Bold

Seven

Eli woke up with a splitting headache and a strange sense of regret. "Fuck me..." she groaned, holding her throbbing head as she sat up.

"Certainly, darlin'," somebody grumbled from the other side of the bed, nearly giving the poor woman a heart attack.

There was only one person that could be, but Eli desperately didn't want it to. In fact, if the first ever Pope has been there in that moment, she would have kissed his manky, rotting toenail for it not to be who she thought it was.

But alas, it was not to be. Eli glanced over at the man lying beside her and let out of small squeak of horror and embarrassment.

Leonard McCoy was in her bed. Albeit still half asleep and hungover, but it was Leonard McCoy nonetheless. Thank god she didn't have a roommate.

What should she do? Should she just leave and let him get on with whatever he needed to do? Or should she wake him up fully?

Scanning the room for her underwear, Eli was relieved to find that they hadn't travelled too far from the bed and quickly slipped them on. She ran to the wardrobe, found some clothes and then to the bathroom to get dressed.

Splashing her face with some cold water, she decided that it would be best for her to leave McCoy a note and some painkillers rather than waking him up (an undertaking well known to be perilous - in more ways than one). Yes, that's fine. A note. Easy, simple, not too distant, not too familiar. What was she thinking? She couldn't have gotten more familiar than she already had! She paused her teeth cleaning to take a deep breath and try to calm down. "Easy, Eli. It's not that bad. I'm sure people do it all the time." She told herself.

Leaving the bathroom, she grabbed a glass of water, a couple of painkillers and her PADD and quickly scribbled a note. It read:

Morning Peach.
Hope you slept well. Have a great day. :)
Eli x

Adding the kiss as an afterthought, she quickly put it down before she could change her mind about the note and everything/one that went with it.

~~~

Suddenly, an irritated voice sound, as if from nowhere, saying, "Woods to Xavier! My god, woman! What happened to breakfast at 7:30? Have I become irrelevant to you?" and nearly scaring the living daylights out of the poor woman. She scrambled around to find the communicator and quiet the damned thing before he woke up. Once it had been quieted, Eli threw on what looked to be her top from the previous day and pulled a face, realising it wasn't hers. she pulled it off, put on a new one and began to hunt for her shoes.

"Bugger, bugger, bugger!" she muttered, having only found the left one. She gave it up as a bad job and promptly left her quarters.

As if on cue, her comm buzzed yet again with the dulcet tones of Irene Woods. "Eli? Come on, woman, pick up!" the comm unit growled.

"Alright, alright. Don't get your knickers in a twist!" Eli razzed back, rolling her eyes. "I'm sorry I'm running late, I seem to have a bit of a situation."

"What kind of situation?"

"I, uh, lost my shoe. I'll explain when I next see you." Eli replied, debating how best to phrase what happened the previous evening.

"I take it you forgot about breakfast, then?" Irene said, audibly rolling her eyes.

"I know. I'm so sorry; I'm a terrible friend and I promise I'll make it up to you." Eli pleaded, thinking desperately about where her shoe could be. "Lunch? At two?"

"I'm there. And so are you, capishe?" Irene replied, intensely curious as to why her friend felt the need to rain check on this particular morning , and why she sounded so very flustered - it certainly wasn't from running to meet her in the mess hall. "See you later."