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[leftwithmybones]

Now, McCoy's not an engineer. He spent a lot of years going to medical school to heal people and make a difference in the world, but it doesn't take a damn engineer to realize that the fritzing lines on his datapadd mean nothing good. His communicator went bust a long time ago, his tricorder has been working, and up until now, his datapadd had been

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[awomanscornd]

Madelyne holds her tongue for a moment before replying, feeling (in her opinion, pretty understandably) awkward around Dr. McCoy, no matter how unwilling she is to show it. She's sick and tired of letting a woman who should be dead dictate any aspect of her life.

"I think you just ask around and cross your fingers," she says with a small shrug.

[leftwithmybones]

It's never going to be simple around her. McCoy's come to admit that fact. Even being in her presence is strange because he looks at her and all he can remember is Jean. He tells himself that it's not her and he stubbornly stands by that knowledge. It helps, but only in the most minute of ways. "What about you? Do you know anything about computers, Madelyne?"

It helps, too, to say her name aloud. The weight of it on his lips is as keen a reminder as any that Madelyne is not Jean and vice-versa.

[awomanscornd]

"A bit," Madelyne admits, hands crossed behind her back as she shifts idly from one foot to the other. "Probably not enough to be much use, though." The man is from the future, after all. "Stick a motor in front of me, and I can usually get by pretty well, but I've always been a little bit lower on the curve when it comes to electronics."

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy makes sure to keep a good bit of distance between them. He's not worried about her being too forward, it's just that he's not sure what he'll do if he gets too close and he doesn't want to get close to that possibility. "It's probably a software issue, but it could be hardware and usually I ship it off to the engineers."

Awkwardly, he offers the datapadd into the space between them. It's something. It's a start, but he doesn't know whether he should be asking her to take a look or accepting her words as an excuse to get away. The damn thing is already stuck between them, so he keeps on with his original tactic. "You wanna...I don't know, try?"

[awomanscornd]

Madelyne hesitates for a long moment, but then she nods and takes the tablet with a small smile. "Sure. I mean, I probably can't hurt it," She's not sure what this is, what the offer means if anything, but it feels like a start. Whether she wants that with another one of Jean Grey's exes or not is beside the point. She needs friends in this place, period. "It's pretty much just a small computer, right? And it was working alright before?"

[leftwithmybones]

"It was working fine, right up until this morning when I put in the new information." He mumbles something after that, which might sound suspiciously like 'and I dropped it', but they don't need to focus on little details like that when everything else is going well. "But yeah, just a small computer with limited functions."

[awomanscornd]

"It seems user-friendly enough," Madelyne says as she starts poking around, although that's admittedly only judging from what she can make out from the fritzing screen. "Well, your information should be okay for the time being, at least, it just looks like a problem with the display. How hard did you drop it?" she asks, imitating his muttering with only a slight wry edge to her voice.

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy offers her a rueful smile as he peers over her shoulder and watches carefully, just in case he sees anything that he can help with (even if that's a long shot, if even a shot at all). "It just slipped out of my hands, which is a sign that I shouldn't be doing anything with it so early in the morning," he admits. "So, you know, a good thunk on the ground, I'd say."

[awomanscornd]

"Gotcha," Madelyne says, returning the smile as she turns the machine over in her hands a few times in search of some obvious way to force a reset in case her first instinct doesn't pan out. The internal mechanics can obviously survive a bit of a jolt, especially since she suspects this isn't the first 'good thunk on the ground' that it's been through, and low-tech problems often require nice, low-tech fixes. Hoping that McCoy isn't actively paying too much attention to what she's up to, she coughs once and whacks the thing lightly against the wall.

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy's eyes widen slightly and then he practically sees red for a moment before he remembers that he did practically the same thing. For a moment, a split-second, Jean's name is on his lips, but he tramples it downward and pulls up the right one instead. "Madelyne," he says, deathly calm. "What in the hell are you doing?"

[awomanscornd]

Madelyne flashes him a slightly apologetic smile along with her best look of wide-eyed innocence, shrugging as she tries turning the thing on again. "I just figured that if something got knocked loose earlier, it could maybe be... knocked back into place? It's not like it's going to make it any worse off." Hopefully. Besides, he was fully warned that she's not exactly technologically-inclined by nature.

[leftwithmybones]

He doesn't quiet the glare, but there's possibly a hint of appreciation for her logic lurking behind it. "And if it's damaged beyond repair, done so by the extraneous damage it suffered at your eager hands?" he asks wryly. He hopes that she can glean that he's mostly teasing, but he never knows who's going to take him too seriously.

[awomanscornd]

"Take me to tiki property court?" Madelyne offers cheekily, handing it back over with an expectant look. On an island so seemingly overflowing with scientific geniuses as Tabula Rasa, she kind of doubts that damage beyond repair would be possible if she tried, so she's not too worried, joking or not.

[leftwithmybones]

"I'll have you know if you have even a single coconut, it'd be mine," he replies before he realizes that they're wading into dangerous territory, here. After all, another step further and suddenly he'll be flirting with her and how's that for awkward? "Or maybe I'd just ask for a slap on the wrist."

[awomanscornd]

"Would you really?" Madelyne laughs before wryly shaking her head. "You're too kind, I could be absolutely ruined otherwise."

[leftwithmybones]

"Yeah, well, kind," he says, in a tone that implies that he's anything but -- these days, at least. "That's exactly who I am. Gentle ol' country doctor." As if his tongue isn't as sharp as the scalpels he uses when he puts his mind to it.