Medically Speaking

A Report #2

Both Luke and Kota stood completely still until about thirty seconds after the sound of footsteps falling abruptly stopped upstairs. Echo was who finally broke the silence by meowing and leaping from Luke's arms. Shaking himself out of the fog of his imagination, Luke looked around the room with a grin. "Alright, I'm going to start in the kitchen."

"Luke," Kota admonished, but his brother had already made his way back into the kitchen and was opening the door to the fridge to look around. "Luke! You shouldn't be going through her things!"

"Why not?" he asked, letting the door swing shut and starting to rifle through Joey's pantry. "She said that we could." Even under normal circumstances, he rarely felt guilt over his particular skill set but Joey had invited him inside with the offer to look around and she hadn't complained when he looked through her locker at the hospital. Luke wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Kota glared at him. "Just because she said that we could, doesn't mean that we should. She's Brandon's nurse, she's one of our friends' sister! We're trying to be her friend, ourselves!"

Luke nodded at him as he pulled out her basket full of tea packets, digging through them to get an idea of what kind she liked to drink. Marc could have the coffee thing, but someone was going to have to make her a cup of tea after a hard day at work while she knitted on the comfort of the couch. "Yeah, most of us are wanting to be more than that." Kota's cheeks turned red. Luke looked up at him with sympathy. "Don't you want to learn more about her?"

Luke knew that he did. When Marc had shared over the group chat that Joey was bi, almost all of his brothers had voiced their excitement at the news. Even if she had only been into women, Luke would have wanted to be her friend and that had been the general consensus for his family. She was drop dead gorgeous, confident, and took no shit from any of them, but you could see the depth of her compassion and how much she cared for others. Even if there was no future there, they had wanted a friend like her in their life.

But she wasn't a lesbian and by her own admission, her relationship would be ending soon. That meant she was available for him and his brothers to get to know better, for them to feel out whether or not she would make a good fit for them. If she'd be willing for what they had to offer at all. They weren't ready to jump into anything, but there was no harm in testing the waters, getting to know her better.

"Of course, I want to learn more about her!" Kota argued quietly as Luke put the basket back in the pantry and moved on to picking through her canned vegetable preferences. "But there are ways to do it that don't involve ignoring social boundaries."

"We're not overstepping boundaries if she gave us permission, Kota."

Luke pushed open a door next to the back door and looked around her tiny laundry room. "I don't think Silas could fit in here even if he crab walked," Kota commented, but she had made good use of the space. All of her brooms and mops were hanging off the wall, and there were sturdy shelves over the washer and dryer with everything from her iron to her handheld vacuum cleaner on it.

"This room's boring," Luke declared. "Back to the kitchen."

There was no arguing with him. Joey had given Luke the greatest gift he could imagine by giving him the full range of her home, minus the second floor. The best Kota could do now was stay here with him and rein him in, make sure he didn't do anything unforgivable.

At least, that's what he kept telling himself as he watched Luke sift his way through her spice cabinet.

"These are definitely frequently used," Luke commented as he slid a partial container of cumin back onto the shelf. "Let's check out the living room."