Chapter Text
Christine Chapel finally learned the truth.
Despite Leonard’s general rumbling to the contrary, the majority of away missions went off without any major catastrophes. The crew knew what they were doing, the captain could usually charm his way out of serious trouble, and the command-trifecta of captain, first officer, and doctor generally came up with a safe way for everyone to survive missions in one piece. However, there were still missions that went bad, and the one on Regulus III certainly qualified. No one died, but everyone had come back with injuries. The worst this time around wasn’t the captain, though, it was the doctor. Leonard McCoy was trapped in a biobed in his own Sickbay while an osteo-regenerator worked to restore his shattered femur.
Leonard wasn’t the horrible patient most people suspected. He was horrible when the captain was a patient, grumping around and refusing to leave Sickbay until Kirk was completely up and about, but on his own he wasn’t too bad. Although he always insisted on poking through his own charts, he trusted his staff. He wouldn’t exactly relax – man was a workaholic, and had admitted once to Chapel that, yes, that was part of the reason his first marriage didn’t make it (she figured workaholics married to each other worked better) – but he would do paperwork, sip tea (not coffee), and generally shoot the breeze when Sickbay was quiet. After M’Benga and Chapel sent everyone else home, including a reluctant Kirk, Christine decided to just pop the question and have it out there.
“All right, Leonard. I’m attempting this because you’re still a bit high on painkillers.” Her statement earned her a semi-inquisitive eyebrow but no grumbling. Christine was generally a direct person, and Leonard appreciated that. “How did you and the captain get together?”
“It’s not as exci-”
Christine gave him a look. While she didn’t have the sort of eyebrow control her boss managed, she had her own arsenal which was plenty effective. “We’ve all heard that one. We’ve also heard about the time you saved the captain from amnesia, when he faked an engagement to get into your sickroom,” she was counting off on her fingers, “how the two of you saved the world with the power of the element of love, when he hired you as a ‘long-term date’-“
Leonard coughed up a bit of the cookie he was having with his tea. He had a serious weakness for cookies, though Chapel considered herself sworn to secrecy on that point. “He said I was a prostitute?!”
“Escort. Higher class.” Christine had to laugh at the doctor’s expression, which somehow managed to both accept this insanity and be clearly pissed off about it. “And…oh, the time you went under cover and fell for his incredible innate ‘hotness’ during the Mr. Terra pageant. But really . . . Doctor. Everyone knows you were friends at the Academy. Uhura says she watched you meet for the first time on the shuttle in from the Iowa Shipyards. So how did you go from being friends to getting married five minutes before sneaking him on board the Enterprise?”
Leonard finished cleaning up the scattered side effects of choking on cookie crumbs and said, “You know this is going to blow all these grandiose ideas everyone keeps building up out of the water.”
Christine patted his hand. “If it’ll break too many hearts, I’ll keep it to myself.”
Leonard shrugged. “Just Jim’s. But, fine.” Leonard raised his eyes and gazed at Christine with great seriousness. His eyebrows indicated that at this point they were Not Playing. “This is the truth, Nurse Chapel: I asked him on a date.”
“…What?” Christine frowned.
“I asked him on a date. We’d known each other since the shuttle to San Francisco, which I'm sure Uhura has told everyone. He’d been tomcatting around, being Jim, the first two years, but he’d really backed off fifth semester and started focusing on his classes. He had to, since he was loading up so much. So I said, ‘We should go on a date.’ He said yes. And that’s what happened.”
Christine’s own eyebrows rose together. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“What was your first date?” she asked hopefully. Surely such an epic romance didn’t start with dinner and a holovid. She hoped.
Leonard quirked a small smile and his eyes softened. “Hamburgers by the bay. Then we went to see some horrible 20th century romantic comedy he’d been yammering about.”
“A romcom? Really?”
“Yes, really, lord, woman. He is addicted to those things, though I’ll deny it if you ever tell anyone because it’s damn embarrassing.” He adjusted the cover over his lap a bit. “Then we went home to our separate dorms.”
“Separate dorms.” Christine knew every ounce of doubt showed in her voice.
The smile spread a bit, mischievously. “I don’t put out on first dates, Chapel.”
Christine was quiet a moment. Then she said, “You’re right.”
“Hmm?”
“That is fantastically boring.”
Leonard rolled his eyes. “Maybe next time you’ll decide to believe me.”