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[leftwithmybones]

The house before him looms still unfinished and McCoy really doesn't know whether Scotty's disappearance is some vague way of telling him to quit the project. Still, he might run away from ruins of an old life, but he's a damn stubborn ass about giving up. So rather than just let the foundation be, he's started to get back to it

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[vendettaevey]

Evey was beginning to think she'd bit off more than she could chew with this term's classes. Intermediate Algebra was especially difficult, though Chemistry was no easy task either, and her mind was swirling with the last lessons' figures and symbols and equations. To stave off the monstrous headache she could feel forming, she went for a walk without focusing on where she went or what she saw., which was quite unlike her usual hyperfocused attention to her surroundings. Rollo stayed with her for some portion of it but had eventually decided she was boring and gone off to chase something else.

When she walked into Dr. McCoy's clearing, she stopped and blinked owlishly at the doctor in front of her. How had she got here? And where, exactly, was here?

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy glances up when he hears footsteps, not sure that someone's even there until he looks. They're very quiet footsteps, after all. "You look like you got lost," he greets her, knowing that he's not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but he's also not close to all the major buildings people usually go to on the island.

[vendettaevey]

"I think I might have done," she agreed slowly, looking around. It wasn't at all like her to be so unobservant of her surroundings and it worried her that she'd done so. There might have been any number of threats she'd missed, but then again, the island's threats weren't generally the kind she was really used to.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to barge into your clearing."

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy dismisses that with a wave of his hand. "I didn't exactly go see a land council about borders. I'm pretty sure we're all just squatting when it comes to where we live," he says, still fixated on the damn switch, grasping a borrowed screwdriver to try and get it tighter. "Besides, this one's not my clearing yet. Not until I finish that," he says, gesturing to the foundations of the house.

[vendettaevey]

"What's that saying about possession and the law? By that, it is your clearing," she pointed out, but not argumentatively. She respected others' property boundaries, as fuzzy and arbitrary as they might be.

She wouldn't have wanted anyone on her little spot of land without some prior notice, after all.

[leftwithmybones]

"Well, since you're here, you might as well pretend you're visiting," he concedes, trying to find some kind of compromise where she doesn't feel like an intruder. He gestures to the foundations of a house, turning back to look at her. "Well? What do you think of it so far?"

[vendettaevey]

She chuckled lightly at that, since it was just a bit more whimsical than she'd come to expect from Dr. McCoy.

"It's difficult to say since you've only just got the foundation in, but the footprint looks good," she noted. "Not too large nor too small."

[leftwithmybones]

"It's supposed to be the same as the house I had back home," he admits, which isn't telling much because it's not even his house anymore. Sure, his daughter lives under the roof, but it legally belongs to his barricuda -- sorry, the ex. There's still little love lost right now for McCoy. "Suppose I ought to make sure there's a room for my roommate, huh."

[vendettaevey]

"He or she might appreciate not sleeping on the roof," Evey replied solemnly, but with a little twinkle in her eyes. "For one thing, on the off chance that it should rain, he or she will be more than a bit wet, and that might make him or her grumpy."

Or positively homicidal, but they'd hope not.

[leftwithmybones]

"Spock?" McCoy harrumphs and gives an audible snort at that. "Have an emotion? Hell, if you see pigs soaring in the sky, maybe then I'll believe you, but Spock's all about repression. He'd live on a roof and barely raise a brow at me to show me how very little he likes it. Vulcans," he says with a roll of his eyes. "Apparently, it's an alien thing."

[vendettaevey]

It wasn't just aliens who didn't show emotion, but this was clearly a sore point for Dr. McCoy, so Evey didn't actively question it.

"I once knew someone whose emotions were quite difficult to discern," she agreed. "Though he did have them, so it might not be exactly the same thing."

[leftwithmybones]

"I'm sure Spock has them, but the man acts like showing them would be torture." McCoy understands that it's custom and he shouldn't take it so personally, but he gets tired of never knowing if Spock actually gives a damn about a situation behind all that Vulcan reserve. So maybe he overcompensates sometimes, so that he doesn't end up like that.

[vendettaevey]

"So he essentially wears a mask all day," she replied. "Yes, I can see why that might be quite frustrating. We're so used to reacting to others' emotions, good and bad, that to not have that would make conversations quite a bit different.

[leftwithmybones]

"Well, the mask and the apparent lack of care," McCoy says, still not sure how much of that is for show, either. "Hell, I don't know. Maybe I have it all wrong." And considering the future he has in the universe that should've been, they are close. Close enough that McCoy toted around Spock's soul, so maybe they do get past this. He's just not sure. "You sound like you've seen this sort of thing before."

[vendettaevey]

Evey hesitated for a moment, considering what to say and how to say it, but she'd begun the conversation, so she felt a bit obligated to continue it, though in what form she did was of course up to her.

"I knew someone once," she replied carefully. "He certainly did care, though, so it's not precisely the same thing, but the mask was definitely a bit of a complication to understanding what he might be feeling. Eventually I learned how to read into less obvious things and that helped a bit."

Mask could be taken literally or symbolically, of course, though she would be explicit about which she meant if asked.

[leftwithmybones]

"Did you at least have tone of voice, because sometimes, I don't even have that." And now he's starting to sound a bit like he's whining, like Spock doesn't give him enough emotion and he sounds like a wife complaining about that. He clears his throat and tries to compose himself. "Not that I care."