I've only seen one or two episodes of er in English, so I'm not familiar with the way those characters used in the story speak. As some of you might have guessed English is not my first language, so bear with me here. I've checked this story again and again but I'm sure there are still mistakes in here. Anybody wants to beta-read for me? I'm not sure if the story is good but maybe that is because I read it too often *g*. I almost feel like Carter: kerann didn't know what to do. Here she was in an apartment in Oldenburg, paid for by herself, drinking a juice and reading her story for about the twelfth time tonight...
This story takes place somewhere in the middle of season five, Carter is living in Kerry's basement, Doug's still there. The last eppy I saw before starting to write was "Hazed and Confused", now I'm up to "Rites of spring" (see how long I've been working on this thing?) but there aren't any spoilers beyond "Stuck on you" I guess. This story is rated NC17, so if you are younger than that, back out here now. If Carter and Kerry would really become a 'couple', I'm quite sure it won't happen like this, but what the hey. *g*
But first things first. John Carter, Kerry Weaver, Maggie Doyle, Carol Hathaway, Doug Ross, Donald Anspaugh, Lucy Knight, Malik, Jerry, Roxanne, Harper Tracy, Abby Keaton, 'Gamma' Carter and all other er-characters mentioned in this story belong to Warner Bros, NBC, ConstanC, Amblin and all those guys that get to play with them all the time. I'm just borrowing them, no infringement intended. Honest. Don't sue me, okay? There are, however, some characters, namely Sarah Williams, Julia Lea, James Kryder and Ellen Moore, who belong to me and may not be used without my permission. This story may not be used, distributed or archived without the permission of the author.
Now, onto the story...
John Carter didn't know what to do. Here he was in a hotel-room in New York, paid for by Cook County General Hospital, drinking a beer and reading the script of his presentation tomorrow afternoon for about the twelfth time tonight.
It was a big thing for him, his being here. This conference was one of the more important ones in the US and it was his job to present Cook County's ER and its teaching system. And now he wasn't sure if his speech was good enough and he was just plain nervous.
He thought about calling Kerry and hearing her opinion about his latest changes of the presentation. His boss and landlady had helped him collecting the facts and putting together the first version of "Emergency Medicine - Teaching in an metropolitan Hospital", which had undergone a lot of changes later.
But could he just call her now? She was not on, he knew that, and she wouldn't be until tomorrow at noon, but it was late and she needed her sleep.
Maybe he should just take a shower and go to bed himself. So he wandered of into the bathroom, collecting a fresh pair of boxers on his way.
Twenty minutes later John emerged out of the shower clad only in his boxer-shorts, a towel around his neck. He grabbed another beer and slumped down on the bed.
In the bathroom he had decided to make a short call to Dr. Weaver, if just to calm his nerves. He was sure he wouldn't get any sleep if he went to bed now anyway. And he would just read his script to her, hear her opinion on it and then work it over one final time. It was not that late really, she would still be awake, he knew that much from experience. Living under the same roof with her had taught him some things about his boss. So he picked up the receiver and dialled the familiar number. After three rings she picked up: "Hello?"
"Hi Kerry, it's John. Sorry to disturb you, would you mind to listen to the latest version of my presentation? I know it's late, but... "
"Hi John. Sure, go ahead."
He could hear a smile in her voice, she probably knew just how excited he was. "I left the introduction as it was, I won't bother you with that, but I changed something in the part about the problems with med-students giving instructions to much more experienced nursing staff... " Shuffling his papers he shifted on the bed, getting more comfortable and relaxed. He read the part to her.
They spend close to half an hour talking about how to improve his text then she gave him some tips about speaking in front of people.
"Oh no Kerry. Don't tell me about imagining the whole audience being nude. That is so cliché!"
"But it works, John. Just try it. I do it almost every time I'm speaking at a meeting or a press conference or something." Grinning, Kerry remembered how she had had to struggle to keep from giggling loud one evening as she pictured a naked Donald Anspaugh listening intently to her plans about changing something about procedures in the ER.
She shifted on the couch, she had been doing paperwork when he had called. It had been a welcome diversion.
"Oh come on, Kerry! Don't tell me you visualise all those reporters in their birthsuit. I thought you wouldn't need something like that, the strong Dr. Weaver. So what's going on at County?" Lazily John stretched, searching for a more comfortable position.
"But you have only been away for what? A day? What do you think has happened? Carol and Doug getting married in the lounge, Malik as their bridesmaid?"
"No, really?!? But seriously, nothing interesting? Jerry didn't bomb something or other?" He wasn't tired at all and she seemed to enjoy their talk. They had spent many evenings on her couch, just talking about movies or books or exchanging gossip, laughing about Jerry's mishaps or Doug's newest antic.
"Hmm, let me think about it... Maggie's new lover showed up to visit her. She seems nice enough, I guess. Lucy was shocked though. I think she never suspected."
"Yeah, Lucy can be a bit dense sometimes. I've met Sarah before, she's really cool. Maggie's lucky. Have I ever told you about my date with her?" Smiling he remembered his astonishment at her coming out.
Kerry frowned. "You went out with Sarah?" She hadn't known John had met Maggie Doyle's girlfriend before.
He laughed at that. "No, I dated Maggie. In her first year at County she took me to the shooting range. There we met her ex-girlfriend and I suddenly knew I hadn't any chance. Story of my life. I really was falling in love with her at that time and now she is one of my best friends."
"You were in love with Maggie Doyle? She barely qualifies as your type, does she?" Kerry was interested now, she hadn't heard about this before.
"My type? What do you mean, she's not my type?"
"Well, she's not blond or small."
John grinned at that. So he had a 'type'. If only she knew. "I see, you've got me figured out. But I have to disappoint you. My first girlfriend wasn't a blonde."
Now Kerry really was curious. Of course she knew about Roxanne and he had told her a little about his relationship with Harper and had even mentioned Abby Keaton but other than that he seldom talked about women. "So what did she look like, small and light brunette?"
"No she actually was 2 inches taller than me. Julia was eight and had long red curls, really thick hair, almost like Carol's. I was seven years old when she kissed me for the first time." Smiling, Carter remembered his disgust when she tried to put her tongue into his mouth like the couple in the movie they had been watching. "I nearly ran out the room screaming, I was so surprised as she tried to french-kiss me. But we were a 'couple' for over a year afterwards until she moved to France. We never kissed after that first time, unfortunately."
"So you started early, did you? I was already almost sixteen when I got my first real kiss."
"Oh go tell! I told you about mine, now it's your turn!" Curious, he almost pressed, Kerry seldom talked about her past. She seemingly lived her life in the present.
Kerry took another sip of her bourbon. She hadn't told this story in along time. "Well, you know I grew up in South Africa, I spent the first twelve years of my life on a farm there, it was the best time of my life." Smiling she remembered the vast spaces, the warmth, the freedom she hadn't felt in such a long time.
"But when my parents came back to the US because my mom got offered a job at a hospital in Washington I never really fit in. My new classmates didn't like me, they thought I was some kind of junglefreak or something. I didn't know about what kind of clothes to wear or music to listen to to belong to the 'in-crowd' which I didn't want to belong to anyway." 'Partly true', she thought but didn't say. It had hurt at first, being stared at, made fun about. She had kept to herself after a while. It was a habit hard to break. Only in her conversations with John Carter she had recently started to open up.
"So I spent my time alone mostly, reading, drawing pictures of my Africa. Until I met Jamie. He had just come back to the US from a two-year stay in Zaire where his dad had build a bridge. We would sit for hours, talking about the people, the endless skies and spaces, the animals or we were listening to his tapes of African music. One evening after I had shown him my drawings he looked at me for what felt like an hour and then kissed me. I was shocked at first, but it was good, I guess. He is now in Africa, building bridges like his dad."
"And he was the first guy you slept with?" John was shocked. Had he really asked Kerry that? "I mean, you were a couple?" He should just stop drinking, he hadn't eaten much tonight, he had been to nervous. This was already his third beer and it had definitely gone to his head.
Kerry grinned and poured herself another drink. She hadn't expected this particular question. "Yeah, he was the first. It was about three month after that kiss. We dated each other until I left for college. I last saw him three years ago."
"And?"
Raising an eyebrow she answered: "What, you want to know what he was like in bed? It was not really what I had expected, it wasn't very long, but I liked it. I had worse lovers afterwards... "
John blushed. "I... what I wanted to ask... how... was you meeting him after all those years like... ", he stammered. Something definitely was wrong with him, he should just finish this call and go to sleep before he made a complete fool of himself. 'To late for that', he thought.
But he suddenly found it hard to concentrate, images of Kerry Weaver, a young Kerry Weaver in bed with some guy danced in his head. 'This is my last beer', he decided. And than he realised the images had aroused him. "Yeah, definitely my last beer!"
"Carter? Everything all right with you? Oh, come on! I was just making fun, I knew you didn't ask for Jamie's qualities as a lover." She realised that John was uneasy about it and wanted to calm him.
"Oh!" John was embarrassed. She was just joking, she sometimes had a strange sense of humour, right? But he was lying on his hotel-bed sporting nothing but boxer-shorts and a slight erection because he thought about his boss in bed with some teenaged boy. 'Great! Just go to sleep, John. I'm really curious what you are going to dream about.' He grinned wryly.
"Should I tell you about my first time to even things out?" He mentally slapped himself 'Clever change of topic there, Carter!'
Kerry felt John's irritation. Had it been alright to tell him even if she had told him it had been a joke? She was his boss after all. She decided to go with it. "At least then I will have something to blackmail you with when you try to tell Doug about Jamie."
"Okay, well I was seventeen and my girlfriend, Ellen, was the same age. We had met in a summercamp, but her parents lived near so we would often see each other. It wasn't easy to be alone somewhere though, I mean to be really private, because Gamma made a habit of coming into my room unannounced and Ellen's parents were mainly the same. So we often made out in the car or the far part of the park where nobody would see us. I got my first blowjob there." Oops, too much information, he was definitely drunk or tired or both. And aroused, more strongly so at the memory.
"Well anyhow, one evening we went to the movies to see a rerun of an old Ingrid Bergmann movie. The theatre was almost empty, there was this drunk in the first row who slept after ten minutes and some older people reliving some memories or something. They kept talking during the movie. The back of the cinema was empty and Ellen and I soon started kissing and making out and suddenly her hand was on my... you know... penis and she would open my zipper and stroke me."
Unconsciously his hand moved to touch himself through his shorts as he remembered Ellen's fingers there. "And then she would straddle me, lift her skirt and... well... I lasted about a minute before I came, luckily she was kissing me hard or my scream would have caused the other viewers to realise. Not really romantic, huh?"
Kerry noticed how ragged John's breathing had become. He was aroused. And she was too, she could feel the dampness between her legs. She imagined Carter in a dark cinema, being fucked by some young girl. Her hand unconsciously snuck under her sweater. "Hmm... "
What was that? It had sounded as if Kerry was groaning. "Kerry? You all right? Your hip aching?" He knew her leg gave her some problems after a day of running around the ER. It couldn't be that she... no, it had to be her hip!
"Huh? Oh, I'm ok, I was just... picturing you in that theatre. Can't be very comfortable, is it?" Had she just told him that she was fantasising about him?
"No it wasn't. But I think it would be worse for you... I mean... Ellen... sitting... on top of me... " he trailed of. Ok, now he had totally lost it. There was no way Kerry would let him stay in her basement after that, was it? He had just told her he was imagining having sex with her in a damn movie-theatre. He should add that he was jerking himself off right now while he was talking to her, his boss, for heaven's sake, just to make things perfect. 'Get a grip, John!'
She raised an eyebrow. "John, uhm, do you... what do you, you know, think of me?" Kerry wasn't sure if it was right to ask him that now but that question had been on her mind for a long time. And it was definitely time to change the course of their conversation.
The question took him aback. He had expected her to hang up on him or tell him to go search for another apartment or start yelling at him through the phone but she didn't seem to be angry. She had sounded almost shy.
He decided to be honest, it couldn't get worse, he thought. "Let's see: you are strong, funny, that is sometimes. Always good to be around, at home at least, uhm... you have a somewhat strange taste of music", maybe, if he did this right, he could stay in her house, "you are a great cook and an even better doctor, and... and you are beautiful and sexy." The last was almost a whisper. He wasn't sure if he did the right thing but he felt he had to tell her. 'Yep, John Truman Carter, you are definitely delirious! Must be the alcohol talking,'
Kerry's mind whirled. Had he just told her he found her sexy? She had thought that thing about the cinema being uncomfortable for her had come out of his concerns for her leg or that was what she had told herself. She needed another drink and quick.
At this moment Kerry remembered hearing him and Roxanne doing the wild thing in her basement. More than once she had toyed with the idea to sneak a peak, had even imagined it being herself with him one time. And now John had told her he found her sexy. Her. She was almost eight years older than him, not blond 'Well, that seems to be no problem for him' and she limped. Although she knew that her workmates didn't see it as a disability she felt that it definitely wasn't sexy.
"Carter, John, I... "