night shift.

Lukas

Getting in a pissing match with the scrub nurse mid-procedure has its hazards. Lukas knows this, of course, but that's when his head is cool and his mind is strategic. When he can't even remember the last time he got six, let alone eight hours of sleep; when he can't remember the last time he had dinner that didn't come from a box, a can, a microwave or a cafeteria; when he can barely remember the last time he saw the light of day not through a glass - it gets proportionately harder to remember why he shouldn't snap at Gretchen and tell her to crank that Ligasure up to three, damn it, or do you like watching the patient bleed?

And now he's paying for it. This week, quite by coincidence of course, Lukas has managed to get assigned three on-call nights almost consecutively, and every single one of them has managed to hit that terrible nomansland between hectic and dull. There's never enough going on that adrenaline keeps him from feeling tired. There's never not-enough going on that he could just sneak off for a quick shut-eye. So now it's one, almost two in the morning, and six am seems so far away, and the CT ward is quiet except for the chatter of the night-nurses and the humming-beeping of the equipment. All quiet on the western front, so

Lukas ducks out for some coffee. He's across the street from New York Presbyterian, sitting in a tiny little hole in the wall cafe frequented by residents and students and beat cops in the area. This ain't no Starbucks. Coffee is one dollar a cup, two bucks with endless refills. There are some greasy breakfast foods on the menu, but he doesn't want anything. He did get a donut; even that feels like too much right now. So for the most part, Lukas - unmistakably affiliated with the hospital with his scrubs and his sixteen-hour beard growth and those rings under his eyes - sips his coffee. Stares blankly out the window. Waits for his pager to go off again.

Danicka

When the door opens, the air in the room changes. Charges. It isn't the inward rush of chilly air from the street, as though the very wind is tired of the cold and wants to escape. It isn't even the way the woman is dressed, which is out of place no matter where she might be. The door opens, and the bell overhead rings -- the drunk in the booth at the end grumbles, gives a muffled groan of protest at the disruptive, jangling sound -- and the room changes. Things that a moment ago did not matter at all now seem balanced on the head of a pin. Decisions are crisper, sharper, more polarized: down this path glory, down that path, despair, the middle ground no wider than your hand.

A few people -- of the few that are there to begin with -- shiver. A couple of others glance up and quickly down again, pretend they never noticed. The poor college student working the late shift here on top of a full course load runs through escape routes, exit strategies, emergency backup plans, in his head. This isn't a cool enough dive in a rural enough city that he's a grizzled old S.O.B. with a sawed-off under the counter. The kid has a paper due tomorrow at three and if he can just get through two more hours here, maybe a two-hour nap, he can get it done. At least turned in. He can't understand why his stress level, his feeling like this is going to be one of those nights he talks to a police sketch artist, just ratcheted up so high.

The woman who walks in does not, on the surface, look particularly threatening, nor unhinged. Nothing about her rakes its nails across one's lizard brain, striking sparks off of the purest instincts geared toward survival. One begins at her feet:

Black heels, though they aren't particularly high. Two inches, maybe. Sedate enough to commute in without having to switch to sneakers, stylish enough to make a statement in their simplicity. That statement is Class. It is also: Nothing to Prove, At Least Not To You. Her suit -- because she is wearing a suit -- is also black, but darker, so deep you can almost feel it under your fingers just by looking at it. Velvet, one thinks of the color, but it's a wool/silk blend, and far too light for this season. The slacks are tailored to sit low on her hips and give her lower half a shape that is not 'box'. They are not too crisply pressed, not freshly pressed either. The jacket skims her frame, tailored at the shoulders and the waist. One button, just a little bit over her navel, and two very acute triangles -- perhaps thirty degrees, for the trigonometrically minded -- of bare flesh above and below that button, because

there is no blouse underneath. From the depth of that upper triangle, no underwired undergarments, either.

Her hair is blonde, more gold than wheat, and drops in a relaxed fashion over her shoulders. Her eyes are green, particularly vivid in this light. One hand in in her pocket. She wears no coat, no visible jewelry, carries no purse. Something about her positively screams 212, but if that were the case, she'd at least have a new Michael Kors clutch, wouldn't you think? Gunmetal leather, a bright blazing emblem on the front with the designer's initials that doubles the item's weight. But no: nothing like that.

Entering, she glances around, and the place is mostly empty. It will grow emptier the longer she stays here. One of the more imaginative minds in the place is thinking she's some kind of super undercover agent who is going to announce to them any second that the city is under attack by aliens only she's actually going to betray the President or something or probably show up and (surprise!) shoot the hero's love interest. In the back.

It's a way for the human brain to cope.

After that glance around, almost perfunctorily done, she walks to the empty booth next to the one Lukas is hunched over in. Sits on the opposite side, facing him. A table, a bench, another bench, and another table separate them. It doesn't smell very good in here.

Seated, she does eventually order -- sausage, toast, waffle, coffee -- and then leans back in her booth, into the cracked vinyl upholstery, and

stares at him.

Lukas

The door opens, and heads turn. It's not because she is, plainly put, beautiful. And classy, and probably rich, and probably a bit of a tiger in bed. It's not even because she's dressed like downtown, like finance and investment, and she's all the way up on 168th at two in the morning. Out here everyone's either an impoverished local, a semi-impoverished student, or a physician and therefore, by Manhattan standards, an average earner at best.

That's not what draws the looks though. The eyes that flick at her and then away, quickly away. It's something else about her, like the atmosphere around her crackles and sparks. Like she's not quite living in the same, safe, sane world everyone else lives in. Lukas looks too: leaning exhausted over that formica tabletop, his arms extended almost straight, his coffee between his hands. He raises his head, he looks at her, he sees her in a glance. Those shoes, that hair, that jacket that, shockingly, seems to hide her naked torso with a single tantalizing button.

Lukas blinks once. Then he looks away.

It's different, though. It's not quite the way the kid behind the counter all but ducks his head to turn away. It's not how the two guys from down the block, who came in here with the pot munchies about ten minutes ago, can't even bear to look at her. He's not looking away because the sight of her fries his synapses with unspeakable, subtle, primordial terror. He's looking away because it's rude to stare at strangers, and besides, he's too tired to try to get her number.

So he goes back to staring out the window. And it is cool outside, but not really cold; fifty degrees with a wind that sometimes claws down these corridors of skyscrapers and tenements. Here it comes: whipping old posters off the light posts, tumbling someone's trash can lid down the street. Across that street the lights in the ambulance bay burn day and night, and every few minutes another bus pulls up and the paramedics unload another gunshot wound, stab wound, four-car pileup, something. Sometimes it's trauma. Sometimes it's cardiothoracic. And then his pager goes off.

He's not really thinking about this, though. He's not really thinking about anything at all. He sips his coffee and finds it's cooling; puts it back down. And this is when, drawn by some instinct he barely even knows he has, he glances over the seats and finds

that the Manhattanite that walked in a few minutes ago has breakfast in front of her, a rather large breakfast at that, and is staring at him. His eyelids twitch like he wants to blink or look away - social instinct when one is caught staring - but then, no. He's not the one caught staring. She is. So he looks back at her, and by now he's no longer hunkered over his table but leaning back in his booth, sprawling a little. A few seconds go by. Then he tips his head at the hospital.

"Are you waiting for someone?" It's the only logical explanation.

Danicka

He wouldn't have much of a chance if he did try, tired or not. Look at him. Unshaven, saggy-eyed, probably doesn't smell too fancy either, isn't eating too well these days -- and she looks fresh as though she's on her way to work. It's two in the morning and she looks like that, not a clubkid or a prostitute, either. He knows better than to try, and he just. Doesn't. Have it in him, anyway. So he stares out the window, he neglects his coffee, he turns off his brain because it's the closest to sleep he'll get for awhile.

And she stares at him this whole time. Eventually she gets her food, heavy and greasy and cheap. She's staring at him, like she's been staring for awhile and isn't just caught in an aimless glance of her own. Her gaze is focused; studious. Thoughtful. There's nothing absent in her eyes, as though she's more present, more here right now, than any of the damn people within a six-block radius. That look has intention.

Nor does it end, when Lukas decides that no, she's the one who has been caught here, it's not his job to be polite and look away. He tips his head, which makes hers automatically, instantly, cant to that side. It's a tiny, slightly sharp jerk of motion where before she was motionless; that's eerie. She's listening.

He gives her the only logical explanation. It is at least partly correct. The woman gives a nod. "You could say," she answers, her voice measured and pitched just loud enough to carry to him. Clear. Slightly accented; hard to place. Eastern European of some kind. Maybe German. Maybe the language his family spoke at home for years, but it's not quite the same. Not quite pure. Then, a volley of her own: "You're still working." It's not really a question; a request for confirmation.

Lukas

The odd thing is that if Lukas were in any other profession, this woman's oddness would probably ping a lot faster. But he works with people who are married to their jobs. People whose tempers snap, who burn with intensity even without the help of rage. He works with people, too, caught on the other side of that equation: some fifty-seven year old who was looking forward to his daughter's wedding, who's suddenly flat on his back after his first heart attack. Some twenty-one year old, a kid younger than he was when he went to medical school, flat on his back bleeding out into his chest cavity because a bullet sliced open a pulmonary vein. And everyone's scared, everyone's under pressure, everyone's doing their best and sometimes that's even enough.

He cracks chests open for a living. He saws bone, cuts flesh, holds living hearts in his hand - not to destroy, but to fix. To treat the best he can.

Or that was the ideal, anyway, a year or so ago when he was applying to these top-notch residencies across the country. But now here he is, a first-year resident, the bottom of the pile, always getting called in on these all-night shifts, except he doesn't even really mind because these are the only times he actually gets to hone his skill because the chief resident is at home with his wife and the attending doesn't want to be there either -- here he is, and the truth is

he works so long and he works so hard that sometimes he can't even see the forest for the trees. He puts bodies back together. Sometimes he barely remembers what people are like.

So this woman points out that he's still working. And she gets a tired, crooked smile back. "You could say," he parrots back. And he lifts his coffee and drains it: those hands that know the temperature and weight of blood almost as well as hers. "What gave it away - the scrubs or the thousand-yard stare?"

Danicka

That parroting, that smile: her eyes are keen on him, not quite 'wary' but it's a close approximation of whatever is actually going on in there. She's watching him so closely, paying such intense attention to everything about him. What he says and, more importantly, how he says it. The sound of his voice. The look in his eyes, half-dead from exhaustion or not. His shoulders in the scrubs. What his hands are doing.

She picks up her fork, spears some sausage, but hasn't taken a bite yet. Her eyebrows flick slightly. "If you could go home right now," she says, still in that paced, measured way of speaking, "wouldn't you?"

Lukas

Home is a tricky word. The first thing that pops into mind is still that little brownstone up in the Bronx, and only later, the little studio a few blocks away in the building with the tight security. The area is rough. The apartment isn't bad, though. He has a nice view of the Hudson, and the city lights up at night.

Lukas pulls his mind back to present. It's hard right now: it wants to wander. It wants to sleep. He discovers that question was a little odd, and on the tail of that, that this woman is a little odd. There are people that come here that look out of place. They're usually here because they're here for a loved one. Sometimes they even look at him, want to strike up a conversation with him, because he is so instantly recognizable as a part of the hospital team. He's wearing hospital scrubs. He's wearing his ID and security badge on his hip. They usually want his medical opinion on something or other.

That doesn't seem to be the case here, though. She keeps looking at him. She's watching his hands: sometimes they turn the coffee mug in slow circles between them, sometimes they lift the mug and set it down again. She's watching his eyes, as though noting and measuring the clarity of the blue. He suspects suddenly that if he were to stand, he would see her eyes travel all the way down to his sneakers

(because back in med school he stopped trying to stand in an OR for ten, twelve, sixteen hours at a go in dress shoes)

and up again, cataloging everything along the way. Height. Build. Even the badge on his hip: LUKAS KVASNICKA, MD. CARDIOTHORACIC SURGERY. And that profile picture of him, unsmiling, dark hair and light eyes, a bit of challenge in the stare.

"Of course," he answers. And then, blunt and bold because being blunt and bold has gotten him this far: "That's an odd thing to ask."

Danicka

The other home is too far away, too long gone, but he knew it once. There was an orange grove, or at least one tree -- which to a child that young may as well be a fairyland, a magical place where brightly colored and tart, sweet, juicy fruit in its bumpy and fragrant skin drops right into your palms, a near-perfect globe of promised taste. It was not so terribly grand, not a castle or a true estate, but it was large and it had a staff. They had a cook who made kolace for he and his sister. Candied the oranges first, made them into perfect sugary slices before turning that into a filling and turning that into his favorite, his favorite, his favorite thing in the whole whole world. That was the home they brought him to when he had not yet learned to smile or laugh, when opening his crystalline eyes was still the most strenuous thing he could bear to do for very long.

Too far away, and too long gone now. That is not what he thinks of when she mentions home.

If she were waiting for someone, wouldn't there be someone with her? Wouldn't she be in the cafeteria or in some waiting area, hoping for news or just trying to pass the time or sleep in a chair? No, someone like this, looking intently at him -- she'd be at the nurse's station, demanding answers, demanding information that no one even has yet. She'd be one of those people having trouble playing Hurry Up And Wait.

No, not quite that either. She seems oddly patient. She seems like she isn't tired at all, isn't worried. But she's waiting for someone, or said something to that effect. She doesn't want to ask him any questions about this spot on her arm or tell him the medical history of someone across the street and on some higher floor just in case that patient's actual doctor is totally wrong and maybe this first-year resident will tell them the real truth. She's just... taking him in.

What he says actually makes her smile. Barely; a curl at the corner of her mouth, a slight parting. "I wasn't asking. You asked what gave it away that you're still working." Her head tilting, her tone a little less careful but not quite 'warm': "And that's what it is. If you weren't still working, you'd go home."

She doesn't say: you'd take off your pager and possibly stow your badge. you might grab a cup of coffee but you'd do it on the way, not come in and sit down for awhile. you'd have more with you than just your coat. She doesn't expose that much of her mind.

Lukas

A flick of a smile in return. "Deductive reasoning at its best. You're right. I'm on call until 6am, after which I'll be going straight home to bed."

There's something a little guarded about the young surgeon across the way. The bluntness of his comment was a sort of defense, actually. He is not the boy he was, who liked oranges and most especially candied ones. He is not the man he could have been in another life. He is driven, competitive - she doesn't even need to analyze him to know that; she just needs to look at the two words under his name on his badge - and he is private, solitary. He doesn't see his parents, or his sister-who-is-in-art-design-downtown, nearly as much as the miniscule distances between them would suggest.

His coffee is gone. He didn't buy the endless cup; he can't drink too much or his hands won't be as steady. His pager hasn't gone off, though, and even though this woman keeps staring at him, even though she's a little on the far side of odd, he doesn't go back to the hospital. Lukas stays where he is, his white coat next to him and his dark coat - his streetwear coat - under that. And he's looking at her now, too, studying her for the first time with curiosity in his eyes.

"What about you? You're having breakfast at two in the morning." His eyes flick down for a moment, but he's too well-mannered to go straight for those two acute triangles of skin above and below that one button. "And forgive the observation, but you're not exactly dressed like you've been holding a bedside vigil.

"I doubt you're just passing by, though." He tips his head a little, mouth curving up and brow furrowing in the same moment. "I can't figure you out."

Danicka

Bold and blunt. His statements skirt complimentary but stay just this side of flirtatious. Just this side, too, of overly familiar. But curious, intrigued now, and she would have to be more than odd -- she would have to be blind, deaf, and retarded -- not to sniff the chemistry. Or attraction, at least on his side of things. Lukas has taken notice of her. Wants to figure her out, and maybe this is just a distraction from the mind-numbing staring out the window, but

it is something. Even if it isn't very much.

She doesn't mock him right now for his brain being tired, forgetting once sentence as soon as it's out of his mouth, mistaking her explanation for a question, for the bags under his eyes -- none of that. She doesn't seem even remotely warm to him, but she isn't putting off such strong inhuman vibes that she can't pass...mostly. She's strange, that's for sure. She's unusual in her dress, her intensity, her attention to him that comes without fear of reprisal or embarrassment.

She's different.

Two in the morning he says, and she glances over at the clock above the counter as though to confirm what he just said. Her eyebrows lift, not in surprise but more of a huh. look at that. you're right. and then she swivels her head back down, looks at him again. As he is observing how she's dressed. There's a flicker of something in her eyes, a thought that passes through her mind as quick and lithe as a fish darting underwater.

"I was working late," she explains, "with an acquaintance who owns a nightclub." But that's all she says about that. She's still watching him, staring at him: "You look like you work very hard."

Lukas

[DIS IS MAI EMPAFEE. I HAV A BIT MOAR IN DIS LIFE.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Danicka

[manipulation + subterfuge]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

Lukas

"Nightclub," he repeats with a little huff of a laugh. That explains it, his tone says. The way she's dressed, the hour, all of it. She doesn't live in their mundane little world after all. She lives in a world where people own nightclubs, and these are normal working hours for her.

Or something like that.

Except Lukas is not the type to fabricate and swallow his own easy answers. His interest was piqued. It stays that way. His intelligence is fierce as a hound: roused, it keeps to its mark. He shifts a little, sits up a little. She can see he's tall. Broad of shoulder. Surgery is curiously close to sports; it demands physical stamina, the ability to act quickly and decisively. It has locker rooms and uniforms. Lukas yawns; it's not languid and sleepy at all, but short, sharp, designed to wake himself.

"It's nothing I didn't sign up for." This time he doesn't even ask forgiveness for this observation: "You seem rather interested in my work ethic. I'm going to start thinking you're some sort of recruiter. Looking for a personal physician for some TriBeCa nightlife mogul, maybe." He smiles a little; he's not serious. It wasn't quite a joke either, though.

Danicka

Her head tips. She hasn't taken her eyes off of him. "You could say."

Lukas

A beat. A quirked eyebrow. Then: "I've said a lot," he replies. "How about you say a little about what you mean?"

Danicka

"No, I wouldn't think you'd complain," she answers, her tone one of agreement as he says he signed up for this. It's part of the deal.

She's silent for a time after that. The food on her plate, never very hot to begin with, has gotten tepid and will soon go cold. She hasn't had the chance to take a bite without interupting their conversation, which she seems unwilling to do. It only serves to further the evidence that she may simply be in this little diner as an excuse to draw his attention, talk to him. Why not call, why not set up a meeting, why not -- a dozen things. And why him.

"I am not recruiting you to be the personal physician for a nightclub owner," she says, clearly and honestly. "However, there is interest in your career -- as well as your ethic, your values, your personal life, and so on -- that may lead to an offer." She pauses. There's something about that word that doesn't quite fit. She goes on anyway: "It would not deter you from your residency,"

she knows that, too,

"or draw you away from New York City." She seems as though she might say more, but stops there. "That is all I will say for now. I do have other questions, but they are of minor importance."

Lukas

Lukas's spine straighten as the woman ticks these things off like checkboxes on a page. Ethics. Values. Personal life. So on. He is not merely curious now. He is wary.

"You know who I am," he says. And a moment later, like piecing a puzzle together: "You came here looking for me."

This is when, for the first time in a long time, Lukas thinks of his family history. The history that he doesn't talk about, that his employers and colleagues and friends have no idea about. Thinks of words like Tribe and werewolf and other fantastical, mindboggling things so far out of his everyday world that he lives most his life without thinking of it. Once upon a time that mattered a little bit more. It had something to do with why his parents came to New York in the first place. It had something to do with that family they knew when he was small, that other family that was like them, but somehow time went by and they lost contact and high school was sports and girls and SATs and college apps, and then came college and medical school and

here he is now, a productive member of human society. No ties whatsoever to that mythological underworld he's not even entirely sure exists. There are so few of them left, anyway, if they're even out there. A handful in a city of millions. Not, in all his experience, anything he's ever needed to concern himself about.

She stops there. She begins to draw the conversation to a close. He's undeterred:

"Hold on a minute. What is this really about?"

Danicka

He's undeterred. So, too, is she: that is all I will say for now turns out to be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. Unease enters his eyes, just as it entered the eyes of a few patrons who have, during their conversation, left sooner than they intended to or wanted to. Her eyes, verdant and deep, seem wild and gentle at once, capable of hiding a great deal and yet, and yet,

all of those secrets seem like they must be so wondrous. Like hidden gardens, untouched places, wise beasts. It's a very different world from the one he lives in.

She knows who he is. His name. Possibly his family, his alma mater, his colleagues. She was waiting for someone over there at the hospital. Waiting for him, perhaps, to take a break. Cross the street. Get a cup of coffee.

Her head tilts to the side, and then she shifts to the side, rises to her feet. She doesn't take out a wallet and toss down a twenty, or a ten, or anything at all for that matter. What she does is walk towards him, not so terribly tall but seeming longer and greater than she physically is. Her fingertips touch the edge of his formica tabletop, her eyes on his still.

"Get what rest you can," she tells him in that vaguely, confusingly accented voice, even as those fingertips are sliding back and way a moment later. They are perfect nails, polished ovals with nothing more than a clear coat on top of them. "After all, if you don't have your health, you have nothing."

That hand, back in her own space. "I'll be in touch, Doctor."

Certainly he may want to shout after her, or chase her down. The urge he may have to grab her hand while she's within reach is minimal, dampened by ...her presence, or his exhaustion, or the manners he was taught so carefully, perhaps. There is also the knowledge, so bone-deep he probably hasn't even recognized it yet, that it is a bad idea, that this would be crossing a terrible line, that on the other side of that line is a direct threat to that health she's advising him to take care of.

Certainly he may want to do something, demand, ask, what-have-you,

but she's leaving now, ignoring his heys or his silence, either way,

the bell over the door a harsh jangling and clanging that makes the drunk in the booth at the back grumble, the swing of the door letting the air rush in, chilly over the tops of Lukas's arms.

Lukas

This is the first and only time he's truly been in her presence tonight, and plainly put, her presence is electrifying. This close, he doesn't know how he ever thought she might have been family of a patient; recruitment for the type of people who ran nightclubs.

A human, approached like this, might startle. Might stiffen. Might scream, might run. And surely that instinct is in Lukas too. It's basic survival. There's something otherworldly about her. She is not human. But he looks at her, he holds his ground; there's something else there. He is not human either. They share the same blood. They are, in a very absolute and unsentimental sense, made for each other. She puts her hand on the tabletop and his body is tense.

His pupils dilate. Sympathetic nervous response: fight or flight.

Or fuck. That's part of it, too.

He does not grab her hand, though. He certainly doesn't shout. She'll be in touch. He doesn't try to offer his card. He doesn't have it on him anyway. His eyes drop from hers at the last moment. He looks at that wedge of skin between her breasts and her navel, interrupted by that one single button.

"Goodnight, then," he says. She turns and he hears her heels on the floor. He looks at her back. The bell over the door jangles. The night outside feels colder now. He stares at nothing for a while, and then

he checks his pager. He checks his mug. He holds it up at Jeff behind the counter, and he asks for another one to go.