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An Ordinary Man	By : firefly124 Category: M through R > Miles Vorkosigan Saga Views: 3052 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Miles Vorkosigan Saga, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“I have to say Ivan, the last thing I expected was to wake up this morning to a comm call from you, asking me to dinner for ‘relationship advice,’” said Kareen Koudelka. She paused to take a sip of the wine the waiter had just delivered.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “First of all, I wouldn’t expect you to need it. And secondly, why come to me?”
Ivan gulped some of his wine.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “You’re uniquely qualified to help me with this, I think.”
“Oh?” she encouraged. When he didn’t answer right away, she looked around and took in the private dining room he’d reserved for them. “Qualified how?” she finally asked.
“Well, you did study a bit of psychology while you were on Beta Colony, even if you didn’t end up pursuing it further.”style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Hell, just the fact that you spent two years on Beta Colony is probably a qualification by itself.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> I mean, you’ve even been to the Orb. style='mso-spacerun:yes'> The Orb of Unearthly Delights was a galactically famous resort offering a wide range of sexual recreations for individuals, couples, and groups in any combination of three genders.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She’d gone there with his cousin Mark during their first year of school on Beta Colony, which had caused quitestyle='mso-spacerun:yes'> a stir when her parents had found out.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Somehow she’d weathered that storm, and was still with Mark. Mark the unstable clone who’d been created and programmed to assassinate and replace Miles, and then continue on some insane plot to topple the Barrayaran Empire.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Mark who’d had two years of intensive Betan therapy with Kareen at his side, sometimes literally, Ivan gathered.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> All of this added up to Kareen being the perfect confidante. Not only was she more sexually liberated in attitude than the average Barrayaran, male style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>or female, but she had some experience with the process of sorting out lunatics, if only as bystander and support.
Kareen’s eyebrows rose a bit at that.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “Well, then, who is she, and why does this relationship require pseudo-Betan therapy?”
Ivan gulped more wine, and was granted a reprieve when the waiter returned with their dinners. He applied himself to his meal with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> In fact, he barely tasted his food at all. Shame, too, this really was a very good restaurant. But he managed to feign starvation sufficiently well that they’d both finished their dinners and ordered desserts before Kareen pressed the issue.
“OK, Ivan, out with it. What is going on? You wanted to talk, or we wouldn’t be here.” She fixed him with a no nonsense stare. Such a sharp look on her otherwise soft and kind features prodded him to the task at hand.
“Right, then,” Ivan began. “So a few nights ago, I’d gotten a bit … well, I’d had rather too much to drink.” He could see Kareen visibly restraining herself from rolling her eyes. “And the next morning I found myself in bed with someone, and didn’t remember anything about the night before.”
This time she did roll her eyes.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “Ivan, you can’t tell me that was a new experience for you. In fact, you’ve probably just described a rather large percentage of your mornings after.”
“Well, yes,” he replied sheepishly, then became more withdrawn. He continued more softly, “but this time was different.”
“Different, how?”
Ivan looked at her hands, her Escobaran style blouse, and her delicately curled blonde hair. How was it he’d never woken up next to one of the Koudelka sisters, then?style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He supposed it was knowing them too long, until they were almost like his sisters. That and some idea that Commodore Koudelka would use that infamous swordstick of his on anyone who tried it. Though Mark had notably survived somehow. Finally, Ivan steeled himself, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “It was a man.”
He had to give her credit. Her eyes widened in obvious surprise, but she didn’t gasp, faint, or burst out laughing. Thus encouraged, he continued, “I still don’t remember much about it, just bits and pieces, really. But … I’m positive we did more than sleep in the same bed.”
“That’s … of all the things I’d imagined, I have to say that never entered my head at all,” Kareen said at last.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He watched her expression as she shifted into what appeared to be a clinical mode. “So, what do you think about that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was horrified. Am horrified. Especially because of who … but I have no idea what to do now.”
“Well,” she said carefully, “who says you have to do anything, now? So you drank enough to lower your inhibitions more than usual, and experimented.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> You could still write it off as just another one-night stand, couldn’t you?”
“I thought I could,” Ivan found himself slumping into his seat. “But I haven’t been sleeping.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Or, at least, I wake up terrified, have no idea why, and feel like I haven’t slept a wink.”
“No idea why?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. Ivan began to reconsider whether Kareen was actually a safer confidante than his aunt.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> She certainly wasn’t going to let him get away with anything in this conversation.
“Well, not no idea,” he admitted. “I just don’t know if I’m afraid of what happened, or afraid someone will find out, or what.”
Kareen swirled her wine and appeared to contemplate it carefully. The waiter returned with their desserts, and then they were alone again. “Did you consider those are not the only possibilities?”
His brow creased as he tried to scare up some more.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “Um, no?” Being afraid of whatever part of himself had led to that situation was at the top of his list, such as it was. Wine or no wine, something like that did not just come from nowhere.
“Hmm.” She took a bite of her dessert, some sort of fruit pastry. Ivan ignored his. “Well, here are at least two others: you’re afraid it will happen again, or you’re afraid it won’t.”
Ivan sat in stunned silence. He found himself in those eddies of memories again.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Lips pressed furiously against his … a warm mouth descending upon and pleasuring him skillfully … pain that became pleasure …style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Even that last bit was essentially a good memory, vague as it was. But he wasn’t … he liked women dammit. And this was Byerly of all people! And he was in the Service, and his mother would kill him, and Miles would torment him until the end of time. But those were pretty good memories.
“Maybe both?” he was embarrassed by the way his voice squeaked on that.
Kareen looked at him sympathetically, but said nothing.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He looked at her, beseechingly he hoped, willing her to tell him what to do. Since she wasn’t cooperating, he finally asked, “What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “But since you don’t know what you’re supposed to do either, how about trying to figure out what you want to do?”
“What I wa … But I don’t know what that is, either,” he protested.
“Well, you started to say something about style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>who you woke up with.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> So it’s someone you know, then, right?”style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Ivan nodded carefully, hoping against hope she wouldn’t ask who, exactly, he’d gone and slept with.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Miraculously, she didn’t.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> “Then, what do you want to happen next with him?” she asked. Ivan looked blank. “Do you want to never see him again?”
“I’ve always thought I’d prefer never to see him again.” He’d spent a fair amount of energy towards that goal over the past couple of years, in fact, futile though it was. Between their jobs and the fact they traveled in social circles that frequently intersected, he couldn’t avoid Byerly completely.
“But now?”
“I … don’t know.” He looked at his hands and thought about the lingering sensations in his shoulder after he’d brushed past By as he left his apartment.
“Well, try the opposite. Do you want to see him again?”
Ivan pondered that a minute. “I sort of have to. Our paths cross pretty often.”
“I didn’t ask that, I asked if you want to.”
“I … don’t know.” Why couldn’t she focus on the easy questions, like what he thought would happen to his career if word of this ever got out, or what radius of land would be turned to glow-in-the-dark glass if his mother ever found out?
Kareen’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment he swore she was looking straight into his skull. She appeared to choose her next words very carefully.
“Do you want to kiss him again?”
“God … ” Ivan started to deny any such thing, but the hazy memory of Byerly’s lips pressing into his intruded, followed quickly by the much clearer memory of how he’d felt brushing against him as he left By’s apartment after returning his belt, and he spoke the next word before he realized what he was saying, “… yes!”
He opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he’d closed, and saw Kareen smiling at him understandingly.
“Then I guess you know which of your options you want to exercise,” she said, with an odd emphasis he didn’t quite grasp.
“But how …”
“Ivan,” she interrupted, clearly exasperated, “of all the people on this planet, style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>surely you can manage to plan a style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>date. In fact,” she swept her hand to encompass the room they were in, “I’m quite certain of it.”
“Oh.” Ask Byerly on a date. Of course.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Here? “Umm.”
“I’m also certain that if even this is too public, you can come up with something else.”
Ivan thought about it a bit. Yes, he probably could pull off a dinner at his apartment.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> He nodded, and was relieved to see her annoyance melt into something more like her normal sweetness.style='mso-spacerun:yes'> Secure in having a plan of action, such as it was, he picked up his fork and addressed his dessert, as he started sorting out ideas for how to set up a date with Byerly.
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An Ordinary Man