Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Author’s note: The Vulcan and Romulan words can be translated by holding the cursor over the phrase.

The battle alarm blared, intruder alert repeating over and over again from the loudspeakers, the sound of phaser fire getting ever closer down the corridor. Nurse Chapel activated the shields around the intensive care biobeds, Doctor M’Benga swore under his breath as he tried to set the broken arm of a security officer who was squirming with desperation to get out to the fight. Doctor Leonard McCoy stood frozen in the middle of the sickbay floor, blood pounding in his ears, a red smoke of panic burning up his throat. Not again, not again, not again.

In a chaos of yelling and swearing a group of security officers tumbled into the sickbay, in the middle of a firefight with several tall humanoids.

“Get out, you fuckers!” Chapel, caught between the fight and a patient in a biobed, screamed at the Romulans. One swung towards her, weapon in hand. Not again, not again, not again. Leonard jumped in front of her, lunging at the attacker. The disruptor fired. His knees buckled and he hit the deck hard.

The Romulans disappeared down the corridor, security in pursuit.

“You chauvinistic asshole,” yelled Chapel. “I can look after myself, you know. My combat scores are way better than yours. You could’ve been killed. What were you thinking?”

Leonard lay curled on his side on the floor, hot aches searing through his patellae and twisting up his thighs. Chapel’s voice echoed through the pain, with M’Benga somewhere in the distance trying to calm her down. The disruptor fire had missed, the sickly green light burning past his hair, thanks to Chapel kicking his knees out as she’d dropped to the floor.

You could’ve been killed. What were you thinking?

He’d been thinking that being dead would be a relief, but he didn’t say so. He brushed off their offers of help - rather perfunctory offers it seemed to him - and limped into his office. He snapped out orders to blank the windows and lock the door. With an only slightly shaking hand he opened the bottom drawer of his desk to pull out a bottle of Scotty’s moonshine. He poured a generous measure into a shot glass and tossed it back in one swift, eye-watering, throat-burning swallow.

If only the rest of his troubles could be disposed of so easily.

* * *

He was back in the sickbay dealing with the wounded – the surviving intruders having apparently escaped via the emergency shuttles – when Jim and Spock strode in, accompanied by Commander Goss, the chief of security. Jim was in mid-rant, focused on Goss. “--and why weren’t the shuttles better secured? It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before, for fuck’s sake.”

He ignored them for a long moment, staring with laser focus at the shattered shoulder joint he was in the process of stabilizing. He didn’t want to talk to them. He didn’t want to talk at all.

“Bones, in your office. Now.”

He handed the regenerator over to Chapel, who was now refusing to speak to him, and followed the other men into the small room that had once been a sanctuary but now felt more like a trap.

“Bones, what the fuck were you thinking?” snapped Jim. “Don’t endanger our boys by getting mixed up in the fighting. Stick to doctoring, okay? Stick to what you’re good at.”

Leonard glared back, fists clenched at his side, not trusting himself to speak. Not good for much these days, was he? He’d only been trying to help.

He realized he’d lost track of what Jim was saying. “--assessment of injuries to my padd. Spock, finish the damage inspection with Goss. I’ll be back on the bridge.”

Jim marched out. Leonard swallowed hard. He’d failed Jim – yet again. Been rejected by Jim – yet again. Goss turned to follow their captain, hissing at Leonard as he went. “Get out of the way in a battle, doctor. Jump in a cupboard or under a bed or something. Just don’t get any more of my guys killed.”

A tidal wave of anger surged up through Leonard, anger fuelled by the alcohol, the exhaustion, the fear, the pain, and under it all the ever-present guilt. He grabbed Goss with one arm and swung straight at his face with the other.

A hot hand wrapped lightning-fast around his wrist, stopping the punch as his knuckles connected with the nose of the security chief. “Doctor McCoy. Desist. Lieutenant Commander Goss, your remarks were inappropriate. Wait in the corridor.”

Leonard stood, fine shudders running through him with every breath, frozen in place by the first officer’s implacable grip. He knew Vulcans were strong but experiencing it was still remarkable. His vision was blurred, his pulse pounding under the skin. He felt nauseous with arrested adrenaline.

“Doctor McCoy. What were you thinking?”

Honest to god, he was sick of that question. Furiously, agonizingly, terminally sick of it.

What had he been thinking? He’d been thinking that he didn’t have the fucking guts to kill himself but he really wouldn’t mind being taken out by the enemy. Recompense, blood-price, a life for a life. A finish, an end, a final termination – no more wading through the shit in his own head, the guilt in his own heart. No more trying to stumble on, day after awful day.

He let the excess adrenaline flood out through his mouth, a torrent of belligerent bullshit, anything to stop Spock from focusing on his real motives. “You interfering pointy-eared ass… he fucking had it coming… what part of your emotionally-deprived computer-driven alien brain fails to understand...”

The Vulcan’s hand remained in a tight hot clasp on the skin of his wrist, like a brand, like a handcuff.

“Doctor McCoy, please accompany me.” The hand shifted from wrist to shoulder and he was firmly turned and walked towards the door. Leonard bit down on his furious objection. He might have gone a little far – yet again. He needed to get himself under control. He didn’t want Spock dragging Jim into this. He couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in Jim’s eyes – yet again.

He had been expecting to go to the XO’s office, but to his bewilderment Spock escorted him to his cabin. Spock punched in an override code and guided Leonard in, following him in without waiting for permission or invitation. Once the door had closed behind them Spock turned to him. “Doctor, I am concerned about your welfare. You have been unusually withdrawn and cantankerous lately, even by your personally aggressive standards.”

“My aggressive standards….” Leonard spluttered at the XO in disbelief. “What the hell are you on about? My welfare ain’t any of your damn business!”

“As first officer, the welfare of the crew is specifically and explicitly my business.”

“Well, fuck off and find someone who needs your tender care.”

Spock ignored this outburst, his face the same infuriating, impenetrable mask of superior smugness as ever.

“CMO McCoy, in my capacity as first officer of the USS Enterprise, I am temporarily relieving you of duty. You are to remain in your cabin until I return after shift. I will then determine a course of action.”

Spock strode out of the door, leaving Leonard spluttering behind him. “No fucking way.” Leonard punched in his door code but it didn’t work. He punched in the CMO override. That didn’t work either. He typed out a quick rant to M’Benga, but simply got an error message saying outgoing communications were disabled except to the first officer. Shaking with fury, he smashed out a less than coherent message to Spock.

All he got back was: Your cabin or the brig. I will return at the end of alpha shift.

The brig? What the hell? He shot off another furious message.

The reply came through almost instantly. Attempted assault on the chief of security.

Leonard took a deep breath. He had to get a grip on himself. Assault of a fellow officer. Relieved of duty. This wasn’t looking good. Damn, he needed a drink. He pulled a bottle out of his bedside drawer. Just a quick shot, help him to think this through.

So he was a little stressed. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have reason. And yes, he’d probably tell someone else in his position that they needed to talk to someone, that they should get counseling.

But who the hell was he supposed to talk to? There were no counselors on the ship. They were barely up to strength with essential crew. He couldn’t turn to his own junior medical staff, they were all stressed enough as it was. Jim was barely speaking to him, all brusque orders and cancelling their weekly dinners. Spock had never spoken to him, beyond his usual smug sneers. Scotty had nothing more to offer than alcohol. Trapped in a tin can with hundreds of people living only yards away from him, how could he feel so agonizingly alone?

There was no one else. After the debacle with the first Romulan boarding party, Starfleet Command had made it excruciatingly plain how little they thought of him. His hand strayed down to the folded letter in his pocket, a letter he touched a dozen times a day. He didn’t need to read it any more. He knew it by heart.

Another shot to chase down the first, to settle his tattered nerves. Relieved of duty? What did that mean? A transfer off the ship? A dishonorable discharge? In some ways it might be a relief. A way out of this endless nightmare of his own making.

He stared moodily at his monitor, where he left the Romulans: language and culture briefing booklet open at the long list of innovative insults. Hhaes faelirh nnea vagram h'levreinnye . The Romulans did know how to phrase a good insult. That was about the only thing you could say for the nasty fuckers.

The obscenities were the only thing of any value in the stupid booklet. Leonard had filled some of the long hours between shifts teaching himself Romulan invective. It made him feel a little better to curse the bastards in their own language. He downed another shot.

Know your enemy. Did those inept idiots back at Starfleet Command really think a briefing booklet would help win this war? Except that it wasn’t even a damned war, was it? The fat-assed brass were too scared to call it as they saw it. It was just a ‘police action’, patrolling the frontier. Out here at the edges of Federation space, under-manned and poorly supplied, no one cared about the enemy’s ‘culture’. All anyone wanted to do was kill the bastards.

Not that Leonard had exactly contributed to that objective, now had he? Once more he ran his thumb along the folded square of paper in his pocket. Lieutenant Commander Dr Leonard H. McCoy. CMO of the USS Enterprise. Savior of Romulans. Killer of his own Starfleet comrades. Nvimm nhaidh eihwai taortuu indeed.

He poured himself another shot. He should have asked for a transfer after it happened. But how could he bring himself to leave Jim? Of course whether Jim still needed him as much as he had in the Academy was a moot point, but as Captain of the USS Enterprise in the middle of an escalating conflict with the Romulans, he certainly needed a competent CMO.

Presumably Spock was busy finding Jim a new one as he signed off Leonard’s transfer papers. Damn, the shot glass was just too small. More efficient to drink straight from the bottle.

* * *

“Doctor McCoy, what have you done?”

Leonard cracked open an eye and peered at the highly polished boots of the first officer. He seemed to be lying on a heap of Starfleet uniforms. He levered himself up on one elbow and peered around. There were a lot of shards of glass on the floor.

“Bottle was empty,” he offered. “S’glass. Be careful.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth and his voice sounded odd, slurred and graceless. The bottle had emptied itself so he’d found another one, but then that one had been empty too. That had been annoying. Deeply annoying.

So he’d thrown the bottle against the wall. That had felt satisfying. Smashing the second bottle into his monitor had felt even more so. Then it had somehow seemed logical that if he was going to be forcibly removed from the ship, he needed to pack. He’d pulled everything out of the cupboards onto the floor. Somehow the mess he’d made had been too reminiscent of the chaos inside of his head and he’d tried to wreck the cabin to match his mood. With the furniture bolted down that hadn’t worked as well but he’d got all the bedding onto the floor, along with the holos and the glasses that he had stored by the food synthesizer.

Nauseous and dizzy, he’d then lain down on the pile of clothes on the floor, just to rest his pounding head.

“Doctor McCoy, we will repair to my cabin.”

He was manhandled onto his feet and walked out of the mess of his own quarters, down the corridor and into the pristine interior of Spock’s cabin.

Spock sat him down at the small table that stood beside the meditation mat and turned to fiddle with the food synthesizer. Dazed, Leonard gazed around the room. “S’warm,” he slurred stupidly.

“I have the ambient temperature raised to a level approximate with a winter’s day on the erstwhile planet Vulcan. I can lower it if the heat makes you uncomfortable,” said Spock as he placed a glass of Vulcan tea in front of the doctor.

“S’nice,” muttered Leonard. “S’like Georgia in summer. Hotter ‘n goat’s ass inna pepper patch. Miss that. Hate the ship, so cold.”

“The temperature is selected for optimum functioning of the electronic systems on board, and for the majority species, which in this instance is Terran.” Spock regarded him thoughtfully. “It had not occurred to me that humans might differ in their requirements.”

“Colder ‘n a witch’s tit in this tin can,” muttered Leonard, cupping his hands around the glass of hot tea.

Spock raised an eyebrow. “That comment is both illogical and incomprehensible, doctor. If the purpose of verbal utterances is effective communication, that fails comprehensively.”

If Spock had hoped that he would rise to the bait, he was disappointed.

“Failed. Yeah, sums it up.”

“You believe you have failed? How do you justify that conclusion?”

Leonard stared at him in muzzy confusion. Surely Spock had already concluded that he was an irredeemable failure. Wasn’t that why he was here?

“How the fuck d’you think? Twelve dead ‘n my sickbay. Unreplacable, no, irreplaceable with us stranded in ass-end of space. Dozens of others, pushed back to work, walking wounded. Equipment screwed, supplies screwed. Staff hate me. Jim hates me. Brass hate me. What's the point, Spock? No point. Better off dead.” Leonard rested his aching head on the table top. He was vaguely aware that he made a morose drunk and that maybe he should pull himself together but it all seemed too much effort.

“Drink it,” ordered Spock, pushing the glass of tea towards him.

Too discouraged to protest, he drank and discovered that the warm spicy liquid was unusual but surprisingly pleasant, leaving just a trace of warm burn down the back of his throat, the faintest echo of a desert planet far away and now long gone. He continued to stare at the empty glass, confused by his growing haziness.

“S’something in it,” he protested fuzzily. “Y’drugged me!”

“You require rest, doctor,” came the abrupt reply, the carefully clipped words reaching him from ever further away. The world slumped into itself and dissolved into darkness.

* * *

Leonard jerked awake in a disorientated panic, his head pounding. He’d slept far too long. He’d be missing his shift. He had to get to sickbay. He looked around in confusion. The room was too warm, the light was wrong, it wasn’t his cabin… His movement set a padd beeping somewhere nearby. He found it lying by the bed and read the message in bewilderment.

Doctor McCoy, I have put you on three-day R+R. For the moment you are confined to my cabin. There is food by the bed if you require it. I will return after alpha shift.

Commander Spock

Next to the padd was a hangover hypo and a glass of tea. He plunged the hypo into his neck and tried to think straight. He was on rest and recovery?

Shore leave was a distant memory since Romulan birds-of-prey had begun making provocative raids on the Earth Outpost Stations that were built on asteroids along the edge of the Romulan neutral zone. The Enterprise was one of a handful of ships sent out in defense. They had repeatedly requested permission to engage in hot pursuit into the neutral zone but had been refused every time.

The raids were technically acts of war as per the Treat of Cheron, which had marked the end of the devastating Earth-Romulan war. The fear among the higher-ups was that the Romulan Empire was beginning a policy of destabilization, just as they had in the years before the first war. It fitted with what was known of Romulan battle tactics, attempting to manipulate an adversary into breaking – or appearing to break – an agreement in order to give the Romulans justification for striking.

The Federation was in no position to go to war with the Romulan Star Empire. Yet the lives of their citizens were at stake and with the public angry and frightened since the Vulcan genocide, tolerating the raids was not an option. Awkward attempts at diplomacy were being made over sub-space radio but the Romulans showed little interest in engaging. So it was left to the likes of the Enterprise to form a thin silver line of defense desperately stretched along the vastness of the neutral zone border.

If the crew wasn’t engaged in combat or pursuit, they were engaged in never ending cycles of repairs. Even days off were becoming increasingly rare as the slowly diminishing crew numbers struggled to fight on with ever more damaged equipment. The most dangerous – and disconcerting – element of it was the Romulans’ ability to appear out of the black right next to the Enterprise. They had some kind of cloaking technology but as yet no one could work out what it was.

And that had been before the Romulans had begun an almost suicidal set of on-board incursions. In most instances all the invaders had been killed, or had killed themselves on capture, although a few had managed to escape back to their vessels. The exact purpose of the invasions was not clear but it certainly sent stress-levels among the crew sky high. Even the Federation flagship no longer felt safe.

To try to compensate for the escalating anxiety, crew members were rotated through R+R, three consecutive days off shift. Even some members of the senior bridge crew had taken it, although of course neither Jim nor Spock had. Neither had Leonard.

And why the hell was he confined to Spock’s cabin? Still puzzling at the message, he absently drank the glass of tea set by the bed. As the hazy blackness enveloped him again, he realized he’d fallen for it a second time. Fucking tricky Vulcans… never trust an alien….

* * *

Leonard woke to an awareness of another presence in the cabin. Looking around through slitted eyes, he saw Spock’s still form kneeling elegantly on the meditation mat. He’d slept right through alpha shift? That was nearly 24 hours of sleep. No wonder he needed to piss. He got up awkwardly, horribly conscious of his rumpled uniform and scruffy cheeks, at a lost as to how to address the first officer.

“While you use the washroom, I will prepare food,” said Spock simply. Leonard found a clean uniform laid out by the sink. The sonic shower cleared away some of his woolly-headedness and using a depilator made him feel a little more respectable. Warily he joined Spock at the small table, wondering how on earth to begin excusing his behavior from the day before, let alone trying to salvage his Starfleet career. He was surprised when Spock briefly touched his wrist, just where the skin lay exposed below the sleeve. He was even more surprised when Spock fussed with the table settings and then laid a plate of food in front of him.

“Fried chicken! And gravy! How the hell did you get the damned food synthesizer to cough this up?”

“With careful programming the machines can be made to produce more than the essentials.”

The appearance of food that he had loved from back home made him realize that he really was hungry. Leonard had wolfed down most of it before he took breath long enough to say: “But isn’t this illogical? Aren’t the synthesizers programmed to produce optimally nutritious tasteless crap given the dwindling supply of raw ingredients available?”

“The current standard diet is indeed optimized to maximize nutritional content while emphasizing sustainability over time given the likely lack of imminent resupply. However, that does not negate the fact that at times the positive psychological impact of ‘comfort food’ outweighs other considerations.”

“Fucking Vulcans,” muttered Leonard as he wiped the plate clean with something that was a fair approximation of cornbread, given that the nearest genuine cornbread was many sectors away. “Why use one word when fifty will do?”

“Precision in communication is to be desired,” retorted Spock. “With regard to precision, I wish to return to our conversation yesterday evening.”

“We had a conversation?” mumbled Leonard. “What was I thinking?” While he recalled with painful clarity the events in the sickbay and immediately after his incarceration in his cabin, his memories of what had followed were muddled.

“You enumerated various reasons why you believe that you are failing as CMO,” said Spock, handing Leonard the inevitable glass of tea. Leonard stared at it suspiciously. “I have not added a sedative. I believe that tonight you are less in need of it.”

Leonard sipped at it cautiously and waited. Being lectured by Spock was not high on his list of preferred activities, but given the events of yesterday he suspected that he deserved it. It was better than being ordered to transfer.

“Doctor McCoy,” started Spock. “I am aware that human over-emotionalism frequently leads to facts being misinterpreted. I am not qualified to comment on ways in which human emotional states may go awry. But I am qualified to offer an impartial analysis of the statistics pertinent to the case.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“The USS Enterprise is designed to be fully manned by a crew of 1100. Due to the impact of the Battle of Vulcan, we launched with only 902, undermanned by 18%. Before the commencement of on-going hostilities with the Romulan Empire our numbers had been reduced to 894, three lives lost on away missions, one fatal accident on-board and four who transferred due to personal issues.”

“Yeah. So?”

“In the six months of hostilities, a further nineteen crew members have been killed. As you pointed out, twelve died despite the attentions of the medical staff. The others were dead before your team could reach them.”

“I know all this, Spock,” Leonard ground out between clenched teeth. “D’you really think I don’t?”

“I am concerned that you have the numbers out of perspective. To lose two percent of the crew in six months of active warfare is well within Starfleet parameters.”

Leonard jumped to his feet before he could think, his heart thumping viciously in his chest. “They aren’t fucking numbers, you cold-blooded bastard, they aren’t fucking percentages. They’re people! With friends on board and family back home, with dreams and plans that extend beyond this fucking filthy war. Y’all assholes in command are always forgetting that!”

“Doctor McCoy, I know. They are all beings who fall under my specific care as first officer and head of personnel. But they are also soldiers, giving their lives to protect friends and families in the Federation. Giving protection that is needed.”

Six billion dead Vulcans hovered in the air between them.

Feeling chastened and stupid, Leonard sat back down.

“As the CMO you can only hold yourself responsible for those deaths that happened within the sickbay. By my calculations, 147 critically injured crew have been treated by yourself or your staff in the last six months. Twelve have died. All the survivors have been able to resume their duties, only eight with any diminution of capacity, another remarkable statistic. To lose only eight percent in a war scenario is well below Starfleet average of 17.3 percent.”

Spock fell silent. Leonard stared at him.

“Is this your idea of boosting morale? Quoting strings of damned numbers at me?”

Spock carefully smoothed down the front of his already pristine uniform. “Doctor, to summarize, you are running your sickbay with remarkable efficiency, despite being under-staffed with denuded resources and damaged equipment.”

Oh.

Leonard buried his face in his hands, suddenly feeling terribly tired. “Even if it is currently acceptable, I can’t keep it up. We both know I’m spiraling down into burn-out. I think my behavior yesterday proves that. Quoting percentages at me isn’t going to change anything. And once I’ve been thrown out of Starfleet, who the hell is ever going to want to employ me? If I can’t be a doctor, what’s the point?”

Spock regarded him. “I will consider those questions,” he said eventually.

“Spock, it was just rhetorical, you’ve better things to do.”

“I believe we have discussed enough for one evening. Go to sleep, Leonard. We will talk again tomorrow.”

“I should go back to my cabin…” started Leonard, oddly reluctant to leave the comforting warmth of Spock’s quarters.

“Order has not yet been restored in your cabin,” replied Spock, steering him firmly back towards the sleeping quarters. “Your presence here is not intrusive, nor is it unwelcome. I will mediate and then continue my duties. Go to bed.”

Leonard drifted to sleep wondering whether Spock was keeping him like some kind of house cat, a living being to come home to rather than facing an empty cabin. Leonard wouldn’t mind having someone to come home to himself.

* * *

Leonard woke the next morning to find that he’d slept for another solid 12 hours and was once again alone in Spock’s cabin. The padd blinked with its morning message.

Doctor McCoy, I must ask you to remain in my cabin but you are free to make use of it as you wish. I have taken the liberty of procuring you some reading material. Some titles I believe you are familiar with. Others might interest you, extrapolating from the source material. We will talk further tonight.

Spock

Leonard sighed. He wasn’t at all sure he was up to another morale building numerical lecture, but then it wasn’t as if he had anything else to look forward to. He peered curiously at the electronic book titles listed below the note, and was startled into laughter. Spock had found him all eleven of the Wade Pennington books, the semi-alcoholic, hard-assed, soft-hearted red-neck detective so popular in the early 22nd century. Leonard had loved those books, had used them as an escape all through the exhausting challenge of accelerated medical training. He hadn’t thought to read them in years.

Listed below were a selection of more modern books in the same genre, most of which Leonard had never heard of. What on earth was Spock doing, sourcing 100-year-old books for the CMO? Didn’t he have a ship to run, a war to win? Leonard was too captivated by the books to give it much thought. He showered quickly, extracted breakfast and Vulcan tea – no other beverages apparently being available – from the food synthesizer and went back to bed with the padd. He wasn’t going to admit it any time soon but he was enjoying this odd opportunity to spend time somewhere other than his cold cabin or the sickbay. He liked the warmth of Spock’s cabin. He liked the exotic scent.

By the time Spock returned from alpha shift, Leonard had re-read his favorite two Pennington books and was deeply engrossed in a novel by a late 22nd century Alabama author who’d set the Pennington clichés on their heads with a redneck detective working off-planet who had made first contact with several of the races that would eventually found the Federation. It was both scathingly funny and surprisingly insightful. Leonard was entranced. In the tough years of his medical training, he had regularly used popular literature as an escape mechanism. How had he lost sight of that particular coping strategy?

“How did you know?” demanded Leonard as they sat down to dinner once more, this time back to eating the standard depressing ship’s cuisine. Spock had again taken care with the meal’s presentation and he had again taken a moment to touch Leonard on the wrist with his fingertips. The heat lingered on the doctor’s skin like the warmth of a log fire.

“Soon after we launched, you were profiled in Full Thrusters,” replied Spock. “You gave the Pennington books as your favorite literature.”

Leonard boggled. He didn’t even remember the interview. The ship’s recreational magazine had fallen by the wayside once the ‘police action’ had begun. “Spock, what is this?” He waved his hand between the two of them. “I thought you were going to kick me out. What are you doing tracking down my favorite detective novels? Don’t you have a war to fight?”

“Doctor, it takes considerably less time to find detective novels than it takes to find a new CMO, especially a CMO with your level of competence. Keeping our personnel functioning as effectively as possible is our best weapon in this war.”

Leonard looked at him in surprise. Was that a compliment? From the ice-for-blood, positive-reinforcement-is-an-emotionally-wasteful-activity Vulcan XO?

“Further to that point, I would like to return to your concern about your future employment opportunities. I have come--”

“So you do want to get rid of me,” Leonard interrupted, his anxiety spiking again. For all his growing anxiety over his ability to do his job properly, he didn’t want to be forced out.

“I have come to realize that humans can be encouraged to stay by being made to feel that they have the option to leave. You may be aware that at the end of every five-year mission there is competition among other organizations to recruit the best of the crew?”

Actually, Leonard had never thought about it. He’d always assumed that he’d worry about career choices once he’d managed to finish the Starfleet training. Then the Narada appeared and next thing he knew he was CMO of the Enterprise and had been booted straight back into space. Making choices hadn’t really come into it.

“Influential institutions put in speculative bids while the mission is ongoing, so that they will be at the top of the list when the mission terminates. I used my personnel clearance to access your file.” He called up a page on the holographic monitor embedded in the wall by the table.

Leonard stared in confusion at the list that appeared. Apparently he had pre-emptive invitations from Starfleet Medical in San Francisco, from the FHO - the Federation Health Organization - and from Doctors Without Borders, the now multi-system voluntary organization that provided urgent medical care to victims of war and disaster regardless of species, race, or politics. Names of a dozen less prestigious institutions followed.

“Your future employability would not seem to be in doubt,” said Spock dryly.

“But they don’t yet know how badly I’m fucked up,” protested Leonard.

“Starfleet recognizes that both doctors and soldiers burn out. If it had been known that we were going into a war zone, we would not be on a five year rotation. We would be rotated out every 12 months. However, Starfleet does not have the personnel to do that at the moment. If you resigned your commission, Doctors Without Borders would not hold that rejection of war service against you. Neither would the FHO.

“Leonard, I took the further liberty of updating your résumé, something I notice that you have not done since entering Starfleet.” The Vulcan seemed subtly disapproving of such a neglect of personal organization. “May I suggest that you read it through as if you were reading a résumé with a view to hiring?” He pulled up the document on the monitor.

Leonard wasn’t entirely sure why he was letting the Vulcan boss him around like this, but then it wasn’t as if anyone else had cared to spend any time with him recently. He settled in to read as Spock worked through some matters on his padd.

He was familiar enough with his time in Atlanta, although in hindsight it was impressive how much he had packed in to his accelerated medical training. Again, he knew his research for grafting neural tissue to the cerebral cortex but he hadn’t realized how many new procedures it had initiated in the years that followed. He was now being heralded as the father of a whole new branch of cerebral surgery. Spock had helpfully linked to all the progeny that his research had spawned.

The hectic blur that had been his three years at the Academy turned out to have produced a number of research papers. Then there was the Starfleet Academy Excellence Award for Surgery, given to him for his operation on Captain Pike in the chaos of the Narada incident. In the madness that had followed he’d forgotten about that. Pike’s name gave him a painful tug and he moved swiftly on.

He knew his years in space had produced a few publications. He’d certainly encountered enough interesting material in the bizarre adventures of the Enterprise. He was astonished to see how long the list was when all collected in one place – Journal of the Terran Medical Association, The Lancet, Proceedings of the Federation Surgical Association, The Tricorder – the list went on.

“Doctor McCoy, can you explain the advisory notes that accompany many of these publications?”

At Leonard’s look of puzzlement Spock clicked through to an example. The doctor laughed as he read.

“I shot off papers to all sorts of publications.” Writing up research papers had been the primary way he’d filled the long hours between shifts. “But I’d get these bullshit replies claiming that I’d not done a review of the current literature, or I’d not addressed the conflicting opinions of Dr. Pompous Ass Never Left His Planet, or could I please expand on this point or remove that one or rework it to fit the journal house style.”

“And then?” asked Spock, offering the one raised eyebrow that Leonard had occasionally suspected meant that the Vulcan was actually laughing at him.

“I’d fly off the handle and send back a scathing reply telling them that I’m the CMO of the Federation flagship, and in the middle of a fucking war zone keeping their fat asses safe back home, and I don’t have time for their bureaucratic bullshit. Amazingly most of them still published.”

The example Spock had pulled up had his scathing letter printed verbatim next to his article. What Leonard hadn’t kept track of were the wealth of comments that his articles had attracted. Many were critical of the content or style but far more were fascinated by the subject matter and in agreement that the uniqueness of McCoy’s material and the originality of his findings warranted certain concessions to convention.

Leonard was soon wading happily through the comments, muttering under his breath about imbeciles and feeble-minded idiots and people who’d found their medical degrees in cereal boxes. When had he stopped reading more than just the essential digest of research supplied by Starfleet Medical to all ships’ sickbays? At some point in the last year he’d started to believe that the medical literature simply highlighted his own isolation and inadequacy, left swabbing snotty noses in the ass-end of space. Which was clearly nonsense. Someone needed to hold these asinine simpletons to account.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself, doctor.”

“Dammit, Spock. This is a labor of love! Why would you do all this for me?”

“For someone of organized mind and disciplined habits, it is rapid and simple work,” stated Spock dryly.

Leonard narrowed his eyes. Was he being teased? “But hold on one damned minute--I thought you wanted me to stay. Why’re you updating my résumé?”

“It is a tool that I learnt from Nyota,” Spock replied. “You may recall the incident with the denizens of Keyigbayiri?”

That had been back in the early days of the mission, back when they were still expecting to focus on deep-space exploration. Uhura had struggled to translate the language of a newly discovered species. A minor miscalculation had led to Jim causing unpardonable offence, the away team having to fight their way out of the capital, Jim being critically injured and the first Enterprise crew member being killed. It seemed a lifetime ago now.

“I found Nyota updating her résumé and feared that she intended to leave the Enterprise. She blamed herself for the death of Ensign Lu. She reassured me that she would not be giving up so easily but knowing that she had the option and the capability to leave made it easier for her to stay. In the strictest terms, the logic seems flawed but it appears to work for humans. I have since used this strategy successfully with other crew members in distress.”

Leonard leant back in his chair and regarded the first officer. “Good lord, Spock, you’re actually learning to manipulate humans by applying order to our tangled emotions. I’m impressed.” He found himself actually smiling at the Vulcan who showed the faintest green flush on his high cheekbones. Leonard realized that he’d been taken out of himself in the last two hours in a way that he hadn’t been in months.

Which of course, given the unforgivable sin that he had committed, was far more than he deserved.

Leonard returned to the monitor. He’d employ a man with a résumé like that in a heartbeat – but the résumé hid the brutal truth of what kind of doctor he really was.

“Look, Spock, this is all very well and I do appreciate it, but it’s all just avoiding the elephant in the room!”

Spock regarded him, his eyebrows drawn minutely towards each other. “Humans may be blind to many things, Doctor McCoy, but I would have noticed were there indeed a pachyderm in my cabin.”

“Oh, fuck you too. You know exactly what I mean.” Leonard had never actually spoken to anyone about this, not since the set of scathing reprimands that he had received in the immediate aftermath. But he seemed to be doing many things with Spock that he had never done before.

“Three of our people died because I gave medical aid to the enemy. There can be no forgiveness for that!”

He glared belligerently at Spock who looked steadily back.

“You did it because you believed it to be the right thing to do, did you not?”

“I broke Starfleet regulations to do it!”

“You did. As a doctor, do you believe that the regulations are correct?”

“No, I damn well don’t.” Leonard was up on his feet, pacing back and forth in the tiny cabin. Spock stood watching him impassively.

“Starfleet military policy,” spat Leonard. “Regardless of nature of their injuries Starfleet soldiers and allied personnel get treated first, and the enemy last. Enemy soldiers who need life-saving surgery may die while my staff are putting bandaids on barely-injured Starfleet crew. I’m a fucking doctor, trained to triage, trained to treat the worst injured with the best chance of survival first, regardless of who they are.”

“Which is what you did.”

“Yeah, patched him up so he could go on killing us. Which is what he did.”

“So there is a point to the Starfleet policy.”

“Dammit Spock, you can’t solve the dilemma with logic. Leaving a man to bleed out at my feet is the wrong thing to do!”

“Yet the concept of triage can require you to leave a dying patient because a likely hopeless attempt to treat them will take time which might be used to prevent other deaths among less severely injured personnel.”

“I can do it in a medical context. I can prioritize injuries. But I can’t prioritize different lives, not when they are dying at my feet.”

“For a long time I had not believed you capable of even that kind of logical prioritizing of injury. You are so vocal in support of emotion-driven decision-making. I realized that you are more complex that I had allowed during the incident on Kalandraka.”

Leonard grimaced. He wasn’t about to forget that in a hurry. It had been another early away mission, back before the Romulan threat manifested. Kalandraka had looked like an innocuous planet, and an attractive one, a possible candidate for colonization, and a chance for the crew to stretch their legs. Leonard had transported down with Jim and Spock and a detachment of scientists. Then an ion storm had cut them off from the transporter, followed by the earthquake that set off the landslide that trapped most of the scientists.

“What about it?”

“The captain, you and I arrived at the site of the accident to find six members of the science team with varying degrees of injury. You had only a small medical kit with you, but we could not evacuate by transporter. Given your lack of emotional control I expected you to panic or throw all your resources into trying to save the life of Merixtell Nasarre. By my calculations, given the severity of her injuries, she had only a 7.4 percent chance of survival. Instead you ignored her completely, ordered Jim and I to attend to the two with the minor damage, and set to work on the other three who had life-threatening injuries but where there was the time to make a difference.”

“I saved her, though.”

“Indeed you did. After 97 minutes of intense and meticulous work on the other three, by which time you were beginning to shake with exhaustion, you returned to Ensign Nasarre. By then her chances of survival were down to 2.4 percent. Your efforts on her behalf seemed futile, especially as we as yet had no way off the planet and we might have need of your abilities in the future.”

“I remember that bit. You told me to leave her be and I just about bit your head off.”

“Your reaction was strong. You memorably told me to stuff my percentages ‘where the sun don’t shine’. An incomprehensible metaphor which--”

“Moving right along,” interrupted Leonard, who had no wish to have to explain that particular idiom.

Spock gave him a raised eyebrow, leaving Leonard suspecting that the Vulcan in fact knew exactly what the phrase meant.

“You labored over her for the next 4.62 hours, performed heart massage on her twice in that time, and kept her alive until Commander Scott could get the transporter to work. She is now one of the most productive members of my scientific staff. It was a powerful example of how an emotional refusal to face up to the logical outcome can change the outcome.”

Leonard gave him a crooked smile. He had stopped pacing and now sat astride his chair, leaning on the backrest, sipping a fresh cup of tea. A small corner in the back of his mind boggled at how comfortable he felt in Spock’s cabin.

“But we do train to overcome our instinctive emotional reactions. That’s why we have protocols to follow. We humans need all the help we can get to view a situation logically.”

“So perhaps there is merit in the meeting of minds between our races.”

“Maybe there is, but you’ll never get me to admit that!” Leonard clinked his glass of tea against Spock’s and drank again.

“You need to sleep, Doctor McCoy.”

“Oh good lord, man, you might as well call me Leonard. I’ve spent the last two nights in your bed. Speaking of which, I really should go back to my cabin.”

“I would be more at ease knowing you are here. Now go to bed, Leonard.”

“Dammit Spock,” Leonard grumbled, “you sound just like my momma.” He offered no further protest. The whole surreal experience – being trapped in the warm cabin, being organized by Spock – was a bit like a regression to childhood. It was a relief for a little while to revert to the happy illusion of youth, the illusion that the adults knew what they were doing. They would sort it all out, make it all better.

* * *

Chapter Text

The next morning the padd contained a new surprise.

Leonard, the Starfleet Medical forum contains a detailed, lengthy, and at times less-than-temperate debate on the ethics of your treatment of the Romulan intruder. We had a stable link to Command for a short period during gamma shift and I have downloaded part of that debate. You will find that you are not without support.

Spock

Leonard dressed properly this time and sat down to read at Spock’s table. Their distance from Starfleet Command meant that he was seldom able to access the databases in real time and had to rely on what had been previously downloaded. He had not been aware of the debate. He skimmed rapidly over the comments. They ranged right across the ethics of medical personnel in wartime, discussed in the light of the escalating ‘police action’ with the Romulan Empire in general and the infamous incident with Dr McCoy and the Romulan intruder in particular. Leonard swallowed down his rising nausea. Nice to know that the every single member of the Starfleet medical corps knew the details of his shame.

He spent a long time staring unseeing at Spock’s odd little meditation lamp, watching the small flame flicker hypnotically, before finally forcing himself to start reading the comments properly.

He was surprised to realize that more than half of them defended his actions, some vociferously.

Soon he was knee deep in the details of the various comments, a possible research paper on how theoretical ethics played out in the reality of a modern war zone already forming in his mind. He finally put the idea aside to marinate at lunchtime, surprised at how hungry he was. As he ate, he turned to catching up on the neglected medical journals the Spock had found while updating his résumé.

Spock returned to find him typing rapidly into two different padds, one a list of all the ways he disagreed with various authors, the other containing new medications, techniques and procedures that he thought might be useful to him.

“Your day was productive?” asked Spock, handing him the inevitable glass of Vulcan tea and touching him, as usual, briefly on the wrist with the back of his fingers. It felt oddly domestic. He found that he enjoyed the quiet calm of Spock’s presence and once again he wondered if Spock didn’t enjoy coming home to company. It was rather unnerving to realize that his three-day R+R in this strange warm womb was nearly over; in the morning he would have to return to active duty. The thought of that sent a chill down his spine.

“Leonard, why have you been avoiding Captain Kirk?”

The Vulcan’s directness was very disconcerting. He really didn’t want to talk about Jim, and cast around quickly for something to distract Spock with. His mind landed on something he’d wondered about on and off through the day. “You tell me something first. Why am I in your cabin? This can hardly be your standard procedure with all stressed crew members. You’d have a small village living in here!”

Spock clasped his hands behind his back. It was his default stance when being formal. Leonard began to suspect that he also did it when feeling uncomfortable.

“You left your cabin uninhabitable.”

“Yeah, there was that.” Leonard’s memories of that evening were still hazy, but he suspected he had little to be proud of. “But it was mostly just glass, right? It wasn’t exactly ruined.”

“No, and it is now fixed. The cost of that will be docked from your pay and the incident will go into your personnel record.”

Leonard waved a hand dismissively. “If that’s all that comes of it, I’m damned lucky and I know it. But you’re avoiding the point. Why am I here?”

Spock’s shoulders stiffened. Leonard thought with private amusement that he was getting better at reading the tells of the supposedly emotionless Vulcan.

“When I caught your wrist as you attempted to hit the chief of security, I had access to your stream of thought. Touch telepathy cannot read thought as one might read a book, but it does give an overall impression of the current mental state and it can read strong emotion.”

The men looked at each other, Leonard wondering what Spock ‘read’ each time he touched him on the wrist.

“And what emotions did you discover?”

“You were suicidal.”

“That’s a bit strong.”

“You wanted a way out, you believed death to be what you deserved. You did not feel capable of doing it yourself but you were prepared to put yourself in a position where a Romulan would do it for you.”

Leonard gaped at him, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. “Yeah, but I didn’t really mean it. Spock, I don’t need to be on suicide watch. Human emotions can spike very strongly, especially when exacerbated by fear and adrenaline. That doesn’t mean that those feelings are representative.”

“I apologize if my assessment of the situation was flawed. You are of course free to return to your cabin when you wish.”

The total blankness of Spock’s tone made Leonard suspicious.

“Well, you weren’t entirely wrong.” Leonard hesitated. He hated talking about his difficulties, but Spock had done so much for him in the last three days; he deserved more than an evasive brush-off. “I did need help. I guess I still do. These last few days have made a world of difference. Being shut up in your cabin isn’t really a hardship.” He offered a weak smile.

Spock’s marble-hard features softened slightly. “I already had reason to be concerned. Two members of your staff had come to me, separately, to express their concern about your welfare and their uncertainty as to what action to take. You look surprised, Leonard. There are people on this ship who care for you.”

Leonard stared at him.

Spock hesitated. “And not just members of your medical staff. But you do not make it easy for us to help you. When I touched you, I sensed a chaotic turmoil of unhappiness and self-loathing, underpinned by a deep loneliness. I am not unfamiliar with the burden of loneliness.”

Leonard stared down at his own hands. He did not like having his emotional weaknesses laid out quite so bluntly. This deflection had not worked quite as he’d hoped.

“Leonard, I am aware that unwarranted emotional states can be the result of changes in brain chemistry in humans. May I ask if you have considered that?”

“You mean, am I clinically depressed? I am a doctor, Spock. That would occur to me.” Leonard took a deep breath, trying to reign in his defensive sarcasm. “In medical we run regular checks on the staff and there’s nothing out of the ordinary in my readings. Sometimes life just fucking sucks. I’ve got reason to be unhappy.” He abruptly realized that he’d not thought about the damned letter in three days and he didn’t know where it was.

“Spock, there was something in a pocket of my uniform pants when I arrived here…”

Spock gestured towards a shelf by the food synthesizer. “Everything is there.”

Next to a few emergency hypos lay a grubby, creased piece of paper. Leonard picked it up, falling back immediately into his old nervous habit of folding and unfolding it. Spock watched his actions intently.

“Look…”Leonard started. He had never told anyone about this. This was worse than talking about Jim, but it suddenly occurred to him that once he returned to active duty he would lose this easy access to Spock. This might be his last chance to ask for help.

“Look, you’ve been great the last few days, I can’t begin to say how much. But for all your kindness, I’ve no future in Starfleet. Not when this is what the brass think of me.” He thrust the letter roughly at Spock before he lost his nerve and then turned to stare unseeing at the wickedly curved knife that hung on the wall, so he wouldn’t have to watch Spock reading it.

He knew every word by heart. The phrases floated in front of him, as they had every day since he’d received it.

…a disgrace to the name of the Federation….. a betrayal of all that our people have fought and died for…. spitting in the face of the entire massacred Vulcan race…

…you disgust me…

“Leonard, have you reported this?”

Leonard turned around and was shocked by the anger on Spock’s face. “Reported?”

“It is quite unacceptable for an officer to castigate a subordinate in this manner. If Captain Kirk or yourself did it to anyone on this ship, I would report it. This warrants a severe reprimand!”

“I don’t think Admirals get reprimanded, Spock. And it’s what he thinks of me that matters, not how he said it. Dammit, I thought he liked me.” Leonard stared hard at the floor, trying to control the prickling of his eyes. After all this time, the letter still got to him.

“How it is said matters, Leonard. While Vulcans do not feel the need to dress up criticism with favorable comments the way humans do, we also do not believe in delivering it in anger. I cannot believe Admiral Pike would address you like this. I too had believed that he liked you. My understanding is that the only reason that he can walk is because of your surgical skill in the immediate aftermath of his rescue from Nero. This letter is not like him. It is not logical.”

“Forget it, Spock.” Leonard offered him a shaky smile. “Just one man’s opinion, right? So… I should get back to my cabin, I guess. You haven’t slept in three nights!”

“Vulcans need less sleep, as you are aware. And the meditation mat is perfectly adequate to the purpose. Go to bed, Leonard. You can leave in the morning.” Spock touched him gently on the wrist, turning him towards the bed.

Casting a dubious glance at the thin, hard meditation mat, Leonard went. He suspected there was another layer to Spock’s motivation that had not been revealed but he was unable to resist one more night of warmth and care. He fell asleep mulling over that odd remark about the burden of loneliness. Maybe, just maybe, there was the beginning of a tentative friendship here that could do them both good.

* * *

Leonard hesitated at the sickbay entrance, shivering in the cold atmosphere, suddenly afraid that he would be sucked back down into a swamp of unhappiness as soon as he entered. Reflexively he patted his pocket in search of the letter he had carried for so long as a kind of anti-talisman. But Spock had never returned it to him. Perhaps it was for the best.

Just one man’s opinion.

He squared his shoulders and marched into the sickbay. His staff cast him wary looks and he wondered who was giving them the kind of support that Spock had so inexplicably offered to him. It clearly wasn’t himself. Maybe he could do something about that.

Once he had caught up with the events of the last few days – third-degree burns from an explosion in engineering, a broken arm from an overenthusiastic sparring session in the gym, the usual array of stress-related stomach- and head-aches, the endless requests for anti-depressants, tranquilizers and stimulants, just to get people by – he had a private consultation with each of his staff, awkwardly offering them some of the support he had received. He doubted he did it well - he’d never had any illusions about his people skills - but they seemed grateful for the opportunity to talk.

He forced himself to take lunch in the mess, rather than skulking at his desk. As he hesitated with his tray, faced with the high-school dilemma of choosing which table to inflict his unwanted presence on, Chekov waved him over. The exuberant navigator appeared genuinely happy to see him, exclaiming about how long it had been since Leonard had visited them on the bridge and had he forgotten all about his friends upstairs?

He was in the middle of an enjoyable conversation with Chekov when Uhura came through on the comm. “Doctor McCoy, you are to meet with the captain in his ready room immediately.”

Abandoning his lunch, Leonard headed for the turbolift, already worried. Why so formal? What did the captain want? How had it become so awkward to contemplate facing Jim?

He entered the small room to find the situation considerably worse than just meeting with Jim. The captain sat at his desk; Spock stood at his side, hands folded precisely behind his back. Admiral Pike was on the viewscreen. All three men looked angry: Kirk visibly furious, Pike tightly contained, Spock betraying nothing more than a subtle flaring of the nostrils.

“Admiral, if you’ll give us a minute.”

Pike nodded and Kirk muted the screen, allowing the Admiral to see them but not hear their conversation.

Spock spoke first. “Doctor McCoy, it was my duty to report the letter you showed me to the captain and via him to Admiral Pike.”

Leonard stared at him, horrified. That was all this had been? Duty? Those days of peace and evenings of care and conversation, those tentative stirrings of what Leonard had dared to think of as friendship. It was all just about the first officer’s duty of care to crewmembers?

“I told you that in confidence, you bastard,” he snapped. “How dare you share it around willy-nilly? It’s none of your damned business.”

Spock’s face tightened, his expression as smoothly blank as marble

“Mr. Spock, take over on the bridge. I need to talk with Bones for a minute.”

“Captain. Doctor.” The Vulcan inclined his head one icy inch and left the ready room. Leonard watched him go, at a loss to explain why he felt so bitterly hurt by Spock’s intervention. Had he been no more than another to-do task for the XO, to be assessed and repaired and then put away, marked off as mission achieved? Had the intimacy of their time together been all Leonard’s over-emotional imagination?

“Bones, take it easy. Spock had to do it. You should’ve done it as soon as you received the damn thing. You should’ve--”

Leonard cut in over him. “But you knew about it!”

“I what?”

“You knew. You agreed! I asked you afterwards about Pike and you said he was the only one in the brass who knew his ass from his elbow. You said Pike’s opinions were gold and the rest of them were just spitting out shit.”

Kirk hesitated, as if trying to remember what he’d said, and why.

“Well yeah, talking about military strategy and the need for hot pursuit into the neutral zone. The need to meet the Romulan raids with real force, not just run with Starfleet’s stupid police action. I didn’t mean this crappy letter! This being the first I’ve fucking heard of it! Is this why you’ve been avoiding me all these weeks?”

“I haven’t…” He hesitated. He’d stayed out of Jim’s way, thinking that was what Jim wanted. In retrospect his conclusions didn’t seem to make that much sense.

“Holy fuck, Bones, you could’ve tried talking to me! Look, Pike’ll do his own explaining and he’s damn well got some to do. But you and I need to talk too. We can’t do it now. We’re using a rapid-feed subspace communications channel to sort this out and we’ve got limited time. Dinner? Tonight in my cabin? It’ll be just like old times.”

Leonard gave a grudging nod. Old times seemed a lifetime away. He didn’t want to talk to Jim about this. He didn’t want to talk to Pike, either.

Jim unmuted the screen and left the room. Leonard stood at attention, staring carefully at a point just above the Admiral’s shoulder. Despite Jim’s slightly incoherent reassurance, he really didn’t want to hear the Admiral’s opinion of him face to face. He’d admired Pike. He’d respected him. Here was a man who had gone alone onto the Narada – gone without hesitation or protest to face certain torture and probable death – in order to give Jim, Sulu, and Olson the wafer-slim chance to try and disable the drilling rig so the Enterprise could get a signal and inform Starfleet of the attack. This man was his definition of a hero.

“Doctor McCoy, how could you have seriously thought that I meant any of that puerile bullshit?”

Pike actually appeared to expect an answer to this bizarre enquiry.

“Because you sent it to me, sir?” he stuttered at last.

“Dammit son, I never meant to send it. I didn’t even realize that I had! Why the hell didn’t you say something? I knew nothing of it until Kirk and Spock contacted me today. And wasn’t that an embarrassment to explain. I’ve never seen the two of them so angry.”

He’d never meant to send it? Leonard couldn’t get his brain to move past that point. “But you wrote it,” he accused, finally looking directly at the Admiral.

Pike looked terribly tired and a decade older than he had when Leonard had last seen him in the flesh some 18 months earlier. “Yes, I wrote it. But I didn’t fucking mean it!”

Leonard stared back disbelieving, his hands now clasped together to try and hide their trembling. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Look, Doctor, just sit down for a moment and let me explain.”

“I’d rather stand, sir,” said Leonard stonily. He couldn’t think of any explanation that would assuage his hurt.

“All right, all right. Anyway, the thing is that I was still doing pretty well when the Enterprise left. There was just so much to be done in the Narada’s aftermath and my physical recovery was moving relatively quickly. But after about six months I crashed, and crashed hard. The relentless pace of the post-Narada chaos finally eased and I had the time to realize that some things were never going to be the same again. I’ll never run a marathon again. Some days my legs seize up just walking up the stairs.”

He raised a hand to stop Leonard’s automatic protest. “Yes, I know I’m damn lucky to be back on two feet and I have you to thank for that. But it doesn’t stop it being hard, some days.”

He paused. Pike’s voice was steady but Leonard, with his doctor’s eye for detail, saw the slight tremor in the hands that lay on the synth-mahogany desk. “I don’t have the fine motor control that I once had. I have inexplicable mood swings and nauseating migraines, thanks to the slug’s excretions seeping into my brain stem. I had to recognize that Captain Chris Pike really was gone forever. And of course so was the Enterprise. I gave up four years in space for that girl and captained her for a few hours. A deep-space captain was all I ever wanted to be. It was how I defined myself. Being an Admiral is an honor and it’s important but it’s not my dream. It never will be.”

For just a moment, Pike covered his face with his hands, before pushing them up through his silver-grey hair, as if trying to push away his frustration.

“Anyway, after six months all that crashed down on me. I came close to a breakdown and ended up crying with rage in front of a Starfleet therapist. She of course had no quick fix to offer but she did suggest various coping strategies, one of which I’m sure you’re familiar with. Writing letters about all the things you are angry about and to all the people you are angry with, and then burning them. I thought it terribly trite at first, but it does actually help. However, because my handwriting is execrable, I type them on a padd, print them and then burn them. Only once have I accidentally sent one – your one.”

Leonard sat down abruptly. His legs seemed to have gone oddly weak at the knees.

“I don’t know how the hell it happened. I seem to have typed it up at work, sent it on to my home address to deal with later and not realized that I’d copied it to you as well. Yes, I was incandescent with fury when I heard the story. Three of our people dead – people we can ill-afford to lose – because you chose to treat a fucking Romulan. But my rage was irrational, and even in the moment I knew it. In my mind I was trapped once again on Nero’s ship, expecting to die there. Strapped down, repeating my rank and reg number, a squirming arthropod forced into my mouth, feeling it kicking and writhing down my throat, eating through my stomach lining, hunting for my spinal cord, making me spill out all our defense secrets, waiting for Earth to implode before my eyes.”

Pike sucked in a deep breath, slowly let it out again. With visible effort, he pulled his attention away from his memories, back to Leonard. “Doctor, those deaths are not your fault.”

“Yes, they are,” protested Leonard. He was increasingly confused in the face of this reversal of all he’d believed about the letter, but this one thing he knew for certain. “I fucked up.”

“Maybe you did. It’s debatable. But so did I. I gave up the subspace frequencies of Earth’s border protection grids, for fuck’s sake. That was not going to be three dead. It was going to be 12 billion. Leonard – may I call you Leonard?”

The doctor nodded dumbly.

“Leonard, all we can do is the best we can in the moment. And then try to forgive ourselves afterwards so that we can move forward. I had no right to communicate with you in that manner. I’m mortified by that letter. The contents make me cringe. I meant none of it. You are one of our best and brightest and I’ve always admired your courage and your dedication. You are well within your rights to lay an official complaint against me. I won’t fight it.”

It was as if a ray of sunshine had suddenly broken through the clouds that had hung sullenly over him for weeks. Relief overwhelmed him.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he mumbled. “Let’s just forget it.”

Pike gave him a long pensive look.

“I think there’s been too much forgetting going on here. I’m concerned that you’re not talking to Kirk about this. I’ve read all the official reports, but tell me – from your point of view – what actually happened that day?”

Leonard took a deep breath, trying to find a neutral point from which to access a day that he had alternately rehashed to death and tried to blot out of memory. “They came out of nowhere, intruder alerts screaming, garbled announcements about unidentified aliens. And then chaos, screams and shots in the corridors. I was working on an ensign who’d been badly burnt in engineering shortly before the invasion. M’Benga and Chapel were out in the corridors doing triage on the security boys.” Leonard stopped abruptly. He hated thinking about this.

“And then?” prompted Pike gently.

“A man came stumbling backwards into sickbay, collapsed at my feet. It was obvious he was an alien, green blood all over his uniform, pointed ears. For a horrible moment I thought it was Spock. I didn’t think twice. At that point Ensign Allun could wait.”

“You are aware that you broke Starfleet policy.”

Leonard stood now, pacing restlessly. He glared at the Admiral. “Yes, sir. Damn well aware. It’s not like I wasn’t told that a hundred times afterwards. But dammit, I’m a doctor. The man was bleeding out. Yeah, maybe I should’ve secured him to something, but he was dying in front of me. People said I should’ve done the bare minimum to keep him alive, but fuck them. They know nothing about it. It was an all or nothing injury. At least I thought it was. And I couldn’t knock him out. I’d no idea if our sedatives would compromise his system.”

“And then?”

And then. This was the bit that still appeared in Leonard’s nightmares.

“A security officer brought in another casualty. The alien grabbed the officer’s phaser, shot him dead right in front of me, and took off down the corridor. Killed two more on the way to stealing a shuttle and escaping.”

“Did you misjudge the severity of the injury?” asked Pike.

“Dammit, I don’t know! It wasn’t as if I’d ever met a Romulan before. He shouldn’t have been able to walk away from that. No human would’ve. I should’ve realized he might be different, might have Vulcan-like strength.” Leonard could feel the wave of ever-present guilt rising again, as relentless as the tide. “And yeah, to top off a fucking fine day, it turns out he was the leader of the Romulan raiding party. Just fucking great.”

“Leonard, the security officer in the sickbay has to take responsibility for losing his weapon. And all three crewmembers died doing their jobs.”

“I know. But they died because I did my job. I hate living with that.”

Pike waited patiently, as if realizing that there was more that needed to be said.

“I looked all three up in the personnel records afterwards,” the doctor continued at last. “The officer killed in front of me was Qondile Khudama, a young man from the south of the United States of Africa, the third generation of his family to serve in Starfleet. Amaroo Wungalu had just become engaged to a young Tellarite he’d met on a school exchange trip. They’d kept faith for years, waiting for her to be old enough for her family to agree to the marriage. And Ts. Altantsetseg had twin daughters back on Earth. A holo of them was found on her body.”

“And all three of them will be remembered with honor in their homelands,” said Pike gently.

Leonard grimaced in frustration.

“I know it’s a cliché, but that doesn’t stop it being true. You’re a good man, Leonard, making the best of a bad situation. Stop beating yourself up about it. And son, bottling it up doesn’t help. Try actually talking to your captain.”

Pike fiddled with some controls on his desk. “You should be receiving a comm from me shortly….” Leonard’s communicator vibrated. “That letter is my official opinion of you, Lieutenant Commander McCoy. A copy is already in your personnel file. Print it out. Keep it with you. I know you, even more than most of us, will put far more weight on criticism than on praise. But I want you to believe every word of what I have written.”

Pike looked Leonard dead in the eye. “I am honored to serve with you, Doctor McCoy.”

Leonard buried his face in his hands, trying to hide the sudden prickle of tears.

“Son, I’m so sorry. And I’m ashamed. Forgive me if you can.”

* * *

Long after the Admiral had gone, Leonard sat staring at the letter, which he had reproduced on the ready room printer.

A credit to Starfleet and to the entire Federation … a good man to the core of your being…. one of the brightest and best of your generation….

I am proud of you…

Pike hadn’t meant it. Jim hadn’t known. Maybe he did have a future with Starfleet. Maybe Spock had done the right thing after all. Maybe it was time to forgive himself for a few things. The sense of relief was so profound that he felt dizzy with it.

When he finally had his emotions under control he left the ready room. He hesitated at the back of the bridge, looking across the gleaming white space to the stimulated starfield on the giant viewscreen. He’d been proven right about just how dangerous and deadly deep space could be; he’d been taken by surprise by how addictively fascinating it could be. He quietly watched the alpha bridge crew. Just two years earlier almost all of them had been Academy cadets, and now they all moved briskly about their business like consummate professionals.

When they had first taken control of the Enterprise, all bright and shiny in their naivety, they had been so green – no one but Spock having served as senior crew before – that they’d broken all sorts of rules by simply not realizing that they existed. It had not occurred to Leonard that the CMO was not supposed to visit the bridge without being summoned. He’d liked popping in to see them, leaning on the back of the captain’s chair, teasing Chekov, admiring Uhura, keeping Jim’s ego in check.

He’d not been back to the bridge since Jim’s furious dressing down following the Romulan debacle. Perhaps it was time to move beyond that. Rubbing reflexively against the new letter that was now folded into his pocket, he cautiously ventured forward.

“Doctor!” cried Chekov happily. “You have come to wisit us, at last!”

Leonard got smiles from everyone and an enthusiastic shout from Jim: “Bones, my man, come and look at this.”

He took his customary position behind Jim’s chair and listened to his friend and captain point out the planetary nebula they were passing. An outer ring of brilliant aquamarine encircled bright green and within it pearly silver-grey. “We’ve got no time to investigate,” said Jim wistfully, “not with fucking Rommies to outwit. Still, another day, hey, Bones?”

Jim tipped the chair back to smile up at him, the same charming smile Leonard had so often received in the Academy. It had been a regular occurrence for him to come home after a hard day at the clinic to find Jim lying on his back on Leonard’s bed, studying. He’d lower his padd, tip his head back off the end of the bed, and gaze upside down at Leonard to say hi, cheerfully ignoring the fact that his feet were on Leonard’s pillow.

“All good?” asked Jim. “I’ll see you tonight?” Maybe talking to Jim wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.

Feeling better than he had in months, Leonard stopped briefly to chat to each officer before finally, with studied casualness, standing beside Spock. He wondered how to undo the damage of his belligerent outburst in the ready room.

“Thank you,” he offered softly. Spock inclined his head, the silky black hair shifting with the movement in a single wave, so unlike human strands. Leonard wondered what it felt like.

His thanks felt so inadequate to the enormity of what had just happened. He thought back to Spock’s description of what he could receive through touch telepathy. He concentrated hard on the moment when Pike had said that he was honored to serve with him, concentrated on his surprise and relief and gratitude, then touched the back of Spock’s hand with the pads of his first three fingers. The Vulcan gave a short, shocked intake of breath and then a long exhale. “I am pleased,” he said quietly.

Uhura gave Leonard an incredulous look, although no one else seemed to have noticed. He headed back to the sickbay happier than he had been in months.

* * *

Leonard entered Jim’s cabin, carrying a bottle of Scotty’s moonshine with him in a mute apology for having caused so much trouble. Jim grinned when he saw it.

“We’ll just pretend I’ve no idea where that comes from, shall we?” He grabbed two glasses and poured them both a shot. “Damn, it’s vile. It’s been tasting worse and worse as the months go by.”

“That’s because the person who’s making this that you totally don’t know about doesn't want to waste any of the precious alcohol by discarding the fore-shot.”

“The what? Sounds porny, Bones!” Jim waggled his eyebrows.

Leonard couldn’t stop himself from grinning in return. “No such luck, it’s the first few percent of the distillate which has a high methanol and impurities content.” He shrugged at Jim’s look of surprise. “I might know a thing or two about brewing up moonshine. My grandpa kept a still in the yard of his farm, called it keeping an old family tradition alive. With this stuff it’s best to just hold your nose and swallow.”

“Fair enough. It’s been the kind of day that calls for a stiff drink. Not that most days aren’t like that now.” Jim rocked his chair back on to the two hind legs. It had driven Leonard mad at the Academy, had led to all sorts of dire warnings about head injuries caused by tumbling over backwards. Now he was just glad to see Jim being his old reckless self. “I’ve been thinking what it must’ve been like for Pike to lose the Enterprise. And not just the ship but his fitness for command. I couldn’t bear it, Bones. She’s my home now, my family. I want to go down at her helm.”

“Dammit Jim, don’t say things like that,” scolded Leonard. “If I have anything to do with it, you’ll live to 150 and die in the bed of one of the nurses in your old age home.”

Jim gave him a crooked smile. “Sounds good, Bones. We’ll share a room and you can bitch at me about eating my greens, yeah? The odds are against it, though.”

Jim downed his drink and poured them both another.

“Pike wrote to me today, after the call. It was a formal apology for his behavior but he also – in super-polite Starfleet speak - handed me my ass for failing to realize how you were struggling.”

Jim raised a hand to silence Leonard’s objection.

“The man has a point. He said to me that I ask no more of anyone than I demand of myself. And yeah, I believe in that, I live by that. You know that, Bones. And I think of you and Spock as my right and left hands. I’ve been as hard on you as I have on myself. Pike pointed out that perhaps I’ve been putting too much effort into looking after the rest of the crew, while failing to see what’s been going on right under my nose.”

“The crew is where your attention should be, Jim. As senior crew we should be able to look after ourselves.”

“No, Bones, I think that’s where you and me have both been getting it wrong. As senior crew we should be looking out for each other.” Kirk stared down at his drink for a long time, swirling the liquor round in the little glass. “Y’know, my dad’s death has always been presented as the epitome of courage, and yeah, it was amazing. Captain for 12 minutes, saved 800 lives. I’d die for my crew, Bones. Hell, I’d die for you. That’s not the hard bit. The hard bit is keeping myself alive, keeping all of you alive, and doing it shift after shift after shift. Knowing I’ll mess up, living with the consequences, battling on again the next day. We’re at war, whatever the asses upstairs are calling it. And it’s only going to get worse. Let’s fight it together, shall we?”

He raised his glass, clinked it against Leonard’s and downed it. Leonard did the same.

“Jim, you do know I never intended to get our people killed, don’t you?”

Jim frowned in surprise. “Of course I do, Bones. I know I tore you a new one immediately afterwards, but I was just so fucking angry. We try to kill them, you heal them. Your healing them gets more of us killed. From the point of view of a battle commander you have to see that it’s frustrating.”

“I’m a doctor, it’s what I do.”

“I know, Bones. And I wouldn’t want you any other way.” Jim reached over and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “We should’ve talked again once we’d both calmed down. You’re the one with the PhD in psychology. You know that they train us to dehumanize the enemy. It makes it easier to kill them. We call them Rommies and bastards. We think of them as a collective adversary, not as individuals. And they do the same to us, call us cockroaches, talk about exterminating us. I’m glad that someone on this ship still values every life as a life. If we ever come round to making peace we’re gonna need your outlook.”

Leonard laughed. “I can’t see myself ever being the key to making peace with the Romulan Empire. I’d just open my big mouth and insult them all in the first sixty seconds.”

* * *

Leonard’s days improved after that. Jim and he reinstated their weekly dinner date and he visited the bridge when he could. He’d even started some new research in his free time, following up on an article in one of the medical journals about accelerating growth rates in replacement tissue. He had an idea about how to possibly further speed up the process. However, free time was becoming increasingly hard to find. The Romulans were harrying them once more and casualties were on the rise.

Spock stopped by sickbay daily. In theory he was visiting injured personnel. It amused Leonard how awed and appreciative crewmembers were to have the stoic Vulcan inquire after their welfare, especially when he always knew their names and positions. Leonard suspected that Spock’s eidetic memory made that less impressive than it seemed to the forgetful humans. The Vulcan was surprisingly good at managing human emotions. It delighted Leonard how disconcerted Spock looked – in a subtle way of course – every time Leonard complimented him on his skills. Complimenting him was almost as much fun as baiting him with emotional illogicality.

Spock always took a moment to talk to Leonard in the privacy of his office and always touched him briefly during those talks. Leonard wondered if he should tell Spock that he no longer needed him checking his emotional temperature, as he thought of it, but he never actually did so. He was glad of the ongoing support and what he secretly hoped was a tentative friendship. It occurred to Leonard one day that before Pike’s call Spock had always touched him on his wrist using the back of two fingers. Since then Spock had begun to touch him on his palm, using the pads of his index and middle fingers. Presumably it signified something, but Leonard wasn’t sure what.

They had little other time together, although Spock sometimes joined him for a quick meal if he ate in the mess. The Vulcan was working increasingly long shifts, with Jim trying to ensure that either he or Spock was always on the bridge. However, a few peaceful days allowed them to try a 3D-chess game in the rec room, not an experience Leonard was not keen to repeat given how badly he was losing.

“Well, this can’t be much fun for you,” he said glumly, looking at the large pile of pieces Spock had captured from him.

“It has other advantages,” replied Spock. “Watching you handle the pieces is satisfying.”

“Huh? What the hell does that mean?”

“You have beautiful hands, Leonard.” A faint green flush crept up the Vulcan’s high cheekbones.

Leonard stared down at his large hands and long blunt fingers. “They’re certainly serviceable. Beautiful seems a bit strong.”

“In the weeks after the loss of Vulcan, after our return to Earth, I had much to meditate upon. I had little to be proud of in my brief service on the Enterprise.”

Leonard listened to the non sequitur in surprise, trying to work out where Spock was going with this.

“In an attempt to understand what had transpired, I reviewed all the material from the voyage. That included the vid footage of your operation on Admiral Pike. The confidence and dexterity of your hands was mesmerizing. Once I had decided to return to the ship, I was looking forward to serving with you.”

“Ah. Right. I probably didn’t make a good impression.” Leonard stared, mortified, at the 3-D chess frame. It had never occurred to him to refuse his assignment as CMO of the Enterprise. It was an honor, of course, but far more importantly the powers that be had made Jim Kirk – with all his genius and all his hang-ups – captain of the flagship and Leonard was not going to leave his best friend to deal with that without someone sensible to watch his damn back. It didn’t mean he’d liked the idea, though.

“You made an impression,” Spock offered dryly, “but it was a confusing one. We shared a scientific interest. You are highly competent at what you do and I respect that. I was at a loss to explain your belligerence.”

Leonard wondered how on earth to explain himself. “I never intended to take a deep space assignment, you know, was planning on a starbase or an earth-side research post. And suddenly I’m dumped in a tin can being flown by a bunch of precocious teenagers with nearly a thousand souls under my care. No hospitals, no specialists. The buck stops with one Leonard H. McCoy. I was just a tiny bit stressed.”

He fiddled awkwardly with one of the chess pieces.

“I hit out when I’m stressed,” he said softly, keeping the conversation out of earshot of the ensigns playing pool nearby. “I decided I hated you for dumping my best friend on an ice planet filled with killer monsters. In reality I despised myself for not having defended Jim when you did it. And I really don’t understand the emotion suppressing thing. The more you blanked me, the more I was determined to get a rise out of you.”

“You were perplexing. I found the challenge of trying to understand you a useful distraction from my own difficulties.”

“You had difficulties?” Leonard had somehow supposed the controlled Vulcan to be above such things.

“After our return to Earth I was deeply conflicted. I believed my loss of control to be a profound failure. And I felt duty-bound to join my people in founding the new colony. I felt compelled to return unconditionally to my Vulcan heritage. Yet those I respected argued against it. From Admiral Pike I would have expected such a thing. Jim Kirk was a surprise. My father even more so.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. He felt that this was neither the time to turn away from my mother’s human heritage, nor the time for Vulcans to withdraw from participation in the organs of the Federation. Then there was Ambassador Spock.”

“Right….” said Leonard. He’d heard a little about this. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know more. “That must have been….. interesting.”

“Interesting is one word for it. But he was adamant that I must come to see my human side as an asset, not a weakness.”

“Lord above. A sensible Vulcan. How extraordinary!” Leonard smiled inwardly when he got ‘the eyebrow’ in reply.

“I returned to the ship determined to follow the Ambassador’s advice. You seemed one of the most human humans on the ship with your uncontrolled emotionalism and disrespect for logical thinking. Yet you were able to run an admirably efficient sickbay and you displayed talent in medical research. I found you intriguing, an enigma.”

“What about Uhura?” Leonard asked cautiously. That relationship had seemed to fade away as mysteriously as it had manifested. “Not that it’s any of my business, but surely that was a good way to explore humanity?”

“I pushed her away upon our return to Earth, indeed even during the journey home. She offered her love and sorrow in comfort, but I wished to avoid all further emotional overload. We have rediscovered our friendship in the time we have served on this mission but the moment for a romantic relationship seemed to have passed.”

Leonard was about to make another random chess move when the red alert sounded. Spock left at once for the bridge. Leonard made his way to his cabin. The days of all hands rushing to sickbay during a red alert were over. It happened too often. Their limited resources had to be conserved over time. He lay in his bed, tossing and turning, trying not to worry about Spock and Jim. About all of Jim’s Enterprise family.

Instead he mulled over Spock’s little revelations. So he was intriguing. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

* * *

In the morning he heard that the Enterprise was involved in a prolonged skirmish with a number of Romulan birds-of-prey. As he spoke to Chapel, another long shudder wracked the ship, the sign of the inertial dampeners absorbing the shock of a barrage of enemy fire. Suddenly the sickbay tipped sickeningly, supplies out on tables spinning across the floor, smashing into walls. The stability alarms on the biobeds shrieked. He and Chapel staggered across the floor, now twisting and shuddering under their feet, to secure manual straps on the patients.

The ship’s seizure had calmed and Leonard was collecting the supplies that had scattered when Spock ran in, Jim on his heels, carrying a blood-drenched Sulu in his arms, who had a plasticrete bar sticking right through his abdomen and out of the small of his back.

“During the last engagement the inertial dampeners were damaged,” said Spock. “A strut tore loose from the helmsman’s console. Lieutenant Sulu was thrown out of his chair and fell forwards onto it.”

Jim was talking over Spock. “The bastards ambushed us. Their stealth technology gets us at every turn. The inertial dampeners are fucked. We’ve got to regroup and repair. They’ve driven us deep into the neutral zone and we’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got McKenna on the helm, threading us through an asteroid belt. It’s the only way out not guarded by Rommie birds. But it’s brutally tricky work. I need Sulu back, Bones.”

Leonard stared at the impaled pilot. The bar had punched right through his intestines. The gastrointestinal tract wasn’t so much perforated as pulverized. “I’ll do what I can, Jim.”

Already the doctor’s mind was racing ahead. Conventional techniques might save Sulu’s life but they’d not have him back on duty any time soon. He needed something better. Chapel and M'Benga prepped Sulu for surgery while Leonard simply stood and watched, letting his mind chase down wisps of ideas. The neural grafting technique he had invented all those years ago. A discussion with Spock during that dreadful chess game about how Vulcan tissue regenerated in a healing trance and what the medical properties of a healing trance were likely to be. An article he’d read in Spock’s cabin outlining an experimental technique for growing tissue sheets. The cultures he’d subsequently set up in the medical research lab where he’d been fiddling with ways of accelerating growth rates.

“We’re going to grow him a new set of intestines,” he suddenly announced to his incredulous staff. “Hook him up to life support, this is how it works.”

“Doctor McCoy,” protested M’Benga. “His intestines are shredded. We will need some 20 feet of tubular tissue. This has never been done before. Is this the time or the place for this?”

“Yes, it’s exactly the time.” Leonard knew he was right, he could feel the techniques forming within his head even as he issued instructions to his staff. This was why he was a doctor.

* * *

Thirteen hours later the newly created tubular tissue was in place inside the pilot. The interior of the peritoneal cavity had been cleaned out. Sulu lay in a medical coma in their one precious bio-womb; Leonard, in consultation with Spock, had hacked the controls to produce an artificially induced human equivalent of a healing trance. Judging by the rate at which Sulu’s medical readings were improving, it was working.

Everyone involved in the operation had been sent off-duty to sleep, but Leonard was high as a kite on his achievement and couldn’t bring himself to return to his empty cabin. He wanted someone to talk to. He still stood in the sickbay, wondering what to do with himself, when Spock came in.

The Vulcan briefly placed two fingertips on his hand. “A remarkable achievement, Leonard. I would like to know more about what you did. Would you join me in my cabin for a drink?”

Leonard grinned. “Hang on, I think this warrants digging out my super-secret end-of-the-world last-and-final bourbon supply.” He ducked into his office and pulled a tiny bottle, snagged from some mini-bar on Risa during a long forgotten shore-leave, out from the hidden compartment in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Tell me,” demanded Spock once they were settled companionably at the small table in Spock’s warm cabin. Leonard breathed deeply of the dry, lightly scented air. It felt familiar; it felt safe. For old times’ sake he accepted a glass of Vulcan tea, putting his tumbler of bourbon to one side for later.

Leonard told him. In extended, exhaustive detail. Spock was the perfect audience – a scientist capable of fully understanding the nuances of Leonard’s story, yet because he was not a medic himself, neither dismissive of nor threatened by Leonard’s achievement.

At some point during the account he realized Spock had placed his fingers on the back of Leonard’s hand, which lay on the table between them. “I know you touch to test my emotional temperature, but I really am okay, Spock.”

“Indeed,” Spock replied. “I have touched you many times over the preceding weeks and felt pain and doubt and despair. To feel you now, thrumming with happiness and confidence and passion is most…” he hesitated, as if substituting one word with another “… most satisfying. Now, you were explaining about the application of your neural grafting technique to the installation of the newly grown abdominal tissue?”

Leonard suspected that Spock was steering him away from the topic, but he allowed himself to be steered, only too eager to explain the unexpected lateral applications of the technique he had dreamt up a decade earlier.

At last he reached the end of his story and with it the end of his adrenaline-fuelled energy. Spock spoke then, speculating about ways in which Leonard’s innovations might be used, considering parallels with Vulcan healing procedures. It was all fascinating stuff; at another time Leonard would have been deeply interested. But now, hazy with warmth and exhaustion, he just let the Vulcan’s melodic voice wash over him.

This was happiness, he thought. A medical success he was really proud of, and then someone to share it with, someone who understood and cared. The only time he’d had this before had been in the early days of his marriage , when Jocelyn still had the patience to listen to the tales of his medical triumphs. But even then, given that she was a professional horse breeder, her attention had wandered when his details went too far beyond the bounds of her own veterinary informed medical knowledge.

At some point Spock’s fingers had moved to lie in the palm of his hand. Their warmth surprised Leonard. Like holding a palmful of sunshine, he thought lazily. He felt little prickles of arousal popping into existence where the pads of Spock’s fingers touched his skin, tiny golden bubbles that then floated up through the veins of his arm toward his heart and bubbled back out to all the corners of his body.

It was a subtle feeling, a shimmering awareness of notional possibilities of erotic pleasure. The alien sensation made him realize that it was months since he’d felt any real sexual urge. He’d just been so damned stressed all the time. He let the sensual sparkles flicker within him. What was the harm? It wasn’t as if Spock was going to know of his inappropriate reaction.

He watched their joined hands idly, thinking how elegant Spock’s fingers were, slender and graceful, the nails subtly tinged green. Quite unlike his own huge hands.

Hands. Vulcans. Touch telepaths.

Oh god, of course Spock could tell what he was feeling.

Spock stopped speaking. The two men regarded each other. Brown eyes, Leonard thought inconsequentially, with quite ridiculously long eyelashes.

“You know.”

“Yes.”

Neither man withdrew his hand.

“It is gratifying to feel you healthy and happy,” offered Spock.

“Okay,” said Leonard slowly. That was one way of putting it.

Vulcans. Hands. Supposedly highly receptive. Allegedly erogenous zones.

“Hang on. You’re the bastard with the super sensitive hands. Anything I’m feeling from this you should be feeling even more strongly.”

“You are correct,” said Spock with a subtle crinkling at the edges of his eyes. “This is most… pleasurable for me.”

Leonard wondered about all those touches to his hands, the sickbay visits, the awkwardly offered personal insights.

“Spock, have I been missing something between… you know?” He waved his free hand between the two of them.

“I had begun to suspect that Vulcan courting rituals might not be obvious to humans.”

“Courting?” Leonard couldn’t help but smile. Had anyone actually courted since the 18th century? And to court him of all unlikely choices?

He stroked experimentally along the back of Spock’s fingers. The Vulcan shivered. How had he ever thought this man a blank slate? There were a thousand subtle reactions. You just had to know how to see them. And Leonard knew. When you were a top-class doctor, one with poor people skills which made patients that much less likely to confide in you, you learnt to look for the slight reactions. The faint twitches and flinches that told you which the real symptoms were, where the damage actually lay. Leonard was good at that. He could be good at this too, if only he could find the courage to actually do something about it.

Spock regarded him for another long minute. “I believe the time has come to try a more direct approach.” He withdrew his hand and calmly dipped the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the doctor’s tumbler of bourbon. As Leonard stared at him, astonished, Spock brought the dripping fingers up to his lips.

Leonard’s capacity for higher reasoning having abruptly departed the room, he reverted to instinct and did what he always did in the presence of good bourbon – he opened his mouth. The hot wet fingers slid in. His mouth filled with the taste of liquor, underlain by the exotic scent he’d come to associate with Spock’s cabin. Spock’s beautiful eyes widened and his mouth opened just slightly. How had Leonard not noticed that pouting mouth before with its perfect cupid’s bow?

He ran his tongue experimentally around the two digits in a slow sensual figure-of-eight and then scraped lightly at the pads with his lower teeth. Spock’s shapely mouth dropped open a little further and a tongue tip flickered out to lick at those pretty lips.

Honestly, how much more was a man supposed to take? It had already been a very long day.

Grabbing Spock’s hand by the wrist to keep those succulent fingers firmly in his mouth, he circled the table and sat astride the Vulcan’s lap. He might be slow on the uptake initially but he could get with the program when required. He quite deliberately fellated the fingers, eyes flicking between Spock’s parted lips and wide eyes until Spock’s pupils were blown with lust. Then, pulling the hand free and entwining the sticky fingers in his, he caught those perfect lips with his own and filled that tantalizing gap with his tongue. Spock moaned softly.

Leonard’s other hand clutched the back of Spock’s neck. He was astonished by the heat of the Vulcan’s skin. It was like having a summer’s worth of blazing Georgia sunshine conveniently packaged into an ambulatory six-foot package and delivered to him in the depths of the black. What more could a man ask for?

Spock’s tongue felt narrower and longer than he was used to, with its upper surface rougher than a human’s. Its subtle rasp along the underside of his own tongue was unbearably erotic and all he could think of was what that would feel like licking up the underside of his cock.

His thoughts must have bled through because Spock was suddenly sucking hard on his tongue, fingers clenched round his, while...

The wail of the red alert siren filled the cabin.

Leonard had never hated Romulans more.

Chapter Text

Some 37 hours later Leonard still had not seen Spock and he began to wonder if the whole thing had been some peculiar misunderstanding. He kept reminding himself that individuals as precise as Spock did not go around inadvertently sticking their fingers in other men’s mouths. That just left him wondering if he’d maybe pushed too hard, made an ass of himself by dumping himself in the first officer’s lap. Maybe Spock now thought the whole thing a terrible mistake – somehow utterly illogical – and was avoiding him.

He was buried in reports of the various injuries from the last attack when Spock finally entered his office. As the door slid closed, Leonard stood, unsure how to behave. Spock laid two fingertips on his hand as usual. His mind instantly jumped to the worry that had preoccupied him all day.

“Leonard, we have been under attack. I have not had time--”

“Dammit, your mind-reading trick is gonna get old,” grumbled the doctor. “I’m a worrier, what can I say?”

Spock brushed his fingers over Leonard’s lips in a gesture that even he could not mistake. “Once this cycle of attacks eases off, we will have time.”

“Explain the finger thing,” blurted Leonard. “It means more than it seems to humans, doesn’t it?”

Spock took the wrist of the doctor’s hand in one of his and then drew the pads of his index and middle finger down the same parts of the human’s hand. “It is the ozh'esta, the finger embrace. It is how Vulcans kiss,” he said quietly.

Leonard flushed when he realized Spock had been kissing him through all these days. Impulsively he brushed his lips across Spock’s smooth cheek. “Like that?”

“Yes, like that.” Spock paused. “To be accurate, more like this.”

He cupped Leonard’s face with one warm hand and pressed his lips against the doctor’s mouth.

“Accuracy being all important in such circumstances,” Leonard murmured against Spock’s lips.

Spock licked across the seam of the other man’s mouth, sucked the full lower lip briefly between his teeth and nibbled at it. He pulled back to say: “Accuracy is paramount in ensuring effective cross-cultural communications, Leonard.”

“If we’d been studying this kind of inter-cultural communication, I might have paid more attention in those god-awful Inter-Species Cultural Awareness classes.” Leonard caught each slender hand with one of his larger ones, rubbing their fingertips together. Spock shuddered against him. “And we get to do it both ways all at once. Now there’s a win-win scenario, in my opinion!”

Spock shut him up by leaning in for another kiss. For several long minutes they clung to each other, able to forget that there was a wider world around them, and a war to be fought.

At last Spock pulled away. “I must go and meditate, and then return to the bridge.” Leonard was heartened by the clear reluctance in Spock’s voice. Leonard’s lips were swollen with kissing and his hands tingled with warmth from the Vulcan’s heated skin. He watched the slender man depart, for the first time letting himself really look at Spock’s lean limbs and pert ass. Letting himself anticipate what might be to come.

He whistled tunelessly through the rest of his shift, enjoying the alarmed looks from the rest of his staff. Maybe things were finally about to get better.

* * *

The days that followed brought a slowly rising tide of frustration. The Romulans were clearly and deliberately harassing the Enterprise, trying to weaken her rather than engage in one all-or-nothing encounter. They would withdraw as soon as they seemed likely to be harmed themselves, only to return before the Enterprise had time to finish repairing the damage from the last round. The engineers had never managed to fully fix the inertial dampeners, so every attack now caused far more collateral damage than it should have – both to equipment and to the people trying to man the equipment.

Leonard was reminded of a wounded elk being pursued through the forest by a pack of wolves, every tearing bite leading to more blood loss, never given the chance to rest and heal, harried at a distance until it finally sank to its knees, crippled by pain and fatigue, and was torn apart by its pursuers.

The ship was permanently on yellow alert and everyone on board was exhausted and increasingly worried. If Leonard was not sleeping, he was in sickbay. Much of the time he didn’t even return to his cabin, collapsing on the camp bed in his office instead. All social visits were postponed until better times came again, whenever that might be, so Leonard only saw Jim on the bridge or in the sickbay inquiring after the health of patients. Leonard finally dragged his friend into the ready room during a shift. He knew Jim wasn’t the type to rely on stims but even his manic energy would run out eventually.

“Dammit Jim, you’re not a Vulcan. Just because he can pull 20-hour-shifts and get by on meditation in-between doesn’t mean you can.” He didn’t mention the other coping strategy Spock used. That was too personal to the two of them.

Jim perched on the edge of the desk, swinging his legs restlessly. “There’ll be time for sleep later, Bones. They’re hunting us down, slowly forcing us ever deeper into the neutral zone.” Dark rings of exhaustion framed Jim’s eyes but they still sparkled with the thrill of the fight. “Their strategy is damned sound. I’d love to have some Romulan ale with their commander in a bar and compare notes.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “You’re supposed to be killing him, Jim, not becoming drinking buddies.”

“Yeah, it’ll come to that, but it’s a shame. He’s a hell of an enemy.” Jim rolled his shoulders and stretched out towards the ceiling, trying to ease the tension of weeks of combat. “This is war, Bones. Not the all-or-nothing set piece of the Kobayashi Maru, or even the way the fight with the Narada played out. This is war. Day after week after month wearing each other down.”

“So,” said Leonard with studied casualness, “are we winning?”

Jim flashed his trademark cocky grin, opened his mouth to reply and then hesitated. He let the grin slip away, leaving a tired smile. “No, we aren’t. But you know that. We’ve destroyed a large number of their birds-of-prey but they just pour more into the fray. We still haven’t cracked the secret of their cloaking technology. And the fuckers in Command won’t send in reinforcements. They won’t do anything that makes it look as if we’re mobilizing for war. Assholes!” Jim slammed his heels against the desk. “We haven’t lost yet, though.”

He jumped off the desk, gave himself a quick shake. Leonard watched the tiredness and worry sink out of sight as the cloak of his trademark confidence and energy wrapped around him. “Hey, I’m Jim Kirk. I’ll think of something. Or one of my shit-hot crew will.” He clapped Leonard on the shoulder. “I need to get back to the bridge. You just concentrate on keeping my people alive and kicking. I’ll get us out of this.”

“You need to sleep,” Leonard yelled after him, but Jim was gone. Muttering to himself with exasperation, he made his way back to the sickbay. Keeping everyone alive and kicking was not as easy as it sounded. The change in the nature of the injuries they were treating bothered him. The level of combat injuries and serious accidents remained consistent with the severity of attack, but the number of idiotic injuries caused by exhaustion or panic was rising steadily and they could not afford the loss of manpower.

Many of the crew had been relying on stims to keep them awake and alert during increasingly long shifts and then on sleeping pills in-between to slow down their racing minds enough to rest. Supplies of both were now desperately low and the medical staff rationed them only to the most essential crew. He’d had to start locking down supply cupboards to stop drugs disappearing. It all added to the rising spiral of stress.

Spock still visited daily, not without justification. He needed to know about the slow degradation of their reserves of manpower. However, he always took a few minutes alone with Leonard in his office, minutes to intertwine fingers and rub fingertips, minutes to brush lips across warm skin and simply rest against each other.

Spock would join hands with Leonard, fingers intertwined, and then lean against him, his forehead resting against Leonard’s temple, breathing slowly and deeply. It finally occurred to the doctor that Spock was drawing some kind of reinforcement from him and he concentrated in those moments on clearing his mind.

It felt wrong to be so happy in the middle of such stress and fear, but Leonard couldn’t help himself. Every time Spock switched from calling him Doctor McCoy to calling him Leonard, every time those warm fingers brushed over his skin like sunshine, every time that impassive face dissolved into a small smile, those liquid brown eyes shone with affection, Leonard’s heart jolted with happiness. He was hip-deep in infatuation and he knew it.

He had moments of worrying that the Vulcan would come to his senses, would realize that Leonard did not have Uhura’s beauty or Jim’s genius. Yet Spock kept returning, so he must be doing something right. With life feeling increasingly precious, and increasingly short, he tried to push aside the worry and concentrate on enjoying their time together.

Without a Vulcan’s control to banish errant thoughts, he focused instead on a warm meadow by a stream in Georgia, the meadow that had lain behind his parents’ house. It had had an oak tree in it and he had spent many days lying in the grass, in the shade of the giant tree, drowsy with heat, listening to the distant sound of water and the buzz of the bees. He imagined the two of them lying there, Spock with his head on Leonard’s chest, Leonard slowly stroking his fingers through the Vulcan’s blue-black hair. He promised himself – hoping that Spock could read the promise through his touch telepathy – that one day they would go there together. Spock never acknowledged the thought, just kissed him with lips and fingers before dutifully returning to the bridge.

* * *

Leonard paced back and forth, sick with worry. The intruder alerts were screaming again, worse than a bag full of cats. Medical was under lock-down, a procedure Leonard had been forced to institute to try and protect the growing number of patients. Spock and Jim were out there somewhere and all he could do was restlessly rearrange his dwindling medical supplies and wait.

A garbled instruction from the captain over the comm had him lifting the lock-down. The patient who limped in, leaning heavily on the shoulder of a black-shirted Jim, was Spock. His right arm was wrapped in what looked like Jim’s command shirt, and already that was soaked through and dripping green.

“The fuckers were suicidal this time,” spat Jim. “They clearly had no intention of getting off the ship. They were just thrashing about trying to do the maximum damage. Spock took down two of them but got filleted with a knife for his trouble. I swear they were trying to hack one of his hands off.”

“It was a decoy, captain,” Spock said quietly, hissing with pain as Leonard began to unwrap the arm. “The chaos was covering for something else. We have to determine their specific mission.”

“I’m on it, Spock. Bones, damn, that looks bad. Is it serious?”

Leonard’s instinctive horror at the forearm that looked as if it had been pulled through a meat grinder was suppressed by his surgeon’s sense which was clinically assessing the damage.

“Not in the sense that it can’t be fixed, but it will be slow, delicate work. Muscles have been shredded, nerves severed. To give him back full use of the hand will take a while.”

Jim wrapped a hand around the back of Leonard’s neck. “If anyone can do it, you can, Bones. Get him back to me as soon as you can.” Jim left for the bridge, leaving Leonard staring at the mangled limb.

“You can restore the function of the hand?” Spock asked, his tone so utterly blank that Leonard suspected that he might be seriously frightened.

“It’ll be fine, but I’m going to have Doctor M’Benga do it.”

“No!” The Vulcan grabbed Leonard’s wrist with his good hand. “You are the best trauma surgeon on the ship.”

“Spock, I can’t treat you. I’m too close to you. It’s not ethical.”

“Doctor McCoy, this is my hand. M’Benga is a good doctor, but you are one of the best surgeons in Starfleet service.”

“I can’t.”

“Leonard. Please.”

Leonard looked down to where Spock’s hand had released his wrist and had instead entwined with his fingers. He knew Spock would be able to feel his intense desire to do the surgery. He was the best on board. This, finally, was something he could do for Spock. He took a deep breath. Fuck the rules. Again.

Spock gave him a small smile. “It will work out better this time, Leonard.”

“I damned well hope so.”

The procedure was time-consuming, requiring the reconnection of the most delicate of nerves, tendons and blood vessels. Each connection needed to be absolutely clean of any scar tissue that might impede future function. Leonard wasn’t having that. The fact that the Vulcan remained awake for the entire operation, using his innate physical control to manage the pain, did nothing for Leonard’s peace of mind.

“I really don’t get why you needed to watch that,” he grumbled when he finally finished the painstaking operation.

“It is my hand, Leonard. It matters. Watching you work is a gratifying distraction.”

“Huh?”

“That was the first intriguing thing I ever noticed about you, your hands. You had come to berate me for banishing Jim Kirk to Delta Vega. You were gesticulating in over-emotional indignation and I observed that you had beautiful hands, so large and strong, so definite in their movement.”

“You noticed my hands?” Leonard asked incredulously.

“Of course. I am Vulcan. Even then I thought you attractive, although emotionally immature.”

Leonard snorted with laughter. “Of course, you were the poster boy for maturity on that trip.”

“We have both learnt much in the interim.”

“Sure have. Now we just need to live long enough to get to enjoy it.”

* * *

Yet another attempt by Scotty’s engineers to restore full function to their warp drive had led to a disastrous explosion in the intermix chamber. The biobeds were all full and those with lesser injuries were sitting on the floor, waiting for one harried nurse to finally get through all of them.

Spock had wished to return to his cabin for the healing trance that would complete the recovery more effectively than any Starfleet regenerator could but Leonard had insisted that he take the camp bed in the CMO’s office instead. Being able to look in on Spock, to see those even features in the relaxation of the trance, made it easier to go on with the hours of demanding surgery. Maybe one day he’d get to see Spock like that lying in his bed. He rested his aching head against the doorframe and took just a moment to let that fantasy unroll in his mind.

Those long lean limbs pale against his sheets, a hand stretched out to draw him down onto the bed. He wondered what Spock would look like fully aroused, whether he’d be soft and giving or bossy and dominating. Whether he’d hold Leonard down with that superior strength of his and whisper hot demands into his ear…. Damn, he really shouldn’t be thinking about such things at work. Reluctantly, he turned back to his other patients.

The mood in the sickbay was leaden grey. The engineers muttered among themselves, fragments of techie-speak about inner core plasma pressure and matter and anti-matter tanks. It meant little to Leonard but that context was enough to suggest that the explosion had further damaged the warp drive. The Enterprise was weaker than ever.

The next time Leonard got to look in on Spock he found him sitting on the camp bed, deep in conversation with Scotty. “It should nae have reacted that way, Spock. Those nasty wee bastards have done summat to our systems.”

Spock looked up at him. “Doctor McCoy, I must return to duty.”

“Dammit Spock! You said the trance needed to be longer than this.” Spock looked implacable and Leonard recognized a lost cause when he saw one. “Let me just check the hand. Scotty, give me five minutes.”

The engineer left them and Leonard wrapped his hand around the injured wrist, searching for the steady thump of the radial pulse. He let his fingers rest against the beating artery, drawing strength from Spock’s life force, glad he did not have the gift of touch telepathy. He had no wish to know what Spock’s ever dwindling calculation of the odds of their survival was.

“The hand is fully functional?”

Spock flexed the hand and wriggled the fingers. He then ran the tips lightly down Leonard’s arm. “Acceptable, doctor. Most acceptable. But then you knew that.”

Leonard did know. He just wanted one minute of peace together before they returned to grinding battle for survival.

“I once asked Nyota how she would describe the default emotional state of the senior crew. Her word for you was compassion, which surprised me. Your confrontational attitude does not reflect that. But I now know what she means. You feel like a warm golden sea to me.”

“A metaphor, Spock?”

“Simply as an aid to explaining this to a limited human mind.”

Leonard pouted. Spock ignored him.

“You combine the heat of my erstwhile home – a home that I cared for deeply despite all its challenges – with an abundance of emotion that I associate with water, the element that was so rare, and so precious, on what was my planet. You are alive with a passion of purpose that disregards all logical analysis in your unwavering commitment to the value of sentient kind. I am not sure that your way of living is either efficient or easy, but it is alluring to me.”

Spock fell silent, absorbed in memories he did not seem inclined to share. Leonard watched him quietly.

“In other circumstances I would not share such a personal thought with you while our relationship is yet so young. But we are running out of time. Although Vulcans only have stated bonds with close relatives and bond-mates, we are all linked by faint mental ties, so subtle that they are only noticed in their absence. With the annihilation of our planet, only 0.000167 percent of those links remain. The universe feels like a cold and an empty place to me now.”

He raised Leonard’s hand and caressed the back with his lips. “Your warmth and your passion for life captivate me.”

Leonard watched as Spock left to return to duty, uncertain as to whether he was heartened by this declaration of regard, or deeply dismayed that the Vulcan was apparently so worried about their future that he’d laid bare his heart like this.

* * *

“Doctor, something’s wrong with the computer systems again. The medical records keep freezing.” Leonard waved a weary acknowledgement at Chapel. The systems seemed increasingly unstable since the last Romulan incursion. The tricorders were self-contained diagnostic units but the more sophisticated systems were unreliable. All the Enterprise’s considerable systems expertise was focused on trying to keep the weapons and navigation systems operational. The medics just had to get by.

The Enterprise was limping through space, now deep in the neutral zone, being chased ever closer to the Romulan edge, harassed every few hours by birds-of-prey. For now they were holding their own, but they needed a miracle and they needed one fast. Their comms links back to Starfleet Command were spotty but they’d received word that a supply ship and reinforcements were finally waiting for them at the edge of Federation space. Which would be great, except that with their barely functional warp drive they had no way to get back there.

The brass still wouldn’t authorize a formal intrusion into the neutral zone, were still placing their hopes on the dead-end diplomatic negotiations by sub-space radio, were still expecting another Captain Kirk tour-de-force to deliver them from the shit. Jim was pushing ever harder on all his crew, and on no one harder than himself, but as yet he’d found no way out.

The rise in requests for emergency contraception suggested that there was a good deal of end-of-the-world sex going on among the crew. Leonard was tempted to snap at them that if imminent death justified unprotected sex, then a birth nine months down the line was hardly a logical thing to worry about. Perhaps Spock’s attitude was rubbing off on him, he thought wryly. Nevertheless, he envied them.

None of this apocalyptic sex was coming his way. Neither he nor Spock were the kind of men comfortable with public displays of affection and both were far too professional to risk being caught with their pants down when the next battle warning sounded. Nevertheless, the doctor was beginning to feel that he hadn’t had a case of blue balls like this since he was 14 years old and a change in the wind direction was enough to give him an erection. It was junior high all over again, holding hands and trading kisses and hoping one day that they might have the opportunity to do more.

He desperately wanted a break – just one night off for the two of them, a chance to think of something other than the fate of the Enterprise and with it the Federation.

“Doctor! A secured message on your comm, from the bridge.”

Leonard handed over the treatment of an engineer’s second degree burns to Chapel. The engineer was so tired that she kept falling asleep during the procedure, yet was adamant that she had to get back to the engines.

The message was from Uhura, sent to himself and Scotty. Leonard’s gut tightened.

STATUS UPDATE [security classification HIGH]: Defensive computer systems offline, shields and weapons inoperable, warp capability has failed. A Romulan virus has been activated in our systems. Surrounded by 12 birds-of-prey. Captain Kirk speaking to Romulan Commander, attempting to negotiate a retreat.

The message abruptly changed from formal briefing-speak.

Commander promising annihilation of the Enterprise. Kirk trying to produce a miracle. Hard to see how. It looks bad!!!

Leonard sat and stared at the screen. The implications carried by the clinical black text were hard to grasp. Another message flashed up, a private message from Spock, although sent on the official channel.

Odds of escaping destruction by Romulans 0.927 percent and falling. Leonard - I had looked forward to a time when we could explore a deeper intimacy. That time will not come. It is not logical to feel regret. But this – I regret. Rom-halan. Taluhk nash-veh k'dular.

Leonard knew Spock was not exactly the effusive type, but in his opinion that sucked as a love letter. And was this any time to expect him to suddenly develop a command of Vulcan? Leonard glared at the message from his – boyfriend? lover? So he’d been right all along. He was going to die, fried to a cinder, in the vast vacuum of space, with no one to hear him scream. No one to care that he was gone. Almost all the people who mattered were on this ship already and they would be reduced to their component atoms just as he would be, lost in the darkness and silence of the black.

And Spock… His heart twisted. Could the universe not give him a break, just one fucking time? His mother, dead in a shuttle crash. His father, gone before his time in prolonged agony. His daughter dead in the womb. His wife lost to him in her grief. His career in private practice destroyed by his father-in-law’s enmity. He had battled so hard, for so long, to find this one small piece of happiness, and now some fucking Romulan was going to destroy it all.

Damn but he hated Romulans.

He jumped up and ran for the turbolift. He was not going to die on G deck like a rat in the hold. He would go down next to Jim and Spock, next to the rest of the bridge crew that he had fought so hard and so long to keep alive.

He stopped, panting, at the back of the bridge, still with enough common sense not to disturb the apparently ongoing negotiations. Jim sat sprawled in the captain’s chair, his body language carefully arranged to display confidence, but the edge in his voice told Leonard that his best friend was close to the end of his tether.

It was a no-win scenario, for real this time. Jim Kirk was going to go down at the helm of the Enterprise, along with his entire crew. The destruction of the Federation flagship virtually on the edge of Romulan space would certainly serve as a pretext to justify the Romulan Star Empire launching a war. Billions would die and Jim knew it. Leonard’s heart ached for the man.

Glancing up at the screen, he froze in shock. The Romulan lounging smugly in the command seat was the same fucking bastard whose life he’d saved. The uniform was different, but the facial features were identical. The supercilious expression was identical.

He’d saved the commander of the enemy fleet? Those damned briefing notes claimed the commanders never left their vessels, sent their underlings to do the dirty work. Trust him to get caught up with the Romulans’ equivalent of Jim Kirk. Anger crashed over him, an overwhelming tsunami of rage. This was his fault. This brute was only alive because of him.

Without thinking he strode forward into the room, stopped beside Jim’s chair and spat out furiously at his nemesis: “You fucking bastards. What the hell do y’all think you’re playing at?”

The Romulan graced him with a brief glance, before commenting with amusement to Jim: “You let him live? Had any physician of mine made an error like that, he’d have been dead within the hour. You humans are so foolish and so weak. Your deaths will be a mercy.”

The Romulan’s voice came over in tinny tones through the universal translator. Jim began to reply but Leonard overrode him.

“You bastard. Au nan'ha-favi! You’re only alive because of me you knvuk kllhe fehill'curak. You owe me. How dare you kill us? You fucking owe me!”

As he spoke, something occurred to him.

The Romulan did indeed owe him.

After the Romulan’s escape Leonard had read restlessly through the Romulans: language and culture briefing booklet, trying to understand what the alien had sneered at him as he departed.

“Au daendle ehlu emael daekr draed aimehn.” As best as he could work out, it had meant something like “It is your misfortune that you will never be able to claim your life debt.” He’d scrolled through the culture section, trying to work out what a ‘draed aimehn’ was. He’d thought he’d found the answer eventually. If one Romulan saved the life of another, he was then owed a life debt which he could claim, once only, as and when he wished. Romulan honor required that the debt be discharged.

To owe such a debt was a weakness and most Romulans would kill anyone who had saved their life to avoid such a thing. That had left Leonard wondering how the hell their medical system worked until he realized that their physicians all came from the Reman slave class and as such had no right to claim honor debts. That had not exactly endeared Romulans to him any further.

Leonard glared at the commander, apoplectic with anger. “You fucking owe me.” But the debt had to be claimed with a specific formula, uttered in Romulan. Leonard had read the formula over and over again, as he sat alone after shift in his ever deepening gloom.

Until a minute ago Leonard had never actually spoken Romulan to anyone other than himself and in the heat of the moment he couldn’t remember the honor formula. He took a deep breath, stared the Romulan commander right in the eye and started to speak.

It had worked for him in his medical orals: staring at his examiners with a completely blank mind, simply opening his mouth and trusting that, with all those terabytes of information crammed into his brain, the right thing would come forth. Given his high marks, the strategy clearly worked.

“Au'shlo'ck mei n're! Vaed'rae ke'rhin! Sthea'hwill kivoi aodaet nnea mnhei'sahe bontwe irrhaimehn draed aimehn!”

The commander stared at him, astonished. The entire bridge crew stared at him.

“Bones? What the fuck?” Jim whispered.

There was a long silence.

Leonard waited with bated breath. The commander did not in fact have to acknowledge the debt. Only species considered honorable enemies by the Romulan Empire had the right to claim honor debts. All other species were simply nhaidh - cockroaches – and considered fit for nothing more than extermination. What they thought of humans was unclear.

The commander threw back his head and laughed. “You’re a feisty little human, aren’t you? Perhaps I see why your captain hasn’t had you killed. Captain Kirk, you and I are of a kind. You have fought long and bravely. I have enjoyed our encounters. You and your crew have proved yourselves honorable enemies. There is honor in acknowledging a life debt. Doctor, I suppose this means you want the ship saved?”

“Well, this damned tin can is the only thing keeping me alive out here, so yes, I kind of need the ship… And all the people who man her,” Leonard added hastily.

“Very well. We will transmit the security patch that will neutralize the virus and will escort your ship to the Federation edge of the neutral zone. There the debt will be discharged.” The commander smiled at Jim, still amused, as if a good fight against a worthy adversary mattered to him more than the final outcome. “Next time I meet you, Captain, I will kill you. I will kill your little physician. I will kill all your crew. It will be my pleasure. Until then. Glohhaasi' mnekha. ”

The viewscreen flickered to darkness. “Captain.” Uhura’s voice pierced the silence. “They’ve just sent through the security patch and course we’re to follow. It’s the shortest route to our border of the neutral zone.”

Leonard clung to the back of the captain’s chair, blood pounding in his ears, unable to comprehend what had just happened. There was noise all around him. Looking up in bewilderment, he realized that the entire bridge crew were giving him a standing ovation.

Jim pulled him into a tight hug. “Bones, I love you man. I told you there’s no such thing as a no-win scenario! I told you one of my shit-hot crew would save the day.” He pulled back so he could look Leonard in the eye. “You just saved over 800 lives--”

“Eight hundred and seventy five, Captain.” Spock stood close behind him, a warm hand secure on his neck.

“Thank you, Spock. You’ve just saved 875 lives without damaging so much as a hair on your own head. Do you have any idea of how much I love you?!”

Jim pulled him back into a tight hold. Other members of the crew were crowding round, clapping him on the back and pumping his hand, their voices mingling in a cacophony of praise and appreciation. Leonard felt weak at the knees as the impact of what he had done sunk in.

“Captain, may I suggest that I escort the doctor back to the sickbay. He appears somewhat overwhelmed.”

“Good plan, Spock. Go and pour some well-deserved moonshine that I totally know nothing about down his throat while we get our lady on course for the Federation. Uhura, get a message through to Starfleet that reports of our imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated!”

Leonard let Spock steer him off bridge and into the turbolift. Shivering with shock, he was glad of the other man’s support. He had assumed they would be returning to the sickbay but Spock pressed the button for the living quarters’ deck.

“I’m still on shift. I should get back to work.”

“Leonard, the likelihood of further injuries during our escorted return to Federation space is minimal and your staff is capable of dealing with any such occurrences. I told you in my message that the likelihood of our survival - and by extension the likelihood of our ever consummating our relationship - was 0.927 percent. Thanks to you we have survived.”

Spock had an arm wrapped tightly around Leonard’s shoulders. He used it to pull the doctor close to him as he spoke softly.

“I now calculate that the likelihood of our living to consummate is 99.938 percent. However, I find the 0.062 percent chance of failure too great to be tolerated.”

Leonard tried to wrap his shaken brain around all of that. “So you’re saying that we’re gonna go to your cabin and fuck like bunnies in a wild eruption of we-survived sex?”

“Other than that I do not anticipate any use for Oryctolagus Cuniculas during the course of coitus, you are correct.”

As the turbolift doors opened, Jim’s voice came over the ship-wide comm system explaining the most recent events: the CMO had saved them, they were headed back to the safety of Federation space where a relief ship awaited them and there would be time for rest and repairs. The sounds of distant cheers echoed down the empty corridor. Leonard, who by now had recovered some of his equanimity, grabbed Spock’s hand and towed him towards the cabin. He really didn’t want to have to be polite to some over-grateful ensign right now, not when he could have a lapful of hot and naked first officer instead.

Even as the Vulcan was opening the doorlock, Leonard was pressed up against his back, hands up under the blue shirt, mouthing messily along Spock’s hairline, licking up the delicate pinnae of those ridiculously pointed ears.

They tumbled into the warm cabin that had come to represent safety and friendship to Leonard. Now he planned to add steamy sex to the mix. Spock pushed him against the wall and kissed him thoroughly. For long minutes they clung to each other, hands intertwined, mouths mashed together.

“So in that damned note of yours, what does taluhk nash-veh k'dular mean?” demanded Leonard when he finally pulled his mouth free.

Spock winced at his pronunciation. He caught Leonard’s hands in his own, slowly, sensuously rubbing their fingertips together. “It means: I cherish thee.”

Leonard brought Spock’s hands up to his mouth, kissing the fingers one by one. “Soft-hearted sap. I’m gonna have to teach you something about writing love letters, though. Quoting percentages of doom doesn’t really do it for me.”

“The percentages are now safely in our favor.” Spock cupped Leonard’s face in two warm strong hands. “You were exceptional on the bridge. I am honored to serve with you.”

“I didn’t really do anything--”

“Leonard, you acted and we lived. Shiyau thol'es k'thorai ri k'ahm. One of the sayings of Surak. Nobility lies in action, not in name.”

Leonard blushed and fidgeted, never comfortable with praise. “Quoting Vulcan philosophy doesn’t really do it for me either. Can we get back to the kissing bit?”

That earned him a raised eyebrow and a hot hand running up the line of his ribs under his shirt, brushing gently over a hardening nipple. Leonard nibbled his way up the side of Spock’s neck before whispering hotly in his ear: “So are you my prize, then? My reward for saving the ship? Victor gets the girl and all that.”

Spock pulled him close again, pressing an apparently substantial erection against his hip while slipping the warm hand down inside his pants to grip hard on his ass. “If you are expecting a girl, Leonard, you are about to surprised.”

Leonard groaned into his mouth, shivering with arousal. “Fish or cut bait, Spock.”

“Fish will not be involved, Leonard, no more than rabbits. And this can be more efficiently managed if we remove our apparel.”

Spock walked to the bed, pulling off his shirt as he did, and then sat down to take off his boots. Leonard stood watching, taking a moment to savor the anticipation of all that was to come. This beautiful, talented, incomprehensible man was his for the taking. All his.

Spock looked up, flexing slender bare feet.

“Come to bed, ashayam.”

The doctor could not stop the broad grin that took over his face.

“Don’t mind if I do, darlin’. Now you definitely don’t sound like my momma, and thank the lord for that.”

“You talk too much, Leonard. Come to bed.”

And Leonard did.

- THE END -

Chapter Text

Even as Leonard was making his way slightly unsteadily off the bridge, Jim was already thinking ahead. No mere mission report was going to do justice to the brilliance of his CMO. Jim had no problem with recognizing the achievements of others, especially when they had just saved his precious Enterprise and every soul within her. This called for something special.

Uhura, as a specialist in communication in all its forms, understood his plan immediately. Soon they were assembling all the different video and audio recordings of the event and had between them began to craft a video that would reflect the awesome that was Dr Bones McCoy standing up to the Romulan Commander in their moment of annihilation.

The growing despair of Jim’s failing negotiation, Leonard’s abrupt arrival and verbal explosion, the expression on the Romulan’s face, Leonard’s rant in Standard and in Romulan, cut-aways to the faces of the bridge crew, to the face of the Romulan commander, the final acknowledgement – all captured in its full technicolour glory and sent back to Starfleet Command with the formal report.

The Admiralty saw the PR power of the video immediately. Morale in the Federation was low and sinking. Every whisper of a Romulan attack came with echoes of the fate of Vulcan. Terra Prime activists were ever more influential on Earth, demanding a withdrawal from the Federation. They demanded that Earth resources be saved for humans.

Admiral Barnett had the video leaked within hours and it had gone viral round the globe within a single rotation of the planet. Something that showed a good old-fashioned human telling a Romulan bastard what for was always going to be a hit. Anyone with something that sounded remotely like a southern accent or who was in any way connected with the medical profession found themselves getting more sexual offers than they could have dreamed off. Enlistment in the medical profession in general and in Starfleet in particular rocketed.

Admiral Pike looked long and hard at the rank insignia of the commander and wondered if there wasn’t an even more powerful use of the video. It took weeks to get a handful of copies out to the farthest edges of the Federation, across the neutral zone and into Romulan space. There the video languished for over a month before suddenly exploding – the first video ever to go viral in Romulan society. The effect was unprecedented.

Pike’s hunch had been right. The commander was in fact the great-nephew of the Romulan Praetor, being put through an accelerated rotation of command positions within their fleet. To see such a powerful man acknowledging the Federation races to be honourable enemies was extraordinary. Of equal impact was the appearance of the humans. Virtually no Romulan had ever seen a human and it was a surprise to see how similar in appearance they were.

The appearance of the interior of the bridge of the Enterprise was a revelation too. Having been repeatedly told that humans were technologically-inferior cockroaches, it was a shock to see the sophistication of their vessel. And of course the assumption was that all Federation vessels must be equally powerful. A new found fascination with and respect for their enemies was rapidly evolving.

All of this Pike had hoped to achieve. What took everyone by surprise was that Romulans, especially but not only the women, turned out to find their most scathing insults, when spat out in Romulan by a human male in a drawled southern American accent, exceedingly sexy.

What no amount of Federation intelligence had managed to uncover was that the Praetor was one of seven siblings, all of the others female. And Romulan women were not exactly shrinking violets. The Praetor kept control of them with a divide-and-rule principle and mostly it worked. But he knew that should the six of them ever band together in common purpose, he would never be able to resist.

And their common purpose quickly became an opportunity to meet these inexplicable humans in the flesh, especially the doctor. It was soon determined that a meeting was essential in order to determine whether the Federation races should indeed be acknowledged as honourable enemies. A perplexed Federation diplomatic office received an invitation to attend talks-about-talks, with the proviso that the senior crew of the Enterprise absolutely must attend.

Thus the next time that Commander Vrih s'Akeidhad met with Captain James T. Kirk, he did not in fact get the opportunity to kill him. Instead they stood side by side, nibbling at little olive-and-cheese-on-a-stick canapés and making uneasy small talk about how uncomfortable dress uniforms always were.

The Imperial ladies descended en masse on the Enterprise CMO who hid behind the First Officer, who in turn made it very clear that Vulcans did not share. For a moment the entire room held its collective breath as a diplomatic bloodbath seemed about to break out. Fortunately it turned out that Romulans considered possessiveness an admirable trait in a partner, and while they were disappointed that the doctor was unavailable, they were heartened to discover that humans did not object to inter-species liaisons. They looked around for other opportunities.

Now official histories will recall that both Admiral Pike and Captain – later Admiral – Kirk had long and distinguished careers in service of the Federation and their achievements were many and glorious. But their particular contribution to this event has been engraved in oral rather than official history. The gossip will tell you that both men went far above and beyond the call of duty in making the ladies of the Romulan Imperial court feel welcome - thoroughly, repeatedly welcome. It was a tough, exacting task but neither man was one to shirk from the call of duty.

They were ably assisted in this selfless endeavour by Commander Chekov (given an instant field promotion from ensign when it became clear that Romulan spoken with a Russian accent was nearly as good as Romulan with a southern accent but the Imperial ladies did not deign to consort with mere ensigns).

The peace did not last of course – the Romulans might like sex but they loved warfare. However the Federation races were by then entrenched in their status as honourable enemies which made the battles considerably less vicious. Contact between the two races remained rare until a day, some eighteen years later when two young Romulans – a boy and girl claiming to be cousins who had run away from home – arrived on the doorstep of the Starfleet Academy, demanding that they be allowed to enlist. They maintained that they had human fathers, which gave them the right to Federation citizenship.

Once the genetic testing had been completed Admiral Kirk and Starfleet Command’s Chief of Staff Admiral Pike disappeared into a scuzzy bar in downtown San Francisco and got shit-faced drunk. In a medical research centre on New Vulcan Research Fellow Emeritus Dr McCoy buried his head against the warm neck of the Federation ambassador to New Vulcan, Ambassador Spock, and howled with laughter.

And newly enlisted cadets Havraha and T'Maekh set out wide-eyed to discover all that the Academy had to offer.

But that is another story...

- THE END -