Chapter Eight
Lion and the Lens

Long after 2200, when Friday's full dark has closed off the windows of her apartment, Abby is seated on her black leather couch, head back and eyes closed, listening to the dulcet notes of Sammy's violin as she practices. She's seated in the black recliner at the left wall by the window, and the remnants of the Great Wall Chinese from the corner litter the coffee table before the couch.

Despite air conditioning having overcome abusive heat, the weather's not her problem this time. She empathizes with her friend; this evening they spoke of it over dinner without finding a resolution. Coming on an old crime scene last night and the corpse she'd work on had not been her idea of a date, especially when faced with Bill's reaction to the decades old corpse. It's one thing to know your girlfriend cuts up bodies to find out what killed them, quite another to be introduced to said corpse when they were supposed to be out at a special event.

She'd heard a great deal from Sammy about the autopsy, in the faith Ducky had shown in his Assistants in leaving them to solo while he stood back and observed, not having to place more than a few work related comments. Abby is sure his non-work related commentary had been formidable, but now she needs to unwind.

When she'd found no relief or inspiration on how to put things back into sanity with her love, she'd pulled out her violin to soothe her nerves, not knowing the effect it'd had on the scientist's.

x

The doctor's musical selections are never her first choice. The fare of the Washington Renaissance Orchestra is normally Classical, while Abby's tastes run to Classic Rock on the rarest of occasions. She's normally cutting edge. Groups such as 'Brain Matter' and 'Artful Dead' and 'Zombie Psychosis', to say nothing of 'Whipped and Whapped' or 'Crawl from the Grave', get her creative juices flowing, but she enjoys Sammy's skill. The sound is usually soothing and relaxation is what she needs tonight.

Since inviting the Apprentice M.E. to move in on what had been intended to be a short interval while her friend searched for a new apartment, a search that'd gradually slowed to a mutually unnoticed halt, she's come to see the appeal of a new (old) type of music.

What Sammy's playing tonight isn't her usual fare either. It'd started with 'Only You' from 'Starlight Express' before she'd moved on to 'Love Changes Everything' from 'Aspects of Love', both Andrew Lloyd Webber hits. The man does know Love Music. Next she'd slipped into 'A Time For Us', the Love Theme from 'Romeo and Juliette', followed immediately by 'Somewhere'. Abby wonders if her friend is even aware that, since meeting a certain artist, her selection of practice music, when she's not assigned a particular work for rehearsal, is more than 90% Love Songs.

She's happy for the spritely imp, but when 'Blue Skies of Hawaii Smile on this our Wedding Day' fades and Sammy begins Mendelsson's 'Wedding March'; traditionally played as the Bride and Groom leave the ceremony, she decides it's time to rein it in.

x

But the reins are pulled by raps on wood. Sammy stops and she and Abby exchange a surprised glance. Not only doesn't percussion belong to this piece, but after 2200 neither of them expects company.

"What, can no one sleep tonight?" Abby asks.

Sammy shrugs, two quick high notes punctuating the gesture.

Abby's off the couch even as Sammy restores her instrument to its molded case. "Who's there?" she calls as she crosses the room diagonally to the corner door.

"It's me, Michelle Palmer," filters through the wood.

Abby glances back at her roommate, who shrugs and offers a grin. She opens the door. "Hey, Lion." She's taken to calling her friend that because of her mane of black hair.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't sure you'd even be up until I heard Sammy playing. That was very nice, by the way," she says past her hostess as she enters. Since Abby's barefoot - both her hostesses are in fact – the Scientist doesn't tower over her as she normally does and since she's in flats she's not that much taller than Sammy.

"Thanks."

"Brings back my Honeymoon." She and Jimmy had gone to the big island.

"Michelle."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to bother you, but... may I speak to you for a minute?"

Abby closes the door, not wanting to throw her guest out onto the street but "You came all this way from Georgetown - without calling B.T.W. - to ask if you could 'speak for a minute'?"

Actually she'd come from the Navy Yard after Tim dropped her off at her car. Had she gone home it really would have been too late. She looks around the living room, discomfort preventing her from meeting their eyes until she finally forces herself to lock - lock - on Abby's. "I have to tell you something. I was waiting for the right time, and since it hasn't come I decided to make it." And if Meredith Brody can guess it by looking at her face, she'd better lift the veil of secrecy before there's no point in keeping it.

Sammy crosses the room to join them but says nothing.

"You mean about what happened to you on the Princess?" Abby asks. Ever since Michelle had fainted as the climax of a dramatic seizure and desperate calls to her Goddess, and then spent the rest of the cruise joined at the hip to the ship's Nurse, Abby had been worried sick and frustrated by the woman's steadfast refusals to explain anything. "The thing you've been tighter than an Aldeberan shell mouth over for a week?"

"I'm sorry about that. I had a lot to think about."

"Okay." She hadn't been mad. Anxious but not mad. Scared but not mad. Worried sick, but not mad. "I'm just glad to see you're not so down anymore. You're a lot more cheerful, in fact, ever since that night." She considers the point. "But before we go on I want to know one thing."

"What's that?"

Hands slam to her hips and she demands with faux severity "Who are you and what've you done with Michelle Palmer?"

x

She laughs. "I guess I deserve that. I've been going through quite a few changes lately."

"You? Ohh, noooooo."

"That's why I came. I wanted to tell you now."

"Where Michelle Palmer is?" Sammy quips.

"She's here," she answers, patting her chest. But then her smile morphs into a much wider grin when she pats herself very low on her abdomen. "She's just not alone anymore."

Sammy shrieks first, her pitch is higher than Abby's but Michelle's is highest of all. She'd been holding it in for far too long.

xxx

Tim McGee unlocks his apartment door, his thoughts on his bed and he's not sure if he's going to stay awake long enough to get that far. He knows the boss has had this case for two decades but he doesn't want to spend a twenty year shift in solving it. But as soon as the door opens he finds the living room to his right and enclosed kitchen to his left are both dark, which doesn't bode well for a Friday late evening. Night. By his watch it's 2248 but after driving 400 miles to interview far too few people, drop off his passengers and then sojourn back north to Silver Spring, he had hoped not to walk into an empty apartment. Okay, Shav's schedule, since she's one of only two priests in a Church servicing over 900 souls, is as irregular and unpredictable as his own. He hadn't called ahead, he'd just hoped – expected – that she'd be home.

When he clears the short corridor and can see the rest of the living room stretched to his right his spirit revives with the dim light shining through the frame of the bedroom door past his writing desk.

He passes the tall shelves of his record collection, passes his typewriter desk, turns right and opens the door.

Siobhan, dressed in her pink negligee and small matching panties, lays on the sheet in the middle of their king size bed, half seated up upon three of the four pillows between both night table lamps on and with a white paperback book in her hands.

"Hoigh, a chéadsearc!" she exclaims, characteristic delight in her greeting.

"Hi, sweetie." She'd called him 'cayd shark', her first and only love, always flattering. "What are you reading?" He reads the colorful book cover, "'Galactic Patrol' by ee 'doc' smith, 'The Famous Lensman Series'." He recalls she'd bought the set of books at the Memorial Day Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention at the Maritz two months ago and they'd joined the volumes that already crowd her tall corner bookcase out in the living room.

"Umm huummm. I'm at the part where Kimball Kinnison has received his Release and everyone's cheering as he's heading for his Speedster."

x

He has no idea what she's talking about, but since she's laying as much on his side of the bed as her own, he steps around and squeezes in beside her, she on his right, and he's up high enough that he can see the page. The book is in mint condition, spine unbent.

"He's about to meet with a Shipping Magnate and the Base Commander on Radelix to outline his plan for assaulting a Pirate ship."

The fact that he can see none of that on the pages makes him ask "How many times have you read this book?"

"Hm? Oh, this is my first."

'Okay, she's playing literal.' He knows she doesn't read backwards, unlike Sarah who reads the end of a mystery to see who did the deed before she starts. Mystery books to his sister are like old episodes of 'Columbo'. "Okay, how many times have you read the story?"

She shrugs. "Fourteen," she answers vaguely. "Give or take." She catches his eye. "I've loved the Lensman series since I was a girl. Especially Worsel."

He doesn't know what a Worsel is other than perhaps a Scots game and she's in no hurry to enlighten him. He suspects half her fun is in referring to things he has absolutely no clue about. He props his head on his hand, but his eyes don't go to the book she's returned her attention to. The negligee is sheer enough to tint rather than obscure and his position is perfect.

A few moments later he reaches for her left clavicle and with one finger he lightly traces a line down from shoulder and up the rise to find and tickle a very sensitive spot.

x

"What are you doing?" she asks, her breath quickening, emerald eyes still on the book but she sounds like she's having difficulty following the narrative. Under his circling finger her nipple firms to tent the pink wisp.

"Tuning in your positronic control."

She giggles, but then tries more determinedly to read as she tells him "Positronic brains are Asimov," she breathes, "and unlike you I do not have my brain in my breast."

"My brain's not in it but it's definitely on it." He gives her nipple a gentle pinch and is happy with her quick breath and to see her shiver from hair to toes.

"I was right at the Maritz," she tells him, staring intently at the pages. He wonders if she sees them. "I married a Satyr."

"No, a satire."

She giggles again but then holds the book firmly in both hands and demonstrably locks her attention on it. Since the scene she'd mentioned having passed is on the lower right page, she's still not reaching the event she'd predicted.

She turns the page however, and he stops teasing her nipple, which quite definitely resembles a rocket ready to launch.

He reaches across her chest to tease her right nipple. "You are blocking my view."

She doesn't sound like she minds. "Do you care?"

"It's a very–" She gasps as he runs his finger very quickly back and forth across her firming nipple. "Thrilling scene," she sighs.

x

He sits up beside her and shifts his body lower until he's sitting beside her hips, her long legs before him and he reaches below the diaphanous hem, his fingertips teasing her warm inner thigh. Her breath quickens and after a few moments her legs drift slightly apart as he traces up under the edge of her garment. The tinting panties are, if anything, sheerer and don't even suggest hiding anything. Her muscles twitch under his gentle touch. The diaphanous material is already moist. He tickles her most sensitive spot.

"What are you doing now?" she asks, breathing harder, staring intently at the page but sounding quite thoroughly distracted. He tickles faster and her deep breaths answer.

"Activating your warp nacelles."

x

This time her laughter is so full the book falls off the bed and bounces quietly on the carpet. But then her laugh is split in half and she grasps his wrist and glares at him, half seated up. "Wait a second. Are you calling my legs warped?"

"Errr, no." Releasing him, she lays back, braces her hands on the mattress, brings her legs up fast, shifts her hips left and her legs come down before and behind him. She locks her ankles and squeezes. "Ng hrrr."

"I'll show you warped." A sharp right twist of her body slams his backward across the mattress. She pulls her trapped leg out and an instant later she straddles his hips and has a double fistful of his shirt. She silences him with her lips.

Tim knows nothing about Lenses or Worsels, but her engine is very definitely purring.