gonna_live | (no subject)

(no subject)

To add insult to injury, it's a slow week at the shop.

Kaylee closes early a couple of days with a note on the door and the autoreply in case anyone sends a wave.

It's one such day where she comes home, takes a nap, and gets up and starts to cook something complicated while barefoot.

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"It was good. Pretty routine."

He hasn't missed the signs -- comfort food in the making; elaborate cupcakes on the far counter; she's been home for a while -- but he doesn't comment, taking her hand and squeezing it, leaning in for a light kiss.

"How was yours?"

"Slow enough day that I just decided to come home." She shrugs a little, and never stops stirring the pot -- without letting go of his hand, either.

"Ah." Quiet; he keeps hold of her hand in turn.

"Can I help at all? With the cooking?"

"At this point it's mostly just stirring." Kaylee sways a little, leaning back into him.

He rubs her shoulder with his free hand. "Can I stand here and offer moral support, then?"

"Unless you got anything better to do." Wry.

"Oh, not for a little while yet."

His hand moves up her shoulder to her neck, massaging gently.

"Also ... I had a thought on the way home that I wanted to run past you."

She tilts her head a little. "Mm?"

"Well ..." He shifts in response to the head-tilt. "I realized -- the talk we had the other night, about alternatives to expanding the business? There was a possibility I overlooked."

Beat.

"Have you ever thought about going for higher education in engineering?"

Kaylee stiffens.

"School ain't for people like me." She sounds shocked. "What possessed you?"

"What do you mean, not for people like you?" His turn to sound a little shocked.

"Well... it's not. I'm not that kind of smart. I don't -- I'm not that good. I can't."

His first impulse is to react indignantly -- of course you're that good -- and to tell her she's wrong.

Slowly, instead: "I'm not going to tell you you should if you don't want to, but ... I think you're selling yourself short if you think you couldn't."

"I don't know math, Simon. And I don't know physics, and I don't know chemistry -- "

"You could learn those things," he protests, hearing his voice go defensive and trying to wrestle it back to calm. "And you've got years of hands-on experience of how those relate to machinery, and I'm sorry, I'm turning this into an argument. I didn't want that."

Kaylee's hands are shaking -- a fact which she does not entirely realize. Still, she has no problems moving the stock pot to the back burner, and turning off the front.

Turning around: "You still didn't tell me what possessed you." Her mouth is set.

Is there a good answer to that?

"I thought it could be a way for you to ... I don't know. Widen your range of opportunities. Do something bigger."

"Like what?"

He shakes his head. "I didn't have anything specific in mind, but ... maybe some angle on engineering design that could be profitable. Maybe something else entirely. It could at least give you an idea of what else you could do."

"I don't even know if they'd take my secondary certificate." Beat. "Simon, you know where I'm from, right?"

"Of course I --"

He breathes out.

"That's no reason to dismiss your qualifications. But yes. I could see it being used as one."

"We were flat out told that what we left school with wasn't gonna get us into anything wasn't a grunt track. And I didn't even bother, because who needs to waste credits I didn't have anyway on a grunt track when I had my daddy?"

Kaylee desperately wants a kitchen utensil to gesture angrily with, but the spoon would drip on the floor, and the knife seems excessive.

"I'd start from nothing. Less than nothing, if I had to requalify for secondary. And I'd fail out because I'm too rutting old."

He's gone a little pale.

"That's --" he says, and stops himself.

And starts again, quieter. "I didn't know."

Kaylee presses the heel of her hand to her forehead.

Much more subdued: "Sorry. I'm just -- I can't do it. I don't like thinkin' about what I can't do."

(What he wants to say -- to shout, if he's honest with himself -- is something about how insane that is, how completely idiotic, do they seriously think the population of Three Hills can't possibly produce anyone who could benefit from a genuine education, can they really be that stupid --)

(And he won't, because she knows, and because hearing him vent about it won't help.)

"I'm sorry," he says, low, and rests his hand on her shoulder again.