simon_doctor | (no subject)

Kaylee's cleaning up from dinner. It's necessary work, and she doesn't mind doing it alone.

The apartment is near-silent. Kaylee takes her time -- it won't do to make too much noise.

After a while, she dries her hands, and wanders into the living room to sit on the couch. She could plug in headphones, watch something; she doesn't much feel like doing anything except staring off into space.

There's a footfall in the doorway.

"Ai ren? Are you busy?"

Kaylee half-sits up. Shakes her head.

"I, ah." For some reason there's a slightly sheepish edge to his smile. "I was wondering if you could help me with this?"

Kaylee looks blank.

She sits up the rest of the way. "Are we rememberin' who I am, Simon?"

His smile gets a bit crooked, but widens at the same time. "It's funny you should say that."

He holds up his datareader, with its screen displaying the first of several lists. "This is what I have to memorize for the upcoming exam, and at first I was just hoping to ask you if you'd drill me on it...."

"...And..."

"...And then I realized, and I really should have realized earlier, that you might be interested in this in its own right."

By this time he's approached the couch, and leans on its arm lightly.

"You ever gonna get around to tellin' me what the hell this is?"

Simon holds out the datareader to her.

(Who Kaylee is is this: she's the mechanical genius.)

"The specs on the diagnostic imager."

Kaylee takes it from him. Tilts her head. Brushes her fingers across the pad, spinning the plan, zooming in, zooming out.

After a moment: "Simon?" She reaches behind her for a takeout menu left on the end table.

"...Yes?"

Kaylee puts the datapad safe on her lap.

She balls up the menu.

She throws it at his head.

He ducks away and throws up a hand instinctively, but not quickly enough to keep the balled-up paper from bouncing off his temple.

"-- What?"

"Aside from the part where yeah, I'm interested -- "

Kaylee's arms are folded.

She's grinning.

"Ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, you might need somebody to fix the thing one day?"

"Well -- I'm supposed to be learning to fix it, but ... "

The grin's reassuring; his smile's starting to come back.

"So does this mean you'll help me review?"

"...depends on what the content is." Kaylee turns her attention back to the datapad. "I mean -- if it's ways to fix it, you might want to ask somebody don't like to take a lot of shortcuts like me. Unless they're okay with that kind of thing."

"This one's just a list of the parts and their names," he says, "and the order they go together. It's not that different from memorizing anatomy," he adds thoughtfully.

"Is that what they told you?"

Kaylee's shaking her head. "I mean, I get why they'd say that to a crowd of doctors, but there's a lot less guesswork and med adjustment to what I do. And how this thing's gonna work. If you got to think of it like anything, think of it like it's an animal. I mean -- at least humans can talk back to you, right? Let you know what it feels like?"

He glances at her, a little startled.

(No one told him this; it was a similarity he noticed himself, how learning the names of the parts has to come before anything else.)

"Usually, yes, but -- we're not up to that yet. This is just learning what all the parts are, before we can start talking about how they work together as a whole."

"And humans ain't machines." Her voice is gentle. Her expression is very, very definite.

Almost stubborn.

"But fine. We'll do it their way. And then when you don't have to worry about learnin' it their way... I can teach you the smart way?"

(That's a lot more tentative.)

He looks at her for another half-second, and then his gaze drops -- but he's smiling, deep and fond and pleased.

"I think I'd like that."

It's not that far off from what he and River used to do.

"Ought to have me in there teachin' it." Kaylee shakes her head, and pulls up her feet to make room. "Come on, handsome, we ain't got all night if you want to be in bed at a decent hour."

He sits down in the spot vacated, half-turning to put his back to the couch's arm and face her directly.

"All right," he says, and takes a breath; there's a wholly unconscious light in his eyes, an eagerness for the challenge. "Ask me the first one."

Kaylee balances the datapad on her knees.

She's never quite seen him like this; it's -- and she'll admit it -- extremely attractive.

(That's for later.)

"Parts in order, startin' with the basal lens and goin' to the end product, for how the image gets projected up on top of the patient."