TITLE: Comin' Home

AUTHOR: Ellen Hursh

RATING: PG-13

KEYWORDS: KW/LKo romance; a little angst

LAST EPISODE SEEN: "Benton Backward"

TIMELINE: Somewhere between "Troubled Water" and "Abby Road"

CROATIAN: "Ulje od bundeve" = pumpkin oil (lit., oil of pumpkin). And let me take this opportunity to apologize to any Croats who are reading, for any manglings I've made of your language.

DISCLAIMER: "ER" and all its characters belong to Warner Bros. No infringement of their copyright is intended. This story was written for the enjoyment of "ER" fans everywhere, and may be downloaded for your own pleasure.

SUMMARY/SPOILERS: Luka's domestic situation changes. Spoilers for... well... not much of anything, to my immense regret.

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT: Relative Safety; Off to a Rocky Start; Troubled Water

AUTHOR'S NOTES: "Comin' Home" is the title of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song - a really very nice tune, too - and I picked it well before hearing of the title of the Season 7 premiere. (Season 7 spoilers? What Season 7 spoilers? La la la la la... can't hear you!). Also, certain liberties were taken with the exact properties of slivovic (aka "slivovitz"), but it *is*, reportedly, pretty potent stuff.

PREVIOUSLY, ON MY ER: Luka and Kerry's affair escalated, with Kerry laying in masculine toiletries and inviting him to come live with her and be her love (okay, not in those exact words). The circus came to town - this time for real, not in the form of runaway oxygen canisters - and they went to a show after getting complimentary tickets from one of the acrobats. Luka gave an unhappy Lucy some words of encouragement.

"Hey. Good morning." He smiled sleepily at Kerry, who was draped across his chest with her face buried in his shoulder and her toes tickling his shins... hm, and something *else* was getting tickled in-between. He took hold of her hand and, a little regretfully, moved it from where she'd had it nesting. His other arm was curled around her shoulders, and - judging from the way they seemed to home in on each other in their sleep - he suspected it had been there all night.

"Mrm." A tiny sound of protest came from the vicinity of his shoulder, and he laughed softly.

"*You're* cranky today. I thought you were a morning person."

"'S not morning," she whined without moving a millimeter, annoyed by the tease in his voice, and tried - unsuccessfully - to free her hand from Luka's grasp; he was gently, but firmly, holding it up against his throat, and she could feel his carotid pulse: strong and steady.

"Yes, it is. There's sunlight coming through the window." That brought her head up from the cradle of his shoulder and she stared at him, a little astonished and sleep-befuddled, before she turned to glare at the stripe of sunshine marching its way across the bed... then let her head fall back against him.

"*Fuh*," she slurred sleepily, "wha'time's it?" He craned his neck so he could see the clock without shifting Kerry from her spot - she looked *so* comfortable, so relaxed, it seemed a shame to force her to move. Almost.

"Ten thirty-eight. If we get moving soon, I can get everything packed up and out of that apartment in plenty of time to keep that landlord from trying to charge another month's rent."

"I thought I was coming with you?"

"You are, but I don't want you to do anything but inventory boxes, at most - your limp's been pretty bad the last few days. At the very least, I'd like your company." With luck, he was going to have many years to enjoy her company... but he'd thought that about Daniela, too. Finding Kerry - somehow convincing her to share even this much of her life with him - had been the best thing to happen to him since he came to this country, and he didn't want to waste any of their time together.

* * *

He sat at the table and watched her work in the kitchen, taking juice, yogurt, fruit and some other things he didn't really want to think about, and running them through a blender to create her special morning energy shakes. He still didn't think these shakes constituted a *proper* breakfast, but he supposed they were tasty enough.

She poured the first shake, and brought it to him; Luka thanked her, and waited until she'd turned her back before he sniffed the strangely-colored drink suspiciously. "Just think, you'll never have to sleep with earplugs again," she told him as she began to slice up some more fresh fruit - it was something odd-shaped that he didn't recognize, but it had probably come from that ethnic grocery just down the street, that he'd been meaning to investigate on the off-chance that they might carry ulje od bundeve - absolutely essential for salad, as far as he was concerned.

"I don't know about that - I've seen some of the CDs in your collection. And that one you were playing the other morning, that was a *little* loud." Specifically, he'd been out of bed, on his feet and halfway to the bedroom door before he was consciously aware of anything. She paused in her slicing.

"You don't *like* Grace Jones?"

"I didn't say that. I said it was a little loud." And he *hadn't* minded it, once he was awake enough to realize what was going on. That style of music would never be his favorite, but a few of the songs had had a fun, bouncy rhythm.

"Mm. You know," she told him as she popped a chunk of fruit directly into her mouth, "I used to use Grace Jones to wake up Carter in the morning sometimes. Put it on, nice and loud, when he was a little late emerging from the basement." He got up, still nursing his shake (he'd found that it was easier to drink when he didn't actually *look* at it), and went into the kitchen area, standing behind her, then set his shake on the counter.

"Yeah? Did he ever say good morning like *this*?" He put his hands on her hips and pulled her back against him, making sure she could feel how she was affecting him, then turned her around and kissed her soundly.

"Not... not *most* mornings," she teased him, once she'd caught her breath, and he nipped at her ear affectionately.

"You are a horrible, horrible woman." But he was smiling - he thought he'd probably smiled more in the two and a half weeks he and Kerry had been together than in the several preceding months that he'd been at County (or the three years that he'd been living a semi-nomadic lifestyle in the United States... and sure as hell in the last eight years), and ignored the premonition that it was when he was happiest that disaster usually struck.

* * *

They took a few minutes to finalize an agreement - the night before, Luka had insisted that they put it in writing since, as he'd wryly observed, "A lot of the arguments Daniela and I had could have been avoided if we'd written down, at the beginning, that I would always pick up my socks and she would never make that awful cabbage stew of hers."

"Oh? You don't pick up your socks? Have I invited a slob to live with me?" That had earned her a kiss and a sarcastic laugh, and they'd begun to brainstorm.

"I'm a *Slav*... and I'm completely housebroken these days, Kerry. I can't swear I'll always do things around here exactly the way you like - just as you can't swear you'll always do things exactly the way *I* like - but I *can* promise that I'll do the best I can. I think maybe if we figure on cleaning up after our own messes, for the most part--"

"What about laundry and dishes? It doesn't make sense to just wash our own clothes, or only the dishes we used."

"We can alternate for laundry, huh? You take one week, I take the next? Same for the bathroom, I guess." Kerry nodded, and Luka made a few notes. "Okay, *dishes*. How about, whichever of us cooks, the other one cleans up?"

"That sounds good. Oh-- but let's try not to make a huge mess while cooking. I had a roommate in college who liked to do that to me all the time."

"That's fair. Now, expenses. What seems reasonable to me is for us to split the utilities - I'll put in more toward the electric bill, of course, since it'll go up after I move in - and the groceries. You're on your own with that... that... *tofu* of yours, though." He made a face - he'd mistaken it for cream cheese the other morning, and nearly got sick after spreading some on his toast. "And, of course, I'll take care of buying my own coffee. Will we want to use both coffeemakers, by the way? One for yours, one for mine?"

"That's a good idea." There'd been a few more items, then they'd typed up the agreement on Kerry's little bare-bones workhorse of a computer, and printed off a copy that they both now signed.

* * *

"You're sure you'll be all right with the boxes I got?" Kerry had made a special trip up to Legal, to snag some empty boxes - they went through enough cases of paper in a week up there that they were happy to have *somebody* coming by to put the boxes to good use. She hadn't even needed to use her story (which, after all, was no story) about helping a "friend" move. Now he was loading them into the back of his Saab.

"I should be. I don't think I have anything more than one trip's worth - I'm sure I can fit everything in my car."

The actual process of moving only took a little more than an hour - he hadn't been kidding when he said he didn't have much. Clothes, books - mostly medical texts, but also a few novels he'd brought along from Croatia (he'd purchased them at the airport in Zagreb) - and a few knick-knacks and personal items... that was about it.

Kerry stared, dumbfounded, at the small pile on the floor of his apartment that was the result of his packing: two suitcases, several boxes of books and toiletries and "miscellaneous", and a pair of shopping bags with most of the food from his refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. "That *can't* be everything! What about--" she gestured at the TV, and the remaining items in the apartment. There were some nice bookcases that she could easily see in the guest room.

There was no way *her* possessions could be summed up so easily, she knew, but she supposed that was the inevitable result of owning a house: Things piled up so quickly... and could be *lost* just as quickly.

"The apartment was furnished. Badly. But thanks for the reminder... I borrowed the TV from a neighbor a few months back, when that Dean Rollins news conference with Drs Corday and Romano was on, and I haven't gotten around to returning it - I never have time to watch, as it is." Kerry could see, on a second glance, that the TV had a fine layer of dust on it. She went through the rest of the apartment anyway, to double check, and came out of the bathroom to find Luka kicked back on the couch, grinning at her. "You're very thorough, Kerry. But then, that's-- that's one of the great things about you." She joined him on the couch, then immediately sat back up.

"Do you have a flashlight?" He frowned, completely baffled by her motives, but got up and dug a flashlight out of one of the boxes. She leaned over the side of the couch, peeking underneath, and laughed softly. "You *did* forget something," she told him, and handed him the flashlight.

"I wondered where that went!" he exclaimed, after he'd got all the way down on the floor and reached under the couch... and retrieved his camera.

"We sure *did* get distracted that night, didn't we?"

"Mm-hm." They shared a reminiscent smile, and he reached up from his seat on the floor to massage her left thigh. "I guess we - *I* - should start taking these boxes downstairs, and then I'll return the TV after I take the last of the boxes." There wasn't any cleaning left to be done - he'd quit smoking a few years ago (he had described the process as "surprisingly easy", though she'd seen the longing glances he sometimes directed at smokers) and he'd never really even been around to do much more than *exist* in this place, let alone make a mess. Clutter, yes -- mess, no.

The biggest obstacle to moving, of course, turned out to be the landlord: specifically, getting Luka's security deposit back. The two men argued back and forth over what had and hadn't been broken when he moved in, the relative condition of the bathroom, and on and on until Kerry had *had* it. She languidly draped herself across the couch, in plain view of the landlord, and began playing with the buttons on her blouse (she wished she had an ice cube to use as a prop, there was a great party trick she'd learned in med school) until the man, who couldn't keep his eyes off her, distractedly wrote a check and shoved it into Luka's hands. Then she quickly followed Luka out, leaving the landlord standing in the middle of the living room, staring after her in a near daze.

When they got to the car, Luka was incredulous and more than a little angry, though he refrained from actually shouting at her. "What the *hell* was that back there?"

"Good for my ego," she promptly replied. "I was getting a headache, hearing the two of you go at it, so I decided to do something about it. C'mon, let's go by the bank and deposit that check, before he comes to and tries to put a stop on it." He sighed.

"I should be pissed off at you," he grumbled, "but thank you." He fumed the rest of the way to the bank anyway, and was sufficiently irritable that she volunteered to stay in the car to guard his possessions - he didn't argue with her decision.

* * *

He pulled up in front of her house; his mood had gradually improved as the incident receded further into the past, and he'd even begun to find a *little* (but still not much) humor in the situation. "Let's get the front door open before I get anything out of the car, okay?" She waited patiently as he came around to her side, to open the door - it was such a little thing, and it seemed to make him so happy to do it for her, that she could easily let him - and leaned on him as he helped her out of the car. He was right, her leg *had* been hurting a little more than usual lately. Nevertheless, she tried to grab one of the smaller bags anyway, in an attempt to help... and didn't argue when he took it away from her and firmly put it back in the car.

His hand stayed at her elbow as they climbed the few steps up to the door, and he took the keys out of her hand to unlock the door, fumbling a couple of times before he got the key in the lock and the door opened. "But traditionally that's good," he joked, trying to cover for his own nervousness. "It means we'll have a few children."

"Excuse me? *Children*?"

"Yep. How else are we going to get those grandchildren?" She groaned and rolled her eyes at his reminder of their one night spent at his apartment, which gave him the opportunity to scoop her up into his arms without *too* much resistance.

"What are you doing?" she squeaked, and flung her arms around his neck. Unfortunately she was still holding her crutch, and nearly brained him with it in the process. He stumbled slightly, then shrugged her weight to one side and took the offending item away from her - luckily, the skin was unbroken and the bruise would be hidden by his hair - then carefully set it just inside the door.

"This is tradition, yes? To carry you inside?"

"For *married* people, yes!" She looked away at that moment, a little panicked by what she perceived as stares from passersby, so she missed the intently speculative smile that flashed across his face briefly and was gone by the time she looked at him again.

"Hmm," he replied noncommittally. "Well, there's no use taking any chances," he informed her, as he carried her inside and gently set her down right next to her crutch. He wouldn't let her carry anything, but did ask her to hold the door for him as he hauled in his boxes and bags and suitcases.

Finally, the last box was inside and the front door closed. Kerry had already cleared space in her closet - moved the clothes she didn't wear as often into the closet of the guest room - and in the dresser drawers, and sent Luka upstairs to unpack. In the meantime, she put away the contents of the bags from his kitchen. There wasn't anything especially... *exotic* - a carton of orange juice, some onions, a small tub of butter, a bag of coffee beans (<sniff> oh, yeah, that sure *was* the stuff he drank!), a block of cheese, and a jar of peanut butter. On impulse, she opened the jar and scooped out a little peanut butter with her finger, then lazily licked her finger clean before she looked around guiltily and shoved the peanut butter into the refrigerator with the other perishables.

The other bag was non-perishables - a bottle of olive oil, a few heads of garlic, two boxes of angel-hair pasta, a few cans of tomato paste, a bottle of soy sauce, a half-full bottle of Tabasco sauce, a box of saltines and a bag of pearl barley.

He didn't have much in the way of kitchen equipment, she found when she unpacked the appropriate box - just a small wok, a saucepan and a large pot, along with a few serving utensils such as salad tongs and a ladle - but what he did have was obviously good quality. His coffee-maker was nothing fancy, but it was a brand well-known for its durability... it'd have to be, Kerry thought sourly, to stand up to the stuff he drank. She set it up on the counter, next to her own, and moved on to the next box.

This one had a few of his knick-knacks, that he'd wrapped up in newspaper - she set them on the top of the desk and removed the layers of newspaper. The first one turned out to be a dark and chubby ceramic... *creature*, with four stubby little legs and patterns etched into its body. Not much of a head that she could make out, either. Her inclination was to put it over on the shelf with some of the other small items she'd picked up over the years, but she left it on the desk - Luka undoubtedly had his own ideas as to where he'd like it - and moved on to the other items. They turned out to be souvenir-type things from what Kerry assumed was places where he'd lived, although they were, for the most part, a little more tasteful than the usual touristy crap.

He came up, very quietly, behind her while she was sitting on the floor a few minutes later amidst the last three boxes, unloading books into piles. She opened one of the paperbacks and frowned at the Croatian text, then put it on one of the piles. "You look like a kid at Christmas, unwrapping packages," he told her, amused when she jumped slightly, and knelt down to kiss her neck.

"Well, if I think of *you* as a late Christmas present, for me to unwrap, then it makes sense." They smiled at each other, and Luka reached into one of the boxes, pulling out a paper bag that he'd wedged between two stacks of books and which turned out to contain a small bottle. He stood back up, a little awkwardly - all of the lifting and carrying today had been something of a strain on his own leg, though damned if he was going to say anything if he didn't have to!

"Stay there - where do you keep the glasses?" She told him, and he fetched two. "We're both in for the night, right? You won't have to be back at the hospital until later tomorrow?" She looked at him oddly, but shook her head in agreement. "Good. This is vicious stuff. I... originally bought it to celebrate getting my license to practice in the States, but..." he waggled the bottle to show how close to full it still was. He knelt by her side, and carefully poured two fingers of the stuff for each of them. "This is slivovic. Plum brandy. Sip it slowly and carefully. 'To our time together, Kerry. May it be long and happy.'" She agreed solemnly, and they clinked glasses and drank.

She had expected something like her usual Scotch, not this slightly bitter liquid fire that tasted absolutely nothing like plums, and immediately warmed her body and made her feel a little strange. Not quite numb, maybe a little rubbery. She made a face. "I think I'm starting to understand why you drink your coffee the way you do."

He gave her a "right back atcha, baby" grin, set his glass on top of one of his boxes and idly motioned for her to do the same, before he slowly lay back and propped his feet up on one of the empty boxes. Kerry moved, just enough so that she could flop down next to him, and sighed. "We're not going to be getting back up tonight, are we?" She could already detect a slight slurring of her words, but other than that her speech didn't seem to be impiddled- impl-- aw, hell.

"Nope. That's why I wanted to be sure we're in for the night." He let the stuff break down his defenses; it seemed safe enough right now to say what was in his heart: "I love you, Kerry." She sighed happily and snuggled into his arms, already almost asleep.

"Mmm. Love you too, Luka," she murmured, and closed her eyes. The last syllable of his name had barely got out of her mouth when her breathing slowed and deepened. Out like a light. He stroked her hair as she began to snore softly. So, she'd actually said it. He would, of course, have preferred for her to say the words when she was fully awake, and completely sober, but he'd take what he could get.

Then he quit fighting, too, and let himself drift off to sleep.

* * *

She woke to a very strange smell, and rolled over in bed... wait. She didn't *remember* going to bed last night. Last thing she remembered was... hrm. He must have carried her to bed, she realized, and wondered why her head didn't hurt more - usually when she drank enough to make her fall asleep like that, she woke up with one hell of a hangover.

Another sniff told her that Luka's coffee was part of what she smelled - there was something else... hm... oh. *Breakfast*. It was odd, she thought, that Luka should be so thin when he was such an excellent cook. But then, how many times had she settled for a tiny salad, or a quick sandwich, during the times *she* lived alone? There just didn't seem to be much point to going all-out in cooking for oneself, even though the magazine articles *told* readers to make a little ceremony, a little banquet out of a meal for one. She'd laughed out loud at one she read in line at the supermarket - the stupid bitch was probably married, with kids, and could only *imagine* single life. There were times that Kerry would love to try dealing with the twin demands of a family and career - granted, most of those times had come after meeting Luka for the first time. A woman would be a fool to look at him and *not* think about happily-ever-after - he was just that kind of man.

She'd tried to keep him at bay with a front of extreme professionalism, had almost been *relieved* when hiring Gabe had meant firing Luka (she wasn't proud of that feeling, just as she wasn't proud of the fact that she'd felt almost... disappointed that he hadn't made a scene). And then Gabe had begun his decline, and she'd been forced to open her eyes and *see* it... and Luka had returned. She'd hesitated a long time that morning before picking up the phone to call him - after the way she'd let him go, why should he agree to come in at even shorter notice than usual? He'd come, though, had almost ghosted through the day with his usual smooth competence until poor Sandra Perry was brought in. Then he'd put everything he had into helping to *try* to save that woman and later, she'd been surprised by how well they worked together on the rape exam. She'd already checked out his professional record (well, there was a first time for *everything*, she supposed), with an eye toward recommending him for a permanent position that she knew was open at Mercy, but after that day - and with his qualifications! - she'd let herself be greedy and take a shot at hiring him for her own department. And he'd said yes... *incredible*.

She sat up and began to swing her legs over the side of the bed to get up, but Luka entered the room first, carrying a tray of food. "Hey, I did *not* bring this upstairs just so you could decide at the last minute to come downstairs." The words were scolding, but his tone was light. "C'mon." He motioned for her to get back under the covers, and set the tray down in front of her. "I know what you said about eating in bed, that first time, but it should be all right with a tray - I know you're not a messy eater." There was a glass of tomato juice on the tray, next to a plate of beautifully scrambled eggs and golden toast... and there was a cup of coffee, which Luka quickly plucked off the tray. "Oops, that's mine."

Kerry began to eat, then paused. "I didn't know there was tomato juice in the house - you didn't make a special trip to the store, did you?"

"What? No, I added water to a can of tomato paste. I learned the trick from some med students who were a little too fond of their Bloody Marys." He didn't need to specify that they were impoverished - Carter was the only med student Kerry had ever known who *hadn't* constantly scurried around trying to find ways to make a buck last. She supposed that Dr Chen had probably been in a similarly privileged position as a student, but that had been the year before her arrival at County. "I assumed you'd have the same reaction to slivovic that I do - fall asleep right away, then wake up wanting food and juice."

"You know me so well." He shrugged.

"I guessed, that's all. There's lots of Vitamin C and potassium in the tomato juice, anyway." He hesitated a moment, then continued. "I like spoiling you, but it's not going to happen every time."

"No, I didn't expect it would. I assume you put my nightgown on me last night?" He nodded, a little shyly. "I thought you hated it?"

"I do! But *you* like it. Besides, it's nice and soft." He reached over and tweaked the fabric. "I could've just stripped you, but you were in no condition to be doing anything, and... we *would* have." He nearly had, anyway, despite his personal convictions, but had somehow resisted the temptation... and oh *boy*, had she been tempting!

* * *

She followed Luka downstairs, and picked up the chubby headless creature that she'd set on the desk last night, turning it around and around in her hands, squinting at it, still trying to figure out what it was. "Ah! You found my dove. Great."

"Dove? Is that what this is?"

"Yep. The Vucedol dove. It's... a reproduction of an artifact that was found near Vukovar."

"Would you be offended if I said that I think it's cute?"

"No, I'm not offended." He was too close to it, emotionally, to *really* see what she thought was "cute" about it, but he supposed that a person who had no idea of the history behind it, saw only a squat, crude-looking object, could easily classify it as "cute" - it wasn't her fault. It made *him* think of the times he'd barely hung on after Daniela and the kids were murdered - he'd once gone as far as putting the gun in his mouth - until he'd finally checked himself into a hospital for a little while. In the meantime, seeing that dove (it had originally been Nikola's, but he'd let Luka take it with him to the hospital... and then to America) had helped him hold onto hope until... well, he still wasn't sure if the *worst* was behind him, but it had to mean something that he was still *here*. "It's cute, Kerry. It's cute."