Title: Hotter Than July
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.
Author's Note: Apologies for the long wait, my muse eloped and left me with many uncertainties. Also, Californiagirl, I will be addressing the Brian issue in the future but probably not in this fic..maybe if I do a sequel or in a totally different story..but thanks for your review as always :)
Reviews: This chapter was tough for me, please let me know what you think. :) Thanks. Oh and of course thanks for all the input after the last chapter :)
Dedication: Many many many thanks to Rowena for her editing. Couldn't have done it without you. :) I appreciate it no end. Also thanks to Natasha for her constant encouragement :)
Under the burning spotlights and the icy, comfortless walls, the image seemed too vivid and so wrong. The slow, creaking turn of wheels was progressive, punishing and tuneful; the heavy metal gliding across the polished, shiny floors as if they were as flawless as the walls of heaven. Bleached blue sheets were pale, perfect pieces of linen, entombing, consoling. Yet they were astoundingly vivid against her pallid, colourless skin, her untroubled ringlets of white hair. But in the eyes, precious traces of life, a thousand memories concealed and shared. Across the uneven plateau of sheets laid the most striking, alien of things: a diffusion of rose petals, clustered and scattered like scarlet clots. Her frail fingers seemed to clutch at them as if they were the only thing ever worth holding on to.
"You're off to cardiology now Mrs Webber."
"Sending me up to the angels so I'll get used to the ride?" Luka smiled. Her breathy, but comical expression was painfully admirable. He was beginning to theorise that the wise old woman was not just an oddity, but indeed, a plentiful and mystifying species. He was reminded of his grandmother and her favourite phrase: "I may be old, but I'm not stupid."
"If I could bring them down, I would, but you need the observation."
"I believe you. Tell my son...to..take care of my garden."
"I'll do that," he said, with an affirmative nod. The mechanised breeze that shut the elevator doors sent a few of the claret petals spinning in the air before landing on the floor. He exhaled sadly before bending down slowly to pick them up, the fresh, rich juices ripe against his fingertips.
"What's with the flowers?" Carter asked with a bemused look on his face, wondering what was going on.
"Unstable angina. She was gardening, trimming her favourite rose bush at the time." It was strange how, in troubled times, the things that a person loved, whether they were mere objects or human beings, should choose to cling to them so perfectly.
"Surgery?" He quizzed, as they walked along slowly. As he had come from the other direction, he had not witnessed the full scene.
"Mrs Webber is eighty-one years old, her angina is caused by her diabetes, the surgery is almost as risky as the condition, I doubt anybody would agree to it. So she's off to cardiology for observation."
"Caught between two evils, that pretty much sucks."
"It does." Luka nodded his agreement as they paced along slowly. "The elderly and the kids are some of the most resilient patients though. They don't complain too much either." Philosophy sometimes went hand in hand with medicine.
"Some guys get all the luck. And if the rumours are true, not just at work."
"Are we having this conversation?" He asked, not sure if he wanted to be having it at all. Slowly, he flicked his fingertips together and sadly deposited the petals into the nearest bin.
"I think we're past the bitchy stage, aren't we?"
Luka allowed himself a slight grin, not quite sure what to say next.
"It's surprising what a few Congolese nights can do."
"I hope it's second time lucky for you guys. Really." There was sincerity both in Carter's tone and on his face.
"So do I," Luka replied, feeling a twinge of optimism race through him. That was brief, but better than nothing, he thought.
"You done for today?" He continued, happy to return the conversation to work-related matters.
"A few more hours," Carter replied, sure that someone or something had been observing with interest. In an oddly synchronised movement, both men turned away from each other and looked behind them.
"Gentlemen. Tell me something. Do I pay you to stand around gossiping like a pair of blue-haired old ladies in the salon?" Romano. Who else? Silence ensued.
"Correct. The answer is no. So go and treat some more patients." After this affirmation, he was off, shot away like a cannonball of enigma.
"It's going to be a long few hours."
The door closed rapidly, with such an empty, mournful thud, he was afraid that the powerful summer breeze had damaged it somehow. The wind was boisterous today, battling with the sun in some kind of natural war and winning, the haze lighter and cooler than it had been in some time. She was sitting there, seemingly engrossed in a magazine, legs sloping, toes clawing at the edge of the table, red toenails dangerously reminiscent of those roses. Finally, Abby responded to the noise, leaning her head back curiously, her hair falling down in whispers of gold and brown.
"Hey," she said, with a smile, pressing her thumb hard between the pages, so as not to lose her place.
"Hi," Luka replied, using just the slightest part of his palm to displace her hair and kiss the back of her neck. He sat down slowly, surveying the scene with an interested eye.
"What? I read." "How was your day?"
"Same as always. You know how it is."
"Any more old ladies lusting after you?" She quickly rejected her magazine for the chance to tease.
"She was not lusting after me! She was just being nice." A few days ago, it did seem that the only old ladies he had been dealing with were not wise or charming, but flat out horny. He was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, trying to remember them as nice old dears.
"Oh come on. Her dying wish was to put her hand on your ass."
"Can you blame her?" He gave as good as he got.
"Maybe not," she replied, peering cheekily over the pages.
"Besides, she wasn't dying, she drank half a bottle of thirty-year-old sherry and convinced herself that it was 1969."
"Well, she wasn't so aware of that at the time."
Luka pressed both his palms into the table, considering getting to his feet, then changing his mind. Somehow his earlier conversation with Carter had lodged itself in the front of his thoughts, begging to be let out into the open.
"I talked with Carter today."
Abby's interest was not piqued, she had already returned to whatever article she was reading. But she could feel his gaze burning through the pages, so she gave up and looked at him intently. "I'm not concerned. Seeing you guys are exclusive members of the Congo club these days." "Forget it, it's ancient history."
Finally, he got to his feet, easing another shirt button open as despite the circulating air, it was still uncomfortably sticky. Thankfully, the water was still cold, he thought, as he watched it rushing to fill his glass.
"And then there were three," Abby said quietly, almost as if it was an afterthought, something she had never meant to articulate, yet nevertheless it trickled from her lips much like the streaming water from the tap.
"Do you still think I'm married to a ghost?" The question was softly spoken, but the pain unmistakable, reminding them both of a harsher conversation in a different lifetime.
Shutting the tap off abruptly, he was glad it had come out as a question. He gripped the base of the glass, his back turned, staring blankly at the wall.
"I didn't exactly say that," she replied, realising that she wasn't doing much to pour water onto the flames.
"Well, you're definitely being cryptic now."
"Luka, I don't want to fight with you about this," Abby asserted, wishing that she had been more tactful in approaching this subject. But she felt that she needed some degree of reassurance and it was better to know now than later, wasn't it?
"Then don't force it out of me." "It's not so easy." Still he could not tear his eyes from the wall, not wanting anyone or anything to read his expression.
"We didn't say it would be. Any of it."
Luka suddenly found his attention drawn to his fingertips, still slightly coloured with the reddish hue of the petals. Was this how his life was always going to be, forever stained by the past? Would he always be somehow tainted by Danijela's beauty, forever marked by the woman he had loved and subsequently buried in the unforgiving, war-disturbed earth? Her legacy to him now was one of smiles, and timeless, beautiful memories, now that considerable time and experience had numbed the indescribable grief significantly. He breathed as if he was taking his final breath and finally turned back, pacing slowly to sit down again.
"There were times that I felt that I was like a ghost too because I didn't feel anything, or I didn't know what to say." "Maybe you were right."
"Hey, we're not trying to score points here," she said lightly, trying to cut the thick tension in the air.
He managed a faint smile, before continuing. "I'm finished with punishing myself for the past and I don't need you to do it either."
"I'm not trying to do that. I just want to make sure that there's nothing between us." "Last time there was too much in the way." "You were right, we had too many people in our relationship." "Both of us," she added, keen to shame the weight of the blame.
"I thought we weren't scoring points," Luka said, with gentle humour.
Abby smiled. "That makes it just about even." She reached out for his hand and took hold of it.
He looked into her eyes for a long moment before he found what he wanted to say, searching for the right words.
"Danijela..she's still with me. But not in the same way. Not because of grief or guilt..but because if I let go completely then I let go of most of the good things about myself. When I was a husband and a father." His voice was thick with emotion.
"There's more to you than just the past, I know that much." Slowly, she kissed his knuckles tenderly.
"I try to only have the good memories now, and they won't get in the way."
"Then don't let go of them." Their eyes locked for an even longer moment, an intense, immovable connection. They shared a delicate kiss, like ribbons of glass, as fragile and intimate as any moment could be, before their heightened emotions were tempered by some kind of normality. The past had to be thrown over the shoulder and dealt with, and it was being dealt with, little by little, piece by piece.
"Have you eaten yet?" Luka asked, not sure if the knot in his stomach was emotion, hunger or a dangerous blend of both.
"No, I thought seeing as you're the master of your own kitchen, you wouldn't mind being the master of mine as well."
He smiled. "I'm flattered, but I don't feel like cooking." "Pizza?"
"If we have pizza that means we have to watch a movie
"No chick flicks though. "A man could only watch Dirty Dancing so many times in one lifetime.
"Relax, American Beauty is on in an hour or so."
The stormy afternoon soon passed into a comfortable evening: pizza, ice-cream and Kevin Spacey's head getting blown off by his neighbour. Very few thoughts had passed through Abby's consciousness in that time. Until she left her bathroom, ready for bed in vest top and shorts, when she found herself leaning speculatively against the door frame to the bedroom. It was more than dark now, the usually red summer sky now ebbing between indigo, jade and coal, intermittent with a touch of silver moon. She watched silently as Luka shrugged off his shirt, after he had opened each button with a painstaking slowness. The very same with his belt, metal and leather slipping between his fingers as if it had all the time in the world. This what it was about, she thought, peeling away all those layers sometimes took time. Whether it was simply clothes or the years of protection that they had both built up to try and evade the hurt.
She crawled into bed, knowing that the cold, untouched sheets would soon be hot with the unrelenting warmth of a summer night, the calm coolness temporary. So was the slight buzz of static as her recently brushed hair crackled against the pillow. He inspected the slight gap in the curtains which allowed in a useless filter of air before joining her, both of them sitting up quietly for a few moments, maybe even minutes.
"Tell me something," Luka said quietly, profoundly.
"What?" Abby asked, resting her cheek against a deliciously muscular shoulder.
"When you're an old lady, you think you'll still want to grab my ass?"
She chuckled. "Now you're just being corny."
He laughed, then asked sleepily, "Don't you mean horny?"
"That can be arranged," she replied, delicately planting a kiss on his chest. But he did not stir, and a quick movement confirmed her immediate suspicions, he was asleep.
Abby then closed her eyes, the only sound daring to tickle across her ears the delicate sounds of their breathing as they lay there, together but divided by the delicate membrane between consciousness and sleep. She listened, to the sound of his slumber and her livid, awakened thoughts, the sound finally willing her to sleep. She did not hear the sound of anything or anybody else, as night's matador silently drew a silky, vivid cape over the day.
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.
Author's Note: Apologies for the long wait, my muse eloped and left me with many uncertainties. Also, Californiagirl, I will be addressing the Brian issue in the future but probably not in this fic..maybe if I do a sequel or in a totally different story..but thanks for your review as always :)
Reviews: This chapter was tough for me, please let me know what you think. :) Thanks. Oh and of course thanks for all the input after the last chapter :)
Dedication: Many many many thanks to Rowena for her editing. Couldn't have done it without you. :) I appreciate it no end. Also thanks to Natasha for her constant encouragement :)
Under the burning spotlights and the icy, comfortless walls, the image seemed too vivid and so wrong. The slow, creaking turn of wheels was progressive, punishing and tuneful; the heavy metal gliding across the polished, shiny floors as if they were as flawless as the walls of heaven. Bleached blue sheets were pale, perfect pieces of linen, entombing, consoling. Yet they were astoundingly vivid against her pallid, colourless skin, her untroubled ringlets of white hair. But in the eyes, precious traces of life, a thousand memories concealed and shared. Across the uneven plateau of sheets laid the most striking, alien of things: a diffusion of rose petals, clustered and scattered like scarlet clots. Her frail fingers seemed to clutch at them as if they were the only thing ever worth holding on to.
"You're off to cardiology now Mrs Webber."
"Sending me up to the angels so I'll get used to the ride?" Luka smiled. Her breathy, but comical expression was painfully admirable. He was beginning to theorise that the wise old woman was not just an oddity, but indeed, a plentiful and mystifying species. He was reminded of his grandmother and her favourite phrase: "I may be old, but I'm not stupid."
"If I could bring them down, I would, but you need the observation."
"I believe you. Tell my son...to..take care of my garden."
"I'll do that," he said, with an affirmative nod. The mechanised breeze that shut the elevator doors sent a few of the claret petals spinning in the air before landing on the floor. He exhaled sadly before bending down slowly to pick them up, the fresh, rich juices ripe against his fingertips.
"What's with the flowers?" Carter asked with a bemused look on his face, wondering what was going on.
"Unstable angina. She was gardening, trimming her favourite rose bush at the time." It was strange how, in troubled times, the things that a person loved, whether they were mere objects or human beings, should choose to cling to them so perfectly.
"Surgery?" He quizzed, as they walked along slowly. As he had come from the other direction, he had not witnessed the full scene.
"Mrs Webber is eighty-one years old, her angina is caused by her diabetes, the surgery is almost as risky as the condition, I doubt anybody would agree to it. So she's off to cardiology for observation."
"Caught between two evils, that pretty much sucks."
"It does." Luka nodded his agreement as they paced along slowly. "The elderly and the kids are some of the most resilient patients though. They don't complain too much either." Philosophy sometimes went hand in hand with medicine.
"Some guys get all the luck. And if the rumours are true, not just at work."
"Are we having this conversation?" He asked, not sure if he wanted to be having it at all. Slowly, he flicked his fingertips together and sadly deposited the petals into the nearest bin.
"I think we're past the bitchy stage, aren't we?"
Luka allowed himself a slight grin, not quite sure what to say next.
"It's surprising what a few Congolese nights can do."
"I hope it's second time lucky for you guys. Really." There was sincerity both in Carter's tone and on his face.
"So do I," Luka replied, feeling a twinge of optimism race through him. That was brief, but better than nothing, he thought.
"You done for today?" He continued, happy to return the conversation to work-related matters.
"A few more hours," Carter replied, sure that someone or something had been observing with interest. In an oddly synchronised movement, both men turned away from each other and looked behind them.
"Gentlemen. Tell me something. Do I pay you to stand around gossiping like a pair of blue-haired old ladies in the salon?" Romano. Who else? Silence ensued.
"Correct. The answer is no. So go and treat some more patients." After this affirmation, he was off, shot away like a cannonball of enigma.
"It's going to be a long few hours."
The door closed rapidly, with such an empty, mournful thud, he was afraid that the powerful summer breeze had damaged it somehow. The wind was boisterous today, battling with the sun in some kind of natural war and winning, the haze lighter and cooler than it had been in some time. She was sitting there, seemingly engrossed in a magazine, legs sloping, toes clawing at the edge of the table, red toenails dangerously reminiscent of those roses. Finally, Abby responded to the noise, leaning her head back curiously, her hair falling down in whispers of gold and brown.
"Hey," she said, with a smile, pressing her thumb hard between the pages, so as not to lose her place.
"Hi," Luka replied, using just the slightest part of his palm to displace her hair and kiss the back of her neck. He sat down slowly, surveying the scene with an interested eye.
"What? I read." "How was your day?"
"Same as always. You know how it is."
"Any more old ladies lusting after you?" She quickly rejected her magazine for the chance to tease.
"She was not lusting after me! She was just being nice." A few days ago, it did seem that the only old ladies he had been dealing with were not wise or charming, but flat out horny. He was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, trying to remember them as nice old dears.
"Oh come on. Her dying wish was to put her hand on your ass."
"Can you blame her?" He gave as good as he got.
"Maybe not," she replied, peering cheekily over the pages.
"Besides, she wasn't dying, she drank half a bottle of thirty-year-old sherry and convinced herself that it was 1969."
"Well, she wasn't so aware of that at the time."
Luka pressed both his palms into the table, considering getting to his feet, then changing his mind. Somehow his earlier conversation with Carter had lodged itself in the front of his thoughts, begging to be let out into the open.
"I talked with Carter today."
Abby's interest was not piqued, she had already returned to whatever article she was reading. But she could feel his gaze burning through the pages, so she gave up and looked at him intently. "I'm not concerned. Seeing you guys are exclusive members of the Congo club these days." "Forget it, it's ancient history."
Finally, he got to his feet, easing another shirt button open as despite the circulating air, it was still uncomfortably sticky. Thankfully, the water was still cold, he thought, as he watched it rushing to fill his glass.
"And then there were three," Abby said quietly, almost as if it was an afterthought, something she had never meant to articulate, yet nevertheless it trickled from her lips much like the streaming water from the tap.
"Do you still think I'm married to a ghost?" The question was softly spoken, but the pain unmistakable, reminding them both of a harsher conversation in a different lifetime.
Shutting the tap off abruptly, he was glad it had come out as a question. He gripped the base of the glass, his back turned, staring blankly at the wall.
"I didn't exactly say that," she replied, realising that she wasn't doing much to pour water onto the flames.
"Well, you're definitely being cryptic now."
"Luka, I don't want to fight with you about this," Abby asserted, wishing that she had been more tactful in approaching this subject. But she felt that she needed some degree of reassurance and it was better to know now than later, wasn't it?
"Then don't force it out of me." "It's not so easy." Still he could not tear his eyes from the wall, not wanting anyone or anything to read his expression.
"We didn't say it would be. Any of it."
Luka suddenly found his attention drawn to his fingertips, still slightly coloured with the reddish hue of the petals. Was this how his life was always going to be, forever stained by the past? Would he always be somehow tainted by Danijela's beauty, forever marked by the woman he had loved and subsequently buried in the unforgiving, war-disturbed earth? Her legacy to him now was one of smiles, and timeless, beautiful memories, now that considerable time and experience had numbed the indescribable grief significantly. He breathed as if he was taking his final breath and finally turned back, pacing slowly to sit down again.
"There were times that I felt that I was like a ghost too because I didn't feel anything, or I didn't know what to say." "Maybe you were right."
"Hey, we're not trying to score points here," she said lightly, trying to cut the thick tension in the air.
He managed a faint smile, before continuing. "I'm finished with punishing myself for the past and I don't need you to do it either."
"I'm not trying to do that. I just want to make sure that there's nothing between us." "Last time there was too much in the way." "You were right, we had too many people in our relationship." "Both of us," she added, keen to shame the weight of the blame.
"I thought we weren't scoring points," Luka said, with gentle humour.
Abby smiled. "That makes it just about even." She reached out for his hand and took hold of it.
He looked into her eyes for a long moment before he found what he wanted to say, searching for the right words.
"Danijela..she's still with me. But not in the same way. Not because of grief or guilt..but because if I let go completely then I let go of most of the good things about myself. When I was a husband and a father." His voice was thick with emotion.
"There's more to you than just the past, I know that much." Slowly, she kissed his knuckles tenderly.
"I try to only have the good memories now, and they won't get in the way."
"Then don't let go of them." Their eyes locked for an even longer moment, an intense, immovable connection. They shared a delicate kiss, like ribbons of glass, as fragile and intimate as any moment could be, before their heightened emotions were tempered by some kind of normality. The past had to be thrown over the shoulder and dealt with, and it was being dealt with, little by little, piece by piece.
"Have you eaten yet?" Luka asked, not sure if the knot in his stomach was emotion, hunger or a dangerous blend of both.
"No, I thought seeing as you're the master of your own kitchen, you wouldn't mind being the master of mine as well."
He smiled. "I'm flattered, but I don't feel like cooking." "Pizza?"
"If we have pizza that means we have to watch a movie
"No chick flicks though. "A man could only watch Dirty Dancing so many times in one lifetime.
"Relax, American Beauty is on in an hour or so."
The stormy afternoon soon passed into a comfortable evening: pizza, ice-cream and Kevin Spacey's head getting blown off by his neighbour. Very few thoughts had passed through Abby's consciousness in that time. Until she left her bathroom, ready for bed in vest top and shorts, when she found herself leaning speculatively against the door frame to the bedroom. It was more than dark now, the usually red summer sky now ebbing between indigo, jade and coal, intermittent with a touch of silver moon. She watched silently as Luka shrugged off his shirt, after he had opened each button with a painstaking slowness. The very same with his belt, metal and leather slipping between his fingers as if it had all the time in the world. This what it was about, she thought, peeling away all those layers sometimes took time. Whether it was simply clothes or the years of protection that they had both built up to try and evade the hurt.
She crawled into bed, knowing that the cold, untouched sheets would soon be hot with the unrelenting warmth of a summer night, the calm coolness temporary. So was the slight buzz of static as her recently brushed hair crackled against the pillow. He inspected the slight gap in the curtains which allowed in a useless filter of air before joining her, both of them sitting up quietly for a few moments, maybe even minutes.
"Tell me something," Luka said quietly, profoundly.
"What?" Abby asked, resting her cheek against a deliciously muscular shoulder.
"When you're an old lady, you think you'll still want to grab my ass?"
She chuckled. "Now you're just being corny."
He laughed, then asked sleepily, "Don't you mean horny?"
"That can be arranged," she replied, delicately planting a kiss on his chest. But he did not stir, and a quick movement confirmed her immediate suspicions, he was asleep.
Abby then closed her eyes, the only sound daring to tickle across her ears the delicate sounds of their breathing as they lay there, together but divided by the delicate membrane between consciousness and sleep. She listened, to the sound of his slumber and her livid, awakened thoughts, the sound finally willing her to sleep. She did not hear the sound of anything or anybody else, as night's matador silently drew a silky, vivid cape over the day.