World Cup fever. Yes, I'm an incurable soccer nut!!
Endless metres of thick black industrial cable snaked their way through the short grass, they were the veins and arteries carrying buzzes of electricity to the hastily concocted sound system on the lawn. Music pierced the air with a sharp, pure clarity, blending rather elegantly with a thousand tones of speech, laughter and whispers.
"Are you alright?" Mo asked cautiously, though rather loudly, as his huge headphones distorted his outward perceptions of sound. His question was directed at a quiet Abby, who was patiently sitting on his record case, one eye watching him at work as he spun disc after disc; the other concentrating on another scene. Intrigued, he trailed his vision off in the direction of her eyeline to see what was so interesting.
He smiled to himself as he saw what he now believed, after a few experiences, to be a familiar scene in this garden. Luka was surrounded by a swarm of attractive women who were buzzing about like excited schoolgirls. Abby quickly noted that Mo was now seeing what she was, and said rapidly, with a vibrant injection of humour, "Have I just walked into the Miss America pageant by mistake?" Inside, she knew it was just a vague attempt to suppress the effervescence of jealousy that she felt creeping across her with a damning heat, intense even in the gentle shade. Mo pulled his headphones off his ears down to the back of his neck, then replied sincerely.
"They're all front," he said, trying to liven her mood even more.
"Thanks, I can see that." She replied sharply, misunderstanding him.
Mo laughed vigorously, slapped his mixing desk and shook his head.
"No!! What I meant was, it's all a game. A few years ago, you girls woulda probably complained that a guy only wanted to get you into bed. Now it's all the other way around. I mean, look at them, they're like freakin' vultures!" He pointed to accentuate his point, then added slowly, cautiously, "Any guy with half a brain can see through it."
As she conceded that Luka did in fact have more than half a brain, Mo's quest in making her feel better had succeeded. She liked him, he was original, he told things how they were, something invigorating in a world so filled with falsities and staged pieces of rhetoric.
"You wanna play soccer with us later?" He asked because he really felt as if she were drifting, shying away from the eclectic crowd. In all truth, she preferred one on one conversations and furthermore, Mo was distracting her from that whole other wall of intrigue that had been permeating her thoughts recently. Besides, why should she partake when half of the fun was in the effortless watching?
"No, I'm just gonna sit here and be voyeuristic." "What's going to be the secret of your success?"
She expected a little consideration on the question, but often, Mo found himself not needing to deliberate. "I've lived in a lot of places, I go wherever the music takes me, so I know people from all over the world." He paused, as if for effect. "In my team, diversity will equal unity." He slid the last few inches of Coke in his glass into his mouth.
"That's a very refreshing attitude. Most people wouldn't give a shit."
He grinned at her positive analysis. "You live and you learn. You may have only known me for a little while, but you'll quickly learn that I'm not like most people." He enhanced the importance of saying "most people" by making quote marks around his words with his fingers. Abby nodded, agreeing with him entirely.
"I sure as hell don't know any other guy over thirty who owns so many children's board games." She said, brightly, not an ounce of criticism in her voice.
"You're tellin' me that you don't wanna play Twister, huh?" He asked, incredulously. She laughed and he continued. "I like to have fun. It's not rocket science. We're all just kids inside." "In some of us, the child never dies." She nodded thoughtfully, wondering which segments of her childhood were worth hanging onto, worth carrying into her adult life. Considering that everybody was pieced together from shattered fragments of the past, from bursts of energy, influenced by the shadowy demons that had lurked so menacingly, there were far too many people who had known far too much anguish. Becoming clearer on the mellow, meltingly warm horizon was one of those very people, as Luka had finally broken free from the shackles of adoration.
Mo greeted him with a churlish grin." Any requests?"
"I thought you were the only one who chose the songs," he replied, knowing very well that he was dealing with a man who was very possessive about his playlist.
"Oh, I'm bein' gracious, just for today. What's the matter with you, are your fan club gettin' itchy backs?" Abby rolled her eyes, unsure whether to be disgusted or amused.
"Nothing. I'm just here for my pre-match instructions," he replied, with a crafty smile, wondering why Mo had perceived his mood as an unhappy one.
Mo slapped his mixing desk in amusement, this time a little harder, sending an irritating thud to vibrate the air. He mused for a few seconds then spoke.
"OK. Let's get one thing straight: you ain't Alen Boksic. You're not here to score goals. Not that he scores that many these days, that guy seems to spend half the game sitting on his butt. You will be wearing the shirt of Italy, so I want less Thierry Henry, more Francesco Totti. It shouldn't be too hard." After listening, Luka nodded in a somewhat non-committal fashion, knowing inside that he had little energy to pretend he was one of the world's greatest soccer players. He decided to switch to something that required little effort and something that, in his workplace, he was well accustomed to, if not always willing to partake in: idle gossip, the very thing that had drifted effortlessly past his ears for the past half an hour or so.
"Did you hear about Natalya?" Natalya was the international superstar that every party begged for, an almost Olympic Russian athlete.
"That she's having an affair with her coach? Damn, I thought I was the only one who knew about that," Mo said, somewhat disappointed that his information was no longer privileged.
"She wasn't exactly being quiet about it." Luka's tone, however, was not one of admiration.
"The woman has no shame." "See what I mean?" Mo turned quickly to Abby, who was lost in deliberation of her subjects, attempting to reinforce his earlier point, then turned back to explain. "We were just having a conversation about faithless women."
"Maybe she doesn't have anything else to believe in," he replied thoughtfully, and rather sadly, before adding, "Do you want anything?" Mo was the kind of person whose appetite for most things was insatiable. Always showing his selflessness, Mo raised his eyebrows at Abby as if to ask her the very same question. She felt rendered slightly incapable of speech, feeling as if she should not interrupt and instead shook her head lightly. After a quick smile, Mo replied. "Tell Remy to get me some more Coke." Luka nodded, then slowly paced away, sunlight trickling down his back like a tropical rainstorm.
In watching him leave, Abby caught a more than insightful glimpse of the rest of the partygoers. Most of them were already dizzy with the hedonistic rush of food, wine and laughter. Their hands clutched eagerly at bottles, cans and wine glasses the way that a frightened child would hold its mother's hand. Mo, however, was more likely to be experiencing a caffeine high as he had consumed countless litres of Coke. Shifting towards him, still sitting on the case, she met his dark eyes with a questioning gaze. Fuelled by her own experiences with the ever-tempting demon that was alcohol, she gently asked, nodding towards the tumultuous crowd, "How come you're not wasted like the rest of them?" She was surprised that his ongoing frivolity was not substance-aided.
Mo was tempted to give her one of the reasons, that he simply thought it was a little pathetic to rely on synthetic substances to enjoy yourself, or simply to say, "What are you, Sherlock Holmes?" But something in her expression seemed to be begging and pleading for a simple, straight explanation.
"I don't drink because they tell me it doesn't go so well with the AZT." Inside, Mo prepared himself for her eyes to be glazed with pity, with what he called "the poor bastard's dying" look but he saw none of this. Instead, Abby was left dumbfounded, shocked and saddened by the mind-numbing cruelty of the world. How could such vibrancy be overshadowed by such misfortune? The sadness almost seemed palpable in the sticky air, a deathly silence was as powerful and quenching as the dry heat. Mo smiled at her ruefully, then found his words.
"C'mon, don't tell me you've never seen a guy with HIV before." His hand gently levered another record onto the spinning turntable of the world, the stylus slipping sadly into another groove of life as sound once again perforated the misty ozone between them. She did not know what to say, more lost for words than ever before. I'm sorry was no compensation. She knew he did not want or need a bucketful of drowning pity. He smiled a grin as perfect as a rainbow.
"Don't sweat it. We're all just victims of circumstance. From the day our parents got horny til they carry us out in a box." She laughed at his hopeful, hopeless, fateful philosophy, but the relief was short-lived as she felt painstakingly angry with anything and everything. This was not how things were meant to happen. Mo took on board the sorrowful expression on her face.
"Hey, will you do me a favour?" He asked slowly, cautiously, considering that she may have been feeling many differing emotions colliding within her head.
"Sure, " Abby replied, knowing somewhere in her heart that she was the one who had nothing to lose.
"Go plant me a cherry tree," he replied, radiating a smile as he dug deep inside his pocket and then gently placed the dry, cracked cherry stone into her warm hand. The sun darted out from behind a solitary white cloud and a beautiful, blood-warm heat prevailed.
*****
General mayhem descended in the air when the much-awaited contest began. Red, orange, yellow, ochre and twists of an alien vermilion wrapped together in the flamed, plumed sky, wisps of puffy cloud stretched in the heat haze. The diversity that Mo had talked about in his team was evident. Natalya, the adulterous pole-vault champion, was playing extremely well in high heels, taking every opportunity to graze them against the bare shins of her unwitting opponents. Her best facet, though, was her throw-ins, able to decapitate any man, woman, child or beast at twenty paces. Simon, Mo's Swedish friend, who was a peaceful, high-flying accountant, was doing an excellent job as winger, his curl of dizzy blond hair merging along with the not-so traitorous blue and yellow kit of his home country. And then there was Luka. As he moved towards his opponents with the ball, they flooded away in opposite directions as if he was Moses parting the Red Sea. But, with the score tightly poised at 2-2, with the first to three as the winner, he was finally cornered.
The ball was at his feet, his back to the makeshift "goal", his arms being illegally held back by some guy simply known as "Butch". After a good twenty minutes of fierce competition in a still humid, overflowing garden, he was not in the mood to turn and leave Butch for dead. As appealing as it may have been, as Butch's huge, greasy hands felt sticky and frankly unappealing against his hot skin, he was certain he would not have the energy. Why the hell do I get myself in these situations? He wondered, but knew deep inside that he would go home with a smile. OK, he thought, you're wearing the shirt of one of the world's greatest footballing nations, so what would the professionals do? Suddenly, he knew the answer, as his brain, sleeping under the influence of pure adrenaline, shifted up a gear. Deftly, he backheeled the ball through Butch's clammy, sausage-shaped legs, where, as he had predicted, an eager Mo was hungrily awaiting the pass.
"Sweet!" Mo yelled, in acknowledgement of the perfect pass. Without an ounce of hesitation, he skipped past the last defender, the grass bouncing underneath his feet. With little deliberation, he thundered a left-foot shot past the dozing goalkeeper into the imaginary net. Enraptured with delight, as, forfeits aside, he was a sore loser, he yanked the yellow shirt over his head and threw it on the ground, infused with a sense of victory which buzzed in his bones. Yelling his happiness, he ran, the ground flying away beneath his feet. All eyes knew his destination. Flinging both hands into the air, with a final yelp of triumph, he hurled himself, still half-clothed, into the cool azure blue of the unsuspecting pool. As his frame displaced molecules of pure H2O, his skin caressed by the silky-smooth chlorinous water; he was a man more alive than dying.