Prompt Fic:"The Human Mating Dance (In Ten Easy Steps)" Sulu/McCoy, ST:XI, NC-17
For 
secretsolitaire, she of the wonderful, wonderful McSulu recs ::smooches::
Being inspired by random songs seems to be my preferred method of spur, however I disregarded the time rules, so as not to write teeny, tiny crap.
The Human Mating Dance (In Ten Easy Steps)
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: ST:XI
Pairing: McCoy/Sulu, background Chekov/Scotty
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: Approx. 8600
Notes/Warnings: Set between two and three years into the mission. Minor violence, slightly gross sexual situation.
Summary: Sometimes, Sulu's a guard-dog and sometimes McCoy is extra pissed off. Ten linked ficlets written for
secretsolitaire's prompt, Sulu woos McCoy with plants, McCoy being totally oblivious to what's happening, and sex in the botany lab, and inspired by ten random songs.
Nirvana: Scentless Apprentice
McCoy's fuming in his office over nothing in particular, while simultaneously correcting medical logs on autopilot well before his shift even starts, when there's a chime at the door.
“Enter at your own risk!” he barks, because if it ain't Christine, Jim, or-hopefully not-Spock, then it's probably just a make-work problem that snuck past the on-calls.
This problem turns out to be his sometimes personal guard-dog, Lieutenant Sulu, smiling that relaxed half-smile that used to drive McCoy up a wall. Till it didn't. And he's holding a potted plant that McCoy's never seen. It's not especially large, nor is it eye-catching-a few faded olive-green stalks with tripartite leaves, uneven orange speckling and tiny, bright orange buds-but for the first time in days, he finds himself smiling, and the Lieutenant smiles back.
“It's a species of trifolium I found, a few missions back,” he says with his usual quiet confidence, stepping into the office proper, and not stopping until he's close enough to sit the plant on the desk half-way between himself and McCoy, who leans in a bit to get a better look.
(He catches a scent like grapes and . . . toothpaste?)
The leaves are shaped almost like something one'd find on Earth. Like a three-leaf clover. Each group of leaves is about the size of McCoy's thumb, and faintly waxy-looking. All in all, an odd looking thing.
He looks up at the Lieutenant again and wonders why the kid's so damn happy, today. Normally, he's always got some sort of smile on that boyish face, but this is above and beyond. “So. What miraculous wonders does this one work, Lieutenant?”
That smile slips a little, and dark brows almost--almost--draw together. “'Work'? Um.” A new expression that McCoy can't place, then that old smile is back, and the Lieutenant looks at the plant like it has answers that he needs. “It. Um. Doesn't work much. It's just . . . pretty. And it smells really nice. Kinda like kudzu, with a little mint thrown in.”
The Lieutenant laughs a little under McCoy's confused staring, and runs his hand through his hair. “See, I . . . figured since you were from Georgia, and kudzu's all over the southeast . . . uh. Anyway. My shift starts in five. I'll comm the care-for directions to you-they're not hard-and leave you to your doctoring. Bye.”
With that he's gone, faster than McCoy can say thanks.
A few minutes after he's resumed his corrections, the tantalizing hint of grape, and more faintly mint, become too much of a temptation. He pulls the plant closer and for the first time in a very long time, doesn't feel homesick.
Journey: Don't Stop Believing
“Well. Can't say I'm happy to see you, Lieutenant. At least not under these circumstances.”
Sulu, despite his injury-arm laid open from elbow to wrist, and damn near to the bone, with shredded muscles that'll be two to three weeks healing-smiles his zen little smile. Though it's more of a grimace, and there are dark circles under his eyes. McCoy huffs and works quickly with the scanner. The Lieutenant's only smiling because the hypo's kicking in, no doubt.
Like Jim, Lieutenant Sulu can't be treated with regular sedatives and painkillers. With Jim, the reason is allergies-there's very little Jim isn't allergic to, it turns out-but with Sulu, it's simply that his system throws off sedatives, painkillers, anti-coagulants, and anti-biotics like they aren't even there. The only ones he responds to are the same ones Jim's restricted to.
McCoy makes certain they're always well-stocked no matter how many bitches Starfleet Medical pitches.
The Lieutenant is smiling. Still. It bugs McCoy, just a bit, and makes him more brusque than he'd normally be with a patient. “Quit smilin' so goddamn much. If you knew how wrecked your arm was, and how much pain you'll be in over the next few weeks--”
“I'd still do it again,” Sulu finishes, and though McCoy can't tell from one quick glance, no doubt the Lieutenant's pupils are dilated. He's flying high on 'the good shit', as Jim tends to call it. “I'd do it aaaallll again, Doc. No pain, no gain.”
“You nearly died, Lieutenant.”
“'Nearly' is nothing. 'Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and photon grenades. Nearly.” Sulu giggles a little. “I got it, Dr. McCoy, so 'nearly' can go screw itself.”
McCoy sighs. It's like dealing with a slightly more sensible version of Jim. Or maybe slightly less. “And what was so important that nearly dying was worth it?”
“A dionaea muscipula,” Sulu says throatily, like a man talking dirty and McCoy's steady hand almost drops the scanner. He squints at Sulu, who's completely relaxed in the bio-bed, his shredded forearm strapped down to the bed's extension table. Filthy, scraped fingers twitch lazily, and McCoy can't stop staring at them. He can feel Sulu's gaze on him like honey. Tranqed-up honey.
“A venus flytrap?” he asks, and clears his throat. Spell broken, McCoy shuts off the scanner and lays it down. Time to irrigate the wound and begin the laborious work of mending and rebuilding muscles and veins.
“It's too fucking cool that you know that, sir,” Sulu says, yawning through his grin. His face is covered in smudges and scratches McCoy's waiting to heal till the tranq kicks in--which it really should have two minutes ago. “Most doctors only know medical Latin.”
“Huh. Most pilots don't even know Pig Latin.”
Sleepy eyes flutter shut then open. That zen smile is completely loopy, now. Sulu is strangely endearing this way, like a drunken kitten. “Mm. Latin's what got me interested in plants. I liked that they had all these weird, romantic names that almost nobody else knows.”
McCoy almost laughs. But doesn't. He's got a rep to maintain. “How quaint. I just learned Latin to impress a girl who was in the Latin Club.”
“Nice! Did it work?” Sulu's gazing at him raptly, as if finding him fascinating, only without any Spock-ish condescension. It's been a long time since anyone looked at him that way, and it makes him . . . less terse than he usually is.
“For awhile, yes.” McCoy pinches the bridge of his nose. At this late date, when he thinks of all that went wrong with his marriage, he thinks more of Jo, than Jocelyn. Misses his little girl so keenly, it feels like he's being eating alive. Like he's been trapped in some giant damn flytrap. “Enough chit-chat, Lieutenant Sulu, we both need to concentrate on getting you mended--”
Sulu's deep, surprisingly loud snore shuts him up.
"'The good shit,' indeed," McCoy mutters to himself, then gets to work.
STP: Vasoline
Like everyone who was on the Enterprise for the battle with the Narada, McCoy has nightmares. Awful ones.
Ones where it was he on Deck 6, instead of Dr. Puri. Or that Jim had been taken to the brig, instead of heeded about whole lighting-storm-is-Romulans thing.
Sometimes, he dreams that he not only couldn't save Pike's legs, but couldn't save any of his spinal column.
Sometimes, he dreams that Chekov couldn't beam Jim and Sulu aboard in time, or that Jim died aboard the Narada, while rescuing Pike. (Jim doesn't talk about what happened, but McCoy knows there were several close calls.)
There was a time, in the beginning, McCoy had these nightmares several times a night. Then, as time went on, several times a week. Then several times a month. In the past year, he's had only a few, and it's been better. Sleeping, being alone in the dark. Alone with himself.
But tonight . . . he has his first nightmare in months, and it's a doozy. The one that recurs the most, but is no less awful, for that. It seems like just when he thinks he's seen the last of this Narada-nightmare, if not all of them. . . .
Though he thinks he understands, now, how reliving the destruction of one's home world night after night, with no relief, can drive one insane. So help him, each time the Earth is destroyed in his dreams brings him one night closer to understanding Nero, and that's what makes this nightmare the worst of all. Not the destruction of his home in his dreams, but the implied destruction of himself that comes after he wakes.
Sleep now out of the question, he's up and dressed before his sweat has time to dry, meaning to commandeer a bucket of ice from the Mess. He's got a bottle of Antaran bourbon-vile, but mule-kick strong-that he procured for just such a night. A few splashes, on the rocks, should be enough to put him out without killing him, but there's really only one way to know for sure. Antaran hooch hits everyone who isn't Antaran differently.
When the door to his quarters opens, he strides out and trips over something and falls flat on his stomach like a giant, surly toddler.
Dazed and winded, it's a struggle just to roll into sitting position. He's swearing all the way, red, furious, and very glad no one's come down this corridor. Though it's only a matter of time. Everything McCoy's never wanted is only a matter of time, it seems.
Getting to his knees he blearily eyes the soil and leaves spilled all over, the red clay pot that's cracked and hopeless.
That plant that'd been in it isn't looking too healthy, either.
McCoy gets to his feet and goes back into his quarters. Roots around in all the alien crap Jim fobs off on him till he finds it. It's too big, maybe too metallic, and it's uglier'n sin in an overdone, baroque way. It was clearly never meant to be a pot, but some kind of urn.
“Will this do, m'lord?” McCoy asks the plant, but really, he's asking its original tender, who's probably sound asleep right now, having come close to achieving his goal of murdering the Chief Medical Officer with a goddamned ficus.
He carefully, carefully, scoops up soil with the pottery shards, and transplants it into the urn. When he's got about two thirds of the soil in there, he picks up the plant, root and all, and pots it in the urn. It's missing half its deep-green fronds-and the damn thing don't stand up straight at all, drooping and listing like an old drunk.
McCoy sighs, and adds the rest of the soil-at least what he can get with hands and shards-and transports the whole mess back into his quarters. Almost waters the damned pathetic thing, then decides to wait till he checks his messages. No doubt Mr. Sulu's forwarded instructions for this plant, too.
The shards go in the reclamator along with the last few bits of soil, the fronds go into one of a pair of matched whiskey glassed filled halfway with water. McCoy means to get that ice so he can use the other glass, but he gets so caught up in the instructions for this plant-hardy, it is, but high-maintenance . . . kinda like a wife-the bourbon is forgotten until after the plant's been cared for, and he's just got enough energy to fall back into bed.
His dreams are green, and nightmare-free.
Collective Soul: Smashing Young Gentleman
Diplomacy.
Great for the Federation, not so great for McCoy, who always feels like a trained chimp in his dress reds. The only reason he's going is to fill out the ranks of Enterprise brass, and because Lieutenant Sulu's arm has healed enough for him to play guard-dog-slash-erstwhile-date. Which means that Jim, for all his faith in diplomacy, has no faith in the renegade Xi'ibus not trying to slaughter at least a few of the Federation representatives, at some point during the evening's celebration of a new and lasting peace.
When McCoy answers the chime at his door, Lieutenant Sulu looks . . . different. Granted, this isn't the first time he's seen the Lieutenant in his dress reds, but it feels like it is, and he can't stop staring. Can't even close his mouth.
“You clean up really nice, Doctor,” Sulu murmurs, managing to sound pleased, but not particularly surprised. Though he does give McCoy a second, quick once over. He's got one hand behind his back and the other on his stomach like an old-fashioned bow. “That medi-kit's a good idea, too. The Xi'ibu renegades are kinda . . . restive, lately.”
McCoy snorts at the understatement. “Yeah, that's the word for those crazy, violent little orange-faced savages. You're armed with something besides personal charm and rapier wit, right?”
A twitch of that smile. It very nearly becomes a grin, the kind McCoy's never seen on the helmsman. “Oh, I'm armed, sir. To the teeth, sir.” Sulu inclines his head, then does, indeed, bow. “And this is for you,” he brings his right arm from around his back, and is holding a small potted plant. There's one pale-green stalk in the reddish soil, and it has five gently curling fronds, at the center of which is a tiny purplish flower that hasn't quite bloomed yet.
“It hasn't bloomed, yet,” Sulu says, almost telepathically, and quite apologetically. “Probably within the next few days, though. This one's a bit more fussy than the others-it's kind of an orchid hybrid I've been tinkering with--but very worth the care. When it blooms, the scent is . . . incredible.”
“It's . . . lovely, Lieutenant.” McCoy takes the plant, and hesitates before brushing a frond with his index finger. Glances at Sulu's excited-somewhere-miles-below-that-zen face and frowns. “How delicate is it?”
“I bred it to be hardy. You know, hardy for an orchid. Though if it's not cared for a certain way-I'll comm you the instructions-it can wilt surprisingly fast. The scent fades away to practically nothing.”
“I see.” McCoy turns the pot at different angles, admiring the hybrid and lightly examining one cool, silk-soft green frond. It's been a long time since he looked at plants just to enjoy their beauty. These past few weeks have been something of a revelation. In more ways than one.
He finds himself looking at the Lieutenant. Looking him over. No surprise he cleans up nice enough to invite in for coffee of the purely metaphorical kind, and McCoy opens his mouth, meaning to do so, but Sulu clears his throat and looks off down the corridor.
“We oughta get to the transporter pad, sir. That ceremony's gonna start in fifteen, and the Captain's already down there.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Goddamned Xi'ibus,” McCoy mutters, turning into his quarters, cursing the Federation's latest candidates for membership, and with more vitriol than usual. He puts the hybrid on the nighttable next to his bed, brushing a cool, green frond once more. The trifolium is still in his office, blooming like mad and smelling like home. The ficus is in the Sickbay receiving room, still as inscrutable and scentless as it is leafy, and lushly gorgeous. It's almost too big for its urn, now.
Smiling, he pats his medi-kit and strides to the door, noting the way Sulu's eyes categorize him like some species of plant he wants to acquire. “Lay on, MacSulu.”
“Aye, sir.” As McCoy steps out of his quarters Sulu smartly offers his arm. The look McCoy gives him could curdle fresh milk . . . but McCoy takes the arm. It's healed well, and there's definitely some kind of wrist-mounted weaponry attached to it. It'd make McCoy smile if he weren't right off a glare.
Sulu clears his throat again, momentarily pressing his other hand over McCoy's, like a young man addressing his prom-date. “Guard duty aside, sir, I really am honored to be your escort for the even--”
“Save it, Lieutenant. Diplomacy waits for no man,” McCoy drawls, and ignores Sulu's amused smile.
Depeche Mode: Free Love
Goddamned Xi'ibus, McCoy thinks, crouched behind the buffet table the Lieutenant had toppled over as cover from sudden projectile weapons fire.
Of course that was after Sulu got shot himself--with nothing so sophisticated as a phaser, but a goddamn arrow that's still protruding from high in his chest-because he'd dived, phasers firing, in front of McCoy.
There's something emerald-green smeared on the damn thing, where it pierces Sulu's chest near the shoulder, and it for goddamn sure ain't butter-cream frosting. Sulu's already pale and greyish, laying in a spreading pool of his own blood. There ain't nothing dress about his reds, now, and from the wet, labored sound of Sulu's breathing, he's got a nicked or perforated lung.
And he's trying to tug the arrow out, because he obviously wants to bleed to death faster, the idiot.
“Goddamned fucking fabulous--keep your arms at your sides, or I'll break 'em,” McCoy growls, smacking the kid's hand away from the arrow and grabbing his medi-kit. Sulu's eyes follow him blearily, and he even tries to smile, licking dry lips.
“'M I . . . 'm I gonna die, Doc?”
“No, you're gonna shut the hell up, is what you're gonna do, Lieutenant Sulu.” McCoy scans Sulu and doesn't like what he sees one goddamn bit. Swears, and selects a painkiller-slash-coagulant that's both rare and one of the few Jim isn't allergic to. Doesn't hesitate to give Sulu the whole dose, and if he needs more, he'll get it. Jim'll just have to try and not nearly bleed to death on a mission, for once. “Just hush up and lemme do my job, and you'll be fine.”
“''Kay. Sorry, Doc. Thanks.” That smile, again, and Sulu's eyes are fluttering shut. He looks ridiculously young, and his lips are paler than any McCoy's seen that weren't on a cadaver. “I think Pav'l's right. I am fallin' in love with you. . . .”
Leonard McCoy is a professional. He is not jarred by such a statement when there's a life at stake. His hands never falter, and his mind never wanders. Around the table and in the massive feasting hall, Jim and the others, along with the Xi'ibus, battle the Xi'ibu renegades over something McCoy could give two good goddamns about.
Under his hands, Lieutenant Sulu keeps on living. Barely.
Head Phones President: Chain
The thing is, sometimes, McCoy can sometimes be extra pissed.
Sulu can usually spot this for several reasons-reason one, of course, being that McCoy will loudly and plainly exclaim this to anyone in raging distance. (And he certainly had a right to be so, during this away mission. The bloviating Xi'ibu Chancellor had been a prick by standards far lower than McCoy's. Sulu, himself, tends to be a live-and-let-live sort, not easily riled, but even he'd found himself touching his retractable katana several times, while eying the Chancellor's weedy, orange neck.)
But aside from his tendency to announce his rage, McCoy also telegraphs it. The way his mouth purses-much more tightly and rigidly than normal-the way those broad shoulders tense and square. The way his head tucks down mulishly, instead of tipping up loftily. The way his dark eyes become almost impossible to meet without feeling empathetic rage pool in one's own stomach--
--telegraphing. Just like in fencing, fighting, sex, poker. . . .
And Sulu's not an excitable man, he's really not. Except where, it seems, the good doctor is concerned. Not only has he and is he willing to step in front of danger to protect McCoy-who seems to make himself enemies without even trying, on some away missions-but Sulu's one of very few people who can talk McCoy down. The other being Kirk who, like any decent judge of people, can spot a similar tendency in others.
That's why, for the infrequent occasions the Chief Medical Officer is required dirt-side, Sulu is always McCoy's personal bodyguard.
(”Y'oughta sock that boy clean in the mouth, Lieutenant. Damnit, man, you're a pilot, not a German Shepherd,” McCoy always gripes, or something to that effect. Sulu's response is also always the same.
“Woof,” he'd say, smiling a little in the face of McCoy's huffs and annoyance; the doctor's a ram-rod straight, stiff line of southern pride and irritation, from his immaculate hair, to the shine of his boots. McCoy is, Sulu realizes like an epiphany every time he sees the man, the hottest guy who ever lived.
Then, generally, they're being beamed down into some untenable, often mucky and gross situation. But even covered in stinking mud or diseased blood, McCoy is still unbelievably sexy.)
It's a helluva body to guard, too, and Sulu has noticed.
Until recently, he simply hadn't decided what to do about this notice.
Now, as numbness spreads from his chest, to his extremities, and McCoy works quickly, calmly, almost dispassionately to save him (dispassionately except for the profuse, muttered swearing, and holy crow, does the doctor have a way filthier mouth than anyone ever thought), Sulu's only regret is that he waited so long to get proactive.
And that he'd never finished his culmination gift, the one that would've surely won the doctor over: the dionaea muscipula.
If anyone can save him, McCoy can, but Sulu's a realist. At any second the renegades could get a leg up, and then he and the doctor are dead, and the thought of the doctor-McCoy--Leonard dying hurts more than the distant ache that is the bolt in his chest. Makes the dicey bet that is breathing impossible, and his formerly numb limbs go cold and tight with convulsing muscles and sluggish circulation.
There's no more time for regrets because everything-body, breath, mind, space-time-everything shuts down.
The Chieftains: Water From The Well
After five days, of tension, glaring, snarking, and truncated pissing matches, Sulu's glad to be out of Sickbay.
In his small botany lab, amongst his plants and clippings, he feels alive again. Much more than he'd felt laid up in a bio-bed, getting cosseted by Chapel, and bitched at by McCoy. Though the visits from the Captain, Chekov, Uhura, and Scotty were nice. Even Spock'd stopped in briefly to see how he was doing, stiff and uncomfortable till McCoy harangued him out the door.
Sulu'd almost laughed till McCoy turned that glare and tongue on him, and as sexy as the doctor is when irritated, Sulu's had more than enough time to discover that there's a ceiling on that sexiness. A point when getting needled by the guy you took an arrow for just isn't the bees knees anymore.
It was words to that effect--more or less--that got Sulu sprung a little early. That, and the fact that life-saving aside, McCoy couldn't stand the sight of him, or the sound of his voice. Was just itching for an excuse to get rid of him, just like Sulu'd been itching to stop feeling a confusing combination of turned-on, angry, and hurt.
McCoy hadn't even come out of his office to say 'good-bye', or even 'get out of my Sickbay, you goddamned malingering fly-boy'.
Nothing. And as Chapel wheeled him out the Sickbay doors, Sulu looking back every two seconds, expecting to see McCoy stalking toward them agitatedly, he'd known then what he would say to McCoy, if he could.
I don't know what the right words are, Doctor, I only know that I'm not trying to make you angry. That I'd die for you, and almost did. And even after the past five days, I'd gladly do it all over again. I've never been in love, but I think I love you, and I don't want to fight with you. If you can't love me back, can we please, please, just go back to the way it was?
Plain and simple. For all the good it'd do.
But he'd still kept glancing behind him all the way to his room, barely noticing the congratulations and admiration of crewmates they passed. He was in his own grumpy sort of funk, and the only thing that'd make him feel better apparently didn't give two shits that he wasn't dead.
“The more he cares, the worse he is about showing it, and the more he blusters and bitches. In other words: he's a man, Lieutenant. Don't crucify him for his nature,” Chapel had said, and finally, Sulu sat back in the chair and refused to look back anymore. Instead, he looked up at Chapel. She'd practically glowed with good health, and a quiet beauty even Sulu could appreciate.
“If he's a bitch to the ones he cares about, then I must be high on his Christmas-card list, right after Kirk.”
Chapel had giggled a little, and snorted, but kept her blue eyes aimed dead-ahead. “Look, don't tell anyone I told you, but . . . the doctor didn't leave Sickbay once until you regained consciousness. Didn't sleep, didn't eat, just sat vigil, smelled bad, looked like hell, and ignored everyone. Wouldn't let anyone near you till you were stable. And even then, no one except me.”
“That's because you're one of the few people on the Enterprise he doesn't think is a hopeless fuck-up,” Sulu had said, remembering the idle conversations he and McCoy used to have about the people in their respective departments. McCoy'd never had anything but praise for his Head Nurse's talent and common sense. "I agree with him, by the way. About you being a hell of a nurse."
“Well, thank you, Lieutenant. But you're missing my point . . . the doctor's only like that when it comes to one other patient: Captain Kirk. Only I've never seen him wait till he thinks no one's looking to kiss the Captain's hand when he's unconscious. And I've never seen him look at the Captain like he hung the moon, either.”
“Sheesh, you're worse than Pavel.” Sulu had rolled his eyes, and silence had reigned over the rest of their brief journey. When they got to his empty quarters, Chapel had helped him into bed, with a reminder to comm Sickbay if he had any problems or needed anything. But by then, despite the new information whirling around his brain, Sulu was already mostly asleep. And when he woke up, almost eight hours later, it'd been with the clear-headed understanding that whatever a sleep-deprived McCoy might have done could be chalked up to just that. Sleep deprivation.
That alleged kiss on the hand? Had surely been the closest to a 'thanks, Sulu,' he'd ever get. And even that, McCoy'd been too brittle to do except when Sulu was unconscious and lingering at death's door.
It's time, at last, to take this stupid infatuation by the hand, and lead it around to the back of the barn.
Now, taking up his laser clipper, he approaches the dionaea muscipula, which has grown in his week-long absence. As he nears it, its head orients slowly toward him, its toothy mouth opening and ready to snap. It reminds him, in passing, of McCoy.
Gritting his teeth, Sulu gets to work. At first his arms shake just a bit, but then they firm.
Soon, it's like no time has passed, and nothing else exists. Especially not Leonard fucking McCoy.
Nirvana: Mexican Seafood
Not bad enough that he feels weird in his own skin, that he randomly itches, especially his hands and face (a legacy of the poison, which'll be in his system for another week, according to McCoy), that it burns when he pees (emerald green), like the worst case of VD ever. Not bad enough that he looks kind of like the living dead, all grey-faced and dull-eyed.
Not bad enough that though he's well enough to be back in his own quarters, he's not yet not well enough to be back at the helm.
Not bad enough that he's now taking more meds than he had in his whole life combined-and still has to go to Sickbay for hypos, treatments, and a horrible, system-cleansing “shake” that tastes like sweaty gym socks and looks like something that came out of the wrong end of a Tarkalean wildebeast.
(Not bad enough that McCoy hasn't said more than three words to him since he got discharged, and those three words had all been health-related.)
None of this shit is, on its own or together, bad enough, no. The universe has to throw a persistently mother-henning best friend, and that best friend's boyfriend into the mix.
Five days out of Sickbay, and between the godawful borscht Chekov keeps bringing, and Scotty's crazy-strong hot toddies, Sulu is both tipsy, and fucking tired of goddamn everything. He finally loses it-for Sulu, anyway-when he winds up with a lapful of toddy, and borsht, in a tag-team mother-henning effort gone horribly awry.
All three of them stare into Sulu's soupy-boozy lap for a long time, till Sulu, himself, finally looks up at the dear, dear friends hovering over his sick-bed and says, evenly: “I love you guys, but if you don't get out, like, five minutes ago, Security will never find your bodies.”
Chekov and Scotty share the kind of glance that only passes between two people who've lived in each other's back pockets for the better part of two years. Then Scotty looks down, clearing his throat and whipping away the wet blanket (ignoring Sulu's “hey!”, and covering of his boxer shorts). He tosses it door-ward, and sits on the right side of the bed. Chekov sits on the left, meeting Sulu's gaze sheepishly and patting his knee.
“We are sorry to be so annoying, Hikaru, but Dr. McCoy ordered us to keep an eye on you and report back.”
It takes a moment to trickle through, but trickle it does. “He what?”
“More like he threatened us with grievous bodily injury and court-martialing, actually, if we didnae glom ont' ye like a fungus,” Scotty clarifies, and Chekov nods, adding: “He even comms us ewery few hours to find out how you are. And if we do not comm him back--”
“--he hunts us down, whenever, wherever,” Scotty finishes, turning extremely red. “He's, em, already used his override t' barge into our quarters when we wouldnae answer the door, and--”
“--we were having sex, Hikaru.” Chekov makes the saddest of his sad-puppy faces. “He would not join in, but he would not go avay either, till we told him how you'd been when we last saw you.”
“Aye, that man's obsession wi' you is fecking unhealthy, and a wee bit scary,” Scotty decides, and Chekov clucks reprovingly.
“Sveetheart, is not unhealthy or scary. Is in love. Hikaru's feelings are finally returned!” he exclaims, the sad-puppy face quickly replaced by the happy-puppy face. He reaches out for Scotty's hand and Scotty meets him halfway. They look sappily at each other, his closest friends--disgustingly, irrevocably in love, and determined to see him similarly paired off--then they look at him, expectantly.
“Well. I suppose this means the ball's in your court, eh, laddy?” Scotty waggles his eyebrows in a fairly ridiculous way, and Chekov heaves a happy little sigh. “Is so romantic! And so exciting! Tell us what you will do next!” They both lean forward, eyes alight, and Sulu pinches the bridge of his nose.
The borscht he can do without, but a toddy'd be nice, right about now. His eyebrows've already started growing back from the last one.
“I'm gonna . . . take a nap.”
Postal Service: This Place Is A Prison
After kicking out a disturbingly prurient Chekov and Scotty, Sulu doesn't nap. He can't. He's too wound up and confused.
One restless hour later, half-hard but too irritated and frustrated to jerk off, he's about to swallow his pride and call Scotty back at least (he could really, really use that hot toddy), when the computer softly alerts him that there's been an unauthorized entry into his botany bay.
*
He doesn't expect to find that McCoy's the intruder.
He's just in his blacks, like Sulu, so off-duty, and he's examining the plants without touching, or getting too close. Sulu just watches him from the doorway. Watches him smile at some plants, mouthing their Latin names from the labels, and finally, when he comes to the dionaea muscipula, he stops. Frowns at it. Seeing it with an objective observer's eyes, it has gotten big. The head alone is the size of a beach-ball.
“This your venus flytrap, then?”
Stepping into the bay, Sulu lets the door close behind him. His muscles are still rubbery, but not as bad as they'd been yesterday. “Actually, its yours.” When McCoy looks up at him, he's smiling bemusedly. His hair's a little mussy, like he's run his hand through it a lot, and he could use a shave, but then Sulu's never minded stubble. “Well. One of its offspring was gonna be, anyway. Been trying to breed a less predatory species, but it hasn't been going well. And this guy, just as is . . . he's apt to bite your face off. Um. You may not wanna lean so close, Doc.”
McCoy moves back down along the table, till he's in front of a much less dangerous plant-well, they're bluebells, for all intents and purposes, but Sulu hasn't named them yet-and his eyebrow quirks up in that way, the one that used to drive Sulu up a wall. It does so now, just not as much as it does when he's not a big bag of poison, chemicals, and irritation. “Charming gift, Lieutenant.”
“'Interesting' was what I was going for, actually.” Sulu crosses the small bay-ancillary, and a gift from the captain since it wasn't being used, anyway-and doesn't stop till he's leaning on the console across from McCoy and the bluebells. The doctor's still smiling, kind of. He doesn't look annoyed, at any rate. “After almost a week in your Sickbay, I have to say you strike me as a man who's charm-resistant, and who moreover doesn't like to be charmed, period.”
“I don't like bein' manipulated,” McCoy corrects, looking angry for a moment, then sighing. “But I'll allow that I don't mind bein' charmed in . . . in low doses.”
“I see.” Sulu looks down at both of their feet. Tries to figure out why, exactly, they're not snapping at each other, and is at a loss for answers. This is the first civil conversation they've had since the dinner ceremony from Hell. “Do, um. Do you think I'm charming?”
“Lord, no.” McCoy snorts, but before Sulu has a chance to wither and die, he goes on. “But you're sweet in your own strange way. Cute, funny, sexy. Plus there's the negligible matter of you taking an arrow for me.”
This's almost a question, but another one Sulu has no answer to. He'd risk his life for any crewmate. That's how he's wired. What makes the doctor different isn't that Sulu has risked his life, but the reason why.
But he can't quite tell the doctor that. Not yet, if ever. It's better just to step over pesky things like whys. “Look, Doc . . . I really like you a lot.”
“I imagine you do.” McCoy laughs briefly. He doesn't sound particularly amused. “And fight it though I have, the feeling is mutual, Mr. Sulu. It is intensely, distractingly mutual. Ignoring it is taking its toll.”
“Ditto.” Sulu shifts nervously then bites his lip. When he looks up, McCoy isn't smiling, but watching him like he's trying to solve a perplexing puzzle. “So what happens now?”
“Ah, damned if I know, Lieutenant. It's been years since I was anything more than a one night stand or convenience-fuck . . . or am I assuming too much here?” McCoy asks with prickly dignity, but he looks faintly embarrassed, too. Something about that look, or maybe the tone, has Sulu closing the physical distance between them without clearing it with his brain, but his brain has no problem with that.
Neither, apparently, does the doctor, who doesn't object when Sulu's hands settle on his hips, with clear intentions of moving around to his ass. Their bodies fit quite well together, despite the height difference, and they're both unmistakably hard.
“God, you smell good. Like kudzu and mint,” he murmurs, looking up into McCoy's dark, dark eyes. And for all that Sulu's one of the fastest, most skilled pilots in the galaxy, it's sure taken him a hell of a long time to get to this destination. “I want a lot more than one night, Doc, and if I wanted convenient. . . .”
“. . . you wouldn't have come sniffin' around me, yeah, I guess that makes a certain sense, Lieutenant,” McCoy huffs quietly, angling his head down to meet Sulu's kiss and return it with matching ardor. He tastes like the ghosts of coffee past, and mouthwash present, and he's not shy about using his tongue and owning the kiss. Every time he moans, it makes the nerves in Sulu's teeth vibrate.
His hands slide under Sulu's shirt and up his chest, pinching his nipples hard enough to make Sulu gasp, to make him pliant in McCoy's arms for a short time. . . .
Then he's pushing McCoy back against the specimen table hard, almost hard enough to knock pots out of their holders. McCoy swears and starts to complain till Sulu makes himself at home against one of the doctor's thighs. After a few seconds, McCoy does the same, staring down into Sulu's eyes, his own half-lidded. He's smirking, just a little. It sends a jolt straight to Sulu's already hard cock.
“You know, there's a reason I didn't clear you for duty, yet, Lieutenant,” he says breathlessly as they rock against each other. Sulu braces his hands on the table for better leverage and rocks a bit harder, like he's in a dead heat race to see who comes in their pants first.
“That reason would be because I'm too sexy for the helm, too sexy for the helm--yeah, Doc, just like that.” For a little while, all that can be heard is rhythmic rocking and the knocking of the table against the wall, and grunting and gasping. At least till Sulu pins McCoy's hips with his hands and drives against him hard enough that an empty pot actually does fall on the floor and shatter. There's even a gentle rain of dirt from most of the occupied pots.
McCoy's head drops back for a few moments--more than enough time for Sulu to lick a wet, rasping trail from jugular to chin, and steal a quick kiss--and he laughs a little. “Mary and Joseph, you're aggressive. You top exclusively?”
“Um. Sort of.” Every time he's ever had sex, actually. He looks up into McCoy's eyes warily, and hopes this isn't another block for them to stumble on. “Wait--why? Is that a, uh, problem? Because I've never bottomed before, but I guess I could try, and . . . fuck, I really wanna fuck you.”
McCoy rolls his eyes, but takes this hopefully brief lull as an opportunity rub Sulu slow and hard through his trousers. “Relax, Lieutenant, I prefer bottoming. A like it. A lot. I'm just askin' because . . . look, you're still too weak for this kind of strenuous activity. Plus, you still have a fairly high level of that damned Xi'ibu toxin tryin' to eat its way through your endocrine system, never mind what it'd do to a condom, or my ass. I ain't too keen on havin' to wreck a perfectly good afterglow by goin' into toxic shock or havin' to pump myself fulla epinephrine.”
“Yeah, that--oh, yeah . . . that doesn't sound like fun.” Understatement of the year. Having just had a near-death experience, he doesn't wish it on anyone, for any reason. And certainly not on the guy whose palm he's humping.
Sulu pushes up McCoy's shirt, jams his hand down the doctor's pants and--wow--silk boxer briefs, and gets his own handful of thick, hard, damp cock. Doesn't once look away from McCoy's face and is rewarded by the doctor's eyes fluttering shut, and white teeth biting into a swollen lower lip.
"We shouldn't be doin' this. You're still recoverin', and you could relap--oh, Lord, yes," he exhales as Sulu's thumb sweeps across the tip of his cock repeatedly. He's breathing hard, and there's a fine sheen of sweat on his brow.
He's gorgeous, and it feels as if Sulu's never wanted anything half so much. Not even the Black.
“I'll wait as long as you want me to, Doc.” It's mortifying blurting it out, but that doesn't make it not true. And even though McCoy's eyes are still shut, by unspoken agreement they lean toward each other to kiss again.
There's really nothing to it, nothing to write home, or brag to Chekov about, and yet . . . it's the best kiss Sulu's ever had. It turns his beehive thoughts into white-noise bliss, and when it ends, the first thing Sulu thinks comes tumbling out of his mouth.
“Considering how long I've been waiting, five days is zero perspiration.”
“Exactly how long're we talkin'?” McCoy asks softly, searching Sulu's eyes. Sulu sways them a little, looking away. He isn't ready to say out loud just how invested he is in this, but he can't stay silent, either. He's never been much of a liar.
“Just . . . long,” he says quietly, and McCoy doesn't push for once, merely leans their foreheads together, then kisses him again. This kiss is everything the other wasn't: fast, wet, hot, tongue-y. And long . . . at least till Sulu gets pushed away.
“Goddamnit,” McCoy swears, grabbing him by one arm and dragging him to the only available chair in the bay. He pushes a startled, but amused Sulu down into it and sinks to his knees between Sulu's legs. He doesn't look angry so much as best-not-fucked-with. At least in a certain sense. “I apparently ain't any kinda doctor at all, because you're about to get the blowjob of your life, Mr. Sulu.”
“I, uh, am?”
“Yeah, you, uh, am. And you'll forgive me if I don't let you come in my mouth, this time. Again, I ain't too keen on windin' up in my own Sickbay, havin' to explain how I got the toxin in my system.” Dark eyes gaze hotly into his own as his fly's undone, his boxers navigated and yes, fuck yes, McCoy's hand is tugging him out, pulling him free of his trousers. He doesn't even pause for reflection, just applies his mouth where the applying is good.
And it. Is. So good.
“Oh, shit. You sure I'm not too weak for this?” Sulu asks, bucking up into McCoy's big, perfect hand and so-not-shy mouth. McCoy gives him one of those narrow-eyed looks, and suddenly slides off his cock with a wet, slurping-sucking noise that nearly gets him a faceful of probably emerald-green come.
“I'd thought you weren't, Lieutenant, but if you feel you're unable to go on with this, I'll certainly sto--” the bastard even starts to stands up, bracing his hands on Sulu's thighs.
“No, I was just kidding-I'm sorry.” Sulu leans forward and instead of grabbing McCoy's hands, he cups McCoy's face in his own. The man's so handsome, it doesn't even make sense on at least fifty different levels, and there are times just looking at him makes Sulu want to cry. And he never cries. Not even when there's an arrow in his lung. “Please, stay. I want this, and you so much. So stay, stop scowling . . . and please keep sucking my dick?”
“You're--really not charming at all. Not even a little, and still. . . .” McCoy sighs ruefully, shaking his head, but settling on the floor again, scowling. The last little bit of Sulu's anger at the thoughtless, hurtful high-handedness that's been McCoy's default since the Xi'ibu Incident comes boiling to the surface, along with everything he's been fighting not to say.
“Jesus, do you know how much I've thought about you going down on me? About me going down on you? Do you know how much I've wanted you?” Sulu runs his finger through the doctor's hair, clenches tight on a handful and tugs until he's looking into those dark, stormy eyes. Wills them to understand what he wants to say, without him actually saying it. But if McCoy's got Betazoid in him, Sulu will eat the Enterprise from Bridge to warp drive. “I may not be charming, but I'm completely sincere when I say I've wanted you since the day we met. You've been my stroke-fantasy for over two years. You have so many alien plants named after you, and registered with the Federation, your ears must be constantly burning. According to Pavel I'm falling in fucking love with you, and I'm starting to think he's right, because it feels like I can't breathe when I'm near you, and it's worse when I'm not. I want you so bad, I can barely think straight and I raise wood on a fucking dime just hearing your voice. If I can't have you, Doctor, I'm probably gonna park the Enterprise in an asteroid sooner or later, just because I'm so distracted all the goddamn time! And did I mention the part where I'd literally step between you and certain death because I can't bear the thought of losing you, even though I don't really have you? Charm, Doc? What the fuck d'you want with charm, when you could have all of this?!” Sulu rants, gesturing at his slumped down body in its half-dressed, purplely turgid state.
McCoy blinks at him, clearly taken aback. It's the longest thing anyone on Enterprise's heard Sulu say, and likely the longest thing he's ever said period.
“Wow, Lieutenant, that's . . . uh, quite a bit to digest, after a ten-hour shift.” McCoy clears his throat, and it looks like he's trying not to laugh. His cheeks are really red, and dimples that are rarely ever seen, are out in force. Sexy fucking bastard, and no amount of fake-scowling can hide that. “One caveat: if you yank my hair again for any reason, I'll circumcise you with my teeth.”
Still breathing hard, Sulu grins. It's probably ghastly, and he knows his hair is sticking up in all directions and he must look insane, but he doesn't care. Simply lifts his hips so McCoy can pull down his pants and underwear. The alloy of the chair is cold on his ass, but he won't be noticing it for long, not when that warm, wet, fucking gorgeous mouth takes him in. “I won't yank on your hair, but fuck-yeah, I like teeth.”
McCoy quirks both eyebrows now. Wets his lips with a tantalizing tip of tongue. “I do believe we'll get along just fine, Mr. Sulu.”
“Hikaru.”
“Leonard.” McCoy licks his name onto the head of Sulu's cock, then lets it rest on his lips. His eyes close slowly like he's savoring the taste, and he just . . . breathes on Sulu's dick, humid and soft.
It's easily the hottest thing Sulu's experienced in a long time. Maybe ever.
“Well, that's the name-thing, all squared away. As you were, Leonard,” Sulu squeaks, six octaves higher than normal, then leans back in the chair, shaking body belaying the steadiness of his sixth grade voice. At least till McCoy proceeds to suck the pigment off his cock.
QoTSA: Go With The Flow
Some hours later:
Sulu has to pin McCoy's hips to the bed, for the way he thrashes about while getting blown.
And even though his jaw and arms are getting tired, and his gag reflex is getting a run for its money, Sulu's happier than he's ever been. Everything feels slow and eternal in the pitch black of McCoy's quarters and the firmness of his big-enough-for-three bed. McCoy is all he can taste, feel, and smell. All his senses will ever need.
The universe is silent and deep and just . . . perfect. The way it should've been, all along.
“Fuck me, damnit,” McCoy starts chanting mindlessly, forcing himself to stop thrashing, though he keens and his whole body shakes when Sulu to pushes one finger, then two into him. McCoy's hands clench in and yank on Sulu's hair, like he wants to scalp the Fleet's most decorated helmsman while fucking his face. “God, please, yes, damnit, fuck me, need you, fuck me, please, Hikaru. . . .”
But of course, Sulu can't. Not till he's stopped coming bright green. As bad as he wants to be inside the body that's shaking and clenching welcome-tight around his fingers . . . he can't. Not yet. But there are other things they can do. Kinky things, things with toys, or just things like this, which they both seem to be enjoying.
“. . . need you, baby, oh, God, please, don't care, epi-pen and condoms in my night-table, just fuck me, just fuck-oh! Oh!” And with that loud, hoarse yell, McCoy's coming, hot and heavy, and Sulu's swallowing as fast as he can, and mostly managing not to drool. His spit-wet fingers press relentlessly on McCoy's prostate till the doctor stops shaking and spurting, and simply goes limp.
Sulu, still hard but tired, too, pulls out and off slowly, and rests his head on McCoy's stomach. Lazy fingers comb through his hair, and he kisses McCoy's damp skin, idly massaging his jaw.
McCoy's fingers feel really good in his hair . . . just . . . magical.
“Charm c'n take a long walk off a short pier,” McCoy declares, shifting his leg just so he can slide his foot tortuously up and teasingly down Sulu's erection. “There's somethin' to be said for a man who can suck m' brains out through m' cock.”
McCoy keeps (expertly; he's so done this before) playing the old skin-flute with his toes, and Sulu . . . keeps letting him. “This is-God, I love that you're such a fucking freak--what I've said all along. Charm is overrated.”
“Point to you, then." McCoy yanks once, but not that hard, on Sulu's hair. Foreplay-hard, and Sulu's so down with that. "And you should know that on the day you get the all-clear, you're gonna be called into the CMO's office for a final check-up. And the CMO fully expects to get bent over his desk like a naughty schoolboy.”
Sulu yelps and swats away McCoy's foot, applying pressure to the base of his cock. He recites the Fibonacci Sequence (Chekov says it works for him) to stave off his orgasm, though he doesn't know why. He's not going to be allowed to come in McCoy for at least another seven days, and he means to come in proximity to McCoy at least thirty or forty times till then.
Though he'd cheerfully trade in all those times for just five minutes in that powerful, demanding body, pounding away till--
“I can hear ya poutin', ya big baby. Quit humpin' my foot, and get up here. Lemme take care of you,” McCoy commands, but kindly. Somehow Sulu finds the energy to obey, dragging his damn-near painful erection up McCoy's leg. When McCoy's breath sighs past his temple, Sulu stops and leans in for a kiss hello that McCoy immediately takes control of, his tongue mapping Sulu's and counting all his teeth. Till Sulu's mouth doesn't even taste like come anymore. Well, not much.
“Hey,” he says, and McCoy smiles against his lips, grabbing his cock none-too-gently. So-long foreplay, hello main-show.
“Hey, yourself.” They kiss, and McCoy cock-teases the way he cock-sucks: slowly, thoroughly-like it's a lost art-form that he's determined to revive singlehandedly. Tired as he is, it isn't long before Sulu's gasping McCoy's name into their kiss. A warning, because they may not be romantics, either of them, but there's unromantic, and then there's shooting green, quite literally burning come all over your lover's hand.
"Oh, fuck, Len--"
“Ready to come?” McCoy asks almost playfully, and Sulu's now beyond forming words, even if the words are Leonard, and ohfuckyes, so he simply nods. Lets McCoy roll them both onto their sides, and spoon up behind him. His grip tightens and speeds up, finishing Sulu off fast, and efficiently. Which shouldn't be sexy but it is, when coupled with McCoy's hoarse-voiced, dirty encouragement in his ear.
Predictably, it burns when Sulu comes, worse than when he pees, but the burn? So worth it. Just so. Absolutely. Fucking. Worth it.
Afterward McCoy kisses his neck and ear, whispering things like fuck and hot, and. . . .
“You know, we should maybe strip and change the linen before my green acid-jizz eats through your bedding.” Though Sulu makes no move to leave the haven of McCoy's arms. In fact, he's ready to go to sleep.
“Nah, it'd dry long before it did that. So if you even think about getting out of this bed, Lieutenant, I'll hypo you, and hog-tie you.” McCoy kisses the back of Sulu's head and gives his cock a possessive squeeze before kicking the acid-jizz blanket onto the floor at the foot of the bed. He then drags a cool, pleasantly jizz-free sheet over them and lays back down, pulling Sulu back into his embrace. His arms are big, warm, strong, everything Sulu imagined they'd be, and their legs tangle together comfortably.
And even though he's always the big spoon on the rare occasions he spends the night with a guy, this feels . . . good.
“There. Happy, now?" It's a grumble that's kissed into Sulu's neck.
"Mmhm. Very."
"I . . . huh. Well. Go to sleep, then.”
Which is pretty sound medical advice. And Sulu's doing just that, lulled by minutes of spoon-y warmth, when McCoy cuddles closer, squeezing him tighter and gasping quietly, shakily in his hair. For, like, awhile.
Even though Sulu knows he's supposed to be asleep and not witnessing this, he can't just lay there and let McCoy suffer. If only because he, himself, would never get to sleep.
And two people who've just had ridiculous-good sex laying there and suffering is just not cool. Not when for once, Sulu can solve both their problems.
“Heyya, Doc?” he yawns, and squeezes McCoy's hand. Behind him, the gasping stops and the body against Sulu's own freezes.
“What, Lieutenant?”
Not exactly a welcoming 'what, Lieutenant', but Sulu caps the yawn with a mini-stretch, settling even more bonelessly in McCoy's arms. He is utterly content, in the way only a man who's about to get everything he's been wanting can be. “You did a great job saving my life.”
Stiff, startled silence until Sulu's almost asleep again. Then McCoy relaxes completely, and covers him, like the best blanket ever. Anchors him to reality even as he's swept away by some feeling that's far too huge and endless for him to quantify or name . . . though he's sure Chekov could.
“You . . . you did a real fine job of savin' mine, Hikaru,” McCoy breathes, tucking his warm, wet face into the crook of Sulu's neck and rocking them both.
In a few minutes, McCoy's face has stopped being wet, and Sulu has stopped being awake. But a rough-voiced, heartfelt: thank you so much, makes itself at home in his dreams.
*
In the morning, when they walk into Sickbay together, holding hands-early for Sulu's next round of treatments, but right on time for McCoy's next shift--no one says anything, and no one seems surprised. Least of all Head Nurse Chapel.
secretsolitaire, she of the wonderful, wonderful McSulu recs ::smooches::
Being inspired by random songs seems to be my preferred method of spur, however I disregarded the time rules, so as not to write teeny, tiny crap.
The Human Mating Dance (In Ten Easy Steps)
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: ST:XI
Pairing: McCoy/Sulu, background Chekov/Scotty
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: Approx. 8600
Notes/Warnings: Set between two and three years into the mission. Minor violence, slightly gross sexual situation.
Summary: Sometimes, Sulu's a guard-dog and sometimes McCoy is extra pissed off. Ten linked ficlets written for
secretsolitaire's prompt, Sulu woos McCoy with plants, McCoy being totally oblivious to what's happening, and sex in the botany lab, and inspired by ten random songs.
Nirvana: Scentless Apprentice
McCoy's fuming in his office over nothing in particular, while simultaneously correcting medical logs on autopilot well before his shift even starts, when there's a chime at the door.
“Enter at your own risk!” he barks, because if it ain't Christine, Jim, or-hopefully not-Spock, then it's probably just a make-work problem that snuck past the on-calls.
This problem turns out to be his sometimes personal guard-dog, Lieutenant Sulu, smiling that relaxed half-smile that used to drive McCoy up a wall. Till it didn't. And he's holding a potted plant that McCoy's never seen. It's not especially large, nor is it eye-catching-a few faded olive-green stalks with tripartite leaves, uneven orange speckling and tiny, bright orange buds-but for the first time in days, he finds himself smiling, and the Lieutenant smiles back.
“It's a species of trifolium I found, a few missions back,” he says with his usual quiet confidence, stepping into the office proper, and not stopping until he's close enough to sit the plant on the desk half-way between himself and McCoy, who leans in a bit to get a better look.
(He catches a scent like grapes and . . . toothpaste?)
The leaves are shaped almost like something one'd find on Earth. Like a three-leaf clover. Each group of leaves is about the size of McCoy's thumb, and faintly waxy-looking. All in all, an odd looking thing.
He looks up at the Lieutenant again and wonders why the kid's so damn happy, today. Normally, he's always got some sort of smile on that boyish face, but this is above and beyond. “So. What miraculous wonders does this one work, Lieutenant?”
That smile slips a little, and dark brows almost--almost--draw together. “'Work'? Um.” A new expression that McCoy can't place, then that old smile is back, and the Lieutenant looks at the plant like it has answers that he needs. “It. Um. Doesn't work much. It's just . . . pretty. And it smells really nice. Kinda like kudzu, with a little mint thrown in.”
The Lieutenant laughs a little under McCoy's confused staring, and runs his hand through his hair. “See, I . . . figured since you were from Georgia, and kudzu's all over the southeast . . . uh. Anyway. My shift starts in five. I'll comm the care-for directions to you-they're not hard-and leave you to your doctoring. Bye.”
With that he's gone, faster than McCoy can say thanks.
A few minutes after he's resumed his corrections, the tantalizing hint of grape, and more faintly mint, become too much of a temptation. He pulls the plant closer and for the first time in a very long time, doesn't feel homesick.
Journey: Don't Stop Believing
“Well. Can't say I'm happy to see you, Lieutenant. At least not under these circumstances.”
Sulu, despite his injury-arm laid open from elbow to wrist, and damn near to the bone, with shredded muscles that'll be two to three weeks healing-smiles his zen little smile. Though it's more of a grimace, and there are dark circles under his eyes. McCoy huffs and works quickly with the scanner. The Lieutenant's only smiling because the hypo's kicking in, no doubt.
Like Jim, Lieutenant Sulu can't be treated with regular sedatives and painkillers. With Jim, the reason is allergies-there's very little Jim isn't allergic to, it turns out-but with Sulu, it's simply that his system throws off sedatives, painkillers, anti-coagulants, and anti-biotics like they aren't even there. The only ones he responds to are the same ones Jim's restricted to.
McCoy makes certain they're always well-stocked no matter how many bitches Starfleet Medical pitches.
The Lieutenant is smiling. Still. It bugs McCoy, just a bit, and makes him more brusque than he'd normally be with a patient. “Quit smilin' so goddamn much. If you knew how wrecked your arm was, and how much pain you'll be in over the next few weeks--”
“I'd still do it again,” Sulu finishes, and though McCoy can't tell from one quick glance, no doubt the Lieutenant's pupils are dilated. He's flying high on 'the good shit', as Jim tends to call it. “I'd do it aaaallll again, Doc. No pain, no gain.”
“You nearly died, Lieutenant.”
“'Nearly' is nothing. 'Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and photon grenades. Nearly.” Sulu giggles a little. “I got it, Dr. McCoy, so 'nearly' can go screw itself.”
McCoy sighs. It's like dealing with a slightly more sensible version of Jim. Or maybe slightly less. “And what was so important that nearly dying was worth it?”
“A dionaea muscipula,” Sulu says throatily, like a man talking dirty and McCoy's steady hand almost drops the scanner. He squints at Sulu, who's completely relaxed in the bio-bed, his shredded forearm strapped down to the bed's extension table. Filthy, scraped fingers twitch lazily, and McCoy can't stop staring at them. He can feel Sulu's gaze on him like honey. Tranqed-up honey.
“A venus flytrap?” he asks, and clears his throat. Spell broken, McCoy shuts off the scanner and lays it down. Time to irrigate the wound and begin the laborious work of mending and rebuilding muscles and veins.
“It's too fucking cool that you know that, sir,” Sulu says, yawning through his grin. His face is covered in smudges and scratches McCoy's waiting to heal till the tranq kicks in--which it really should have two minutes ago. “Most doctors only know medical Latin.”
“Huh. Most pilots don't even know Pig Latin.”
Sleepy eyes flutter shut then open. That zen smile is completely loopy, now. Sulu is strangely endearing this way, like a drunken kitten. “Mm. Latin's what got me interested in plants. I liked that they had all these weird, romantic names that almost nobody else knows.”
McCoy almost laughs. But doesn't. He's got a rep to maintain. “How quaint. I just learned Latin to impress a girl who was in the Latin Club.”
“Nice! Did it work?” Sulu's gazing at him raptly, as if finding him fascinating, only without any Spock-ish condescension. It's been a long time since anyone looked at him that way, and it makes him . . . less terse than he usually is.
“For awhile, yes.” McCoy pinches the bridge of his nose. At this late date, when he thinks of all that went wrong with his marriage, he thinks more of Jo, than Jocelyn. Misses his little girl so keenly, it feels like he's being eating alive. Like he's been trapped in some giant damn flytrap. “Enough chit-chat, Lieutenant Sulu, we both need to concentrate on getting you mended--”
Sulu's deep, surprisingly loud snore shuts him up.
"'The good shit,' indeed," McCoy mutters to himself, then gets to work.
STP: Vasoline
Like everyone who was on the Enterprise for the battle with the Narada, McCoy has nightmares. Awful ones.
Ones where it was he on Deck 6, instead of Dr. Puri. Or that Jim had been taken to the brig, instead of heeded about whole lighting-storm-is-Romulans thing.
Sometimes, he dreams that he not only couldn't save Pike's legs, but couldn't save any of his spinal column.
Sometimes, he dreams that Chekov couldn't beam Jim and Sulu aboard in time, or that Jim died aboard the Narada, while rescuing Pike. (Jim doesn't talk about what happened, but McCoy knows there were several close calls.)
There was a time, in the beginning, McCoy had these nightmares several times a night. Then, as time went on, several times a week. Then several times a month. In the past year, he's had only a few, and it's been better. Sleeping, being alone in the dark. Alone with himself.
But tonight . . . he has his first nightmare in months, and it's a doozy. The one that recurs the most, but is no less awful, for that. It seems like just when he thinks he's seen the last of this Narada-nightmare, if not all of them. . . .
Though he thinks he understands, now, how reliving the destruction of one's home world night after night, with no relief, can drive one insane. So help him, each time the Earth is destroyed in his dreams brings him one night closer to understanding Nero, and that's what makes this nightmare the worst of all. Not the destruction of his home in his dreams, but the implied destruction of himself that comes after he wakes.
Sleep now out of the question, he's up and dressed before his sweat has time to dry, meaning to commandeer a bucket of ice from the Mess. He's got a bottle of Antaran bourbon-vile, but mule-kick strong-that he procured for just such a night. A few splashes, on the rocks, should be enough to put him out without killing him, but there's really only one way to know for sure. Antaran hooch hits everyone who isn't Antaran differently.
When the door to his quarters opens, he strides out and trips over something and falls flat on his stomach like a giant, surly toddler.
Dazed and winded, it's a struggle just to roll into sitting position. He's swearing all the way, red, furious, and very glad no one's come down this corridor. Though it's only a matter of time. Everything McCoy's never wanted is only a matter of time, it seems.
Getting to his knees he blearily eyes the soil and leaves spilled all over, the red clay pot that's cracked and hopeless.
That plant that'd been in it isn't looking too healthy, either.
McCoy gets to his feet and goes back into his quarters. Roots around in all the alien crap Jim fobs off on him till he finds it. It's too big, maybe too metallic, and it's uglier'n sin in an overdone, baroque way. It was clearly never meant to be a pot, but some kind of urn.
“Will this do, m'lord?” McCoy asks the plant, but really, he's asking its original tender, who's probably sound asleep right now, having come close to achieving his goal of murdering the Chief Medical Officer with a goddamned ficus.
He carefully, carefully, scoops up soil with the pottery shards, and transplants it into the urn. When he's got about two thirds of the soil in there, he picks up the plant, root and all, and pots it in the urn. It's missing half its deep-green fronds-and the damn thing don't stand up straight at all, drooping and listing like an old drunk.
McCoy sighs, and adds the rest of the soil-at least what he can get with hands and shards-and transports the whole mess back into his quarters. Almost waters the damned pathetic thing, then decides to wait till he checks his messages. No doubt Mr. Sulu's forwarded instructions for this plant, too.
The shards go in the reclamator along with the last few bits of soil, the fronds go into one of a pair of matched whiskey glassed filled halfway with water. McCoy means to get that ice so he can use the other glass, but he gets so caught up in the instructions for this plant-hardy, it is, but high-maintenance . . . kinda like a wife-the bourbon is forgotten until after the plant's been cared for, and he's just got enough energy to fall back into bed.
His dreams are green, and nightmare-free.
Collective Soul: Smashing Young Gentleman
Diplomacy.
Great for the Federation, not so great for McCoy, who always feels like a trained chimp in his dress reds. The only reason he's going is to fill out the ranks of Enterprise brass, and because Lieutenant Sulu's arm has healed enough for him to play guard-dog-slash-erstwhile-date. Which means that Jim, for all his faith in diplomacy, has no faith in the renegade Xi'ibus not trying to slaughter at least a few of the Federation representatives, at some point during the evening's celebration of a new and lasting peace.
When McCoy answers the chime at his door, Lieutenant Sulu looks . . . different. Granted, this isn't the first time he's seen the Lieutenant in his dress reds, but it feels like it is, and he can't stop staring. Can't even close his mouth.
“You clean up really nice, Doctor,” Sulu murmurs, managing to sound pleased, but not particularly surprised. Though he does give McCoy a second, quick once over. He's got one hand behind his back and the other on his stomach like an old-fashioned bow. “That medi-kit's a good idea, too. The Xi'ibu renegades are kinda . . . restive, lately.”
McCoy snorts at the understatement. “Yeah, that's the word for those crazy, violent little orange-faced savages. You're armed with something besides personal charm and rapier wit, right?”
A twitch of that smile. It very nearly becomes a grin, the kind McCoy's never seen on the helmsman. “Oh, I'm armed, sir. To the teeth, sir.” Sulu inclines his head, then does, indeed, bow. “And this is for you,” he brings his right arm from around his back, and is holding a small potted plant. There's one pale-green stalk in the reddish soil, and it has five gently curling fronds, at the center of which is a tiny purplish flower that hasn't quite bloomed yet.
“It hasn't bloomed, yet,” Sulu says, almost telepathically, and quite apologetically. “Probably within the next few days, though. This one's a bit more fussy than the others-it's kind of an orchid hybrid I've been tinkering with--but very worth the care. When it blooms, the scent is . . . incredible.”
“It's . . . lovely, Lieutenant.” McCoy takes the plant, and hesitates before brushing a frond with his index finger. Glances at Sulu's excited-somewhere-miles-below-that-zen face and frowns. “How delicate is it?”
“I bred it to be hardy. You know, hardy for an orchid. Though if it's not cared for a certain way-I'll comm you the instructions-it can wilt surprisingly fast. The scent fades away to practically nothing.”
“I see.” McCoy turns the pot at different angles, admiring the hybrid and lightly examining one cool, silk-soft green frond. It's been a long time since he looked at plants just to enjoy their beauty. These past few weeks have been something of a revelation. In more ways than one.
He finds himself looking at the Lieutenant. Looking him over. No surprise he cleans up nice enough to invite in for coffee of the purely metaphorical kind, and McCoy opens his mouth, meaning to do so, but Sulu clears his throat and looks off down the corridor.
“We oughta get to the transporter pad, sir. That ceremony's gonna start in fifteen, and the Captain's already down there.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Goddamned Xi'ibus,” McCoy mutters, turning into his quarters, cursing the Federation's latest candidates for membership, and with more vitriol than usual. He puts the hybrid on the nighttable next to his bed, brushing a cool, green frond once more. The trifolium is still in his office, blooming like mad and smelling like home. The ficus is in the Sickbay receiving room, still as inscrutable and scentless as it is leafy, and lushly gorgeous. It's almost too big for its urn, now.
Smiling, he pats his medi-kit and strides to the door, noting the way Sulu's eyes categorize him like some species of plant he wants to acquire. “Lay on, MacSulu.”
“Aye, sir.” As McCoy steps out of his quarters Sulu smartly offers his arm. The look McCoy gives him could curdle fresh milk . . . but McCoy takes the arm. It's healed well, and there's definitely some kind of wrist-mounted weaponry attached to it. It'd make McCoy smile if he weren't right off a glare.
Sulu clears his throat again, momentarily pressing his other hand over McCoy's, like a young man addressing his prom-date. “Guard duty aside, sir, I really am honored to be your escort for the even--”
“Save it, Lieutenant. Diplomacy waits for no man,” McCoy drawls, and ignores Sulu's amused smile.
Depeche Mode: Free Love
Goddamned Xi'ibus, McCoy thinks, crouched behind the buffet table the Lieutenant had toppled over as cover from sudden projectile weapons fire.
Of course that was after Sulu got shot himself--with nothing so sophisticated as a phaser, but a goddamn arrow that's still protruding from high in his chest-because he'd dived, phasers firing, in front of McCoy.
There's something emerald-green smeared on the damn thing, where it pierces Sulu's chest near the shoulder, and it for goddamn sure ain't butter-cream frosting. Sulu's already pale and greyish, laying in a spreading pool of his own blood. There ain't nothing dress about his reds, now, and from the wet, labored sound of Sulu's breathing, he's got a nicked or perforated lung.
And he's trying to tug the arrow out, because he obviously wants to bleed to death faster, the idiot.
“Goddamned fucking fabulous--keep your arms at your sides, or I'll break 'em,” McCoy growls, smacking the kid's hand away from the arrow and grabbing his medi-kit. Sulu's eyes follow him blearily, and he even tries to smile, licking dry lips.
“'M I . . . 'm I gonna die, Doc?”
“No, you're gonna shut the hell up, is what you're gonna do, Lieutenant Sulu.” McCoy scans Sulu and doesn't like what he sees one goddamn bit. Swears, and selects a painkiller-slash-coagulant that's both rare and one of the few Jim isn't allergic to. Doesn't hesitate to give Sulu the whole dose, and if he needs more, he'll get it. Jim'll just have to try and not nearly bleed to death on a mission, for once. “Just hush up and lemme do my job, and you'll be fine.”
“''Kay. Sorry, Doc. Thanks.” That smile, again, and Sulu's eyes are fluttering shut. He looks ridiculously young, and his lips are paler than any McCoy's seen that weren't on a cadaver. “I think Pav'l's right. I am fallin' in love with you. . . .”
Leonard McCoy is a professional. He is not jarred by such a statement when there's a life at stake. His hands never falter, and his mind never wanders. Around the table and in the massive feasting hall, Jim and the others, along with the Xi'ibus, battle the Xi'ibu renegades over something McCoy could give two good goddamns about.
Under his hands, Lieutenant Sulu keeps on living. Barely.
Head Phones President: Chain
The thing is, sometimes, McCoy can sometimes be extra pissed.
Sulu can usually spot this for several reasons-reason one, of course, being that McCoy will loudly and plainly exclaim this to anyone in raging distance. (And he certainly had a right to be so, during this away mission. The bloviating Xi'ibu Chancellor had been a prick by standards far lower than McCoy's. Sulu, himself, tends to be a live-and-let-live sort, not easily riled, but even he'd found himself touching his retractable katana several times, while eying the Chancellor's weedy, orange neck.)
But aside from his tendency to announce his rage, McCoy also telegraphs it. The way his mouth purses-much more tightly and rigidly than normal-the way those broad shoulders tense and square. The way his head tucks down mulishly, instead of tipping up loftily. The way his dark eyes become almost impossible to meet without feeling empathetic rage pool in one's own stomach--
--telegraphing. Just like in fencing, fighting, sex, poker. . . .
And Sulu's not an excitable man, he's really not. Except where, it seems, the good doctor is concerned. Not only has he and is he willing to step in front of danger to protect McCoy-who seems to make himself enemies without even trying, on some away missions-but Sulu's one of very few people who can talk McCoy down. The other being Kirk who, like any decent judge of people, can spot a similar tendency in others.
That's why, for the infrequent occasions the Chief Medical Officer is required dirt-side, Sulu is always McCoy's personal bodyguard.
(”Y'oughta sock that boy clean in the mouth, Lieutenant. Damnit, man, you're a pilot, not a German Shepherd,” McCoy always gripes, or something to that effect. Sulu's response is also always the same.
“Woof,” he'd say, smiling a little in the face of McCoy's huffs and annoyance; the doctor's a ram-rod straight, stiff line of southern pride and irritation, from his immaculate hair, to the shine of his boots. McCoy is, Sulu realizes like an epiphany every time he sees the man, the hottest guy who ever lived.
Then, generally, they're being beamed down into some untenable, often mucky and gross situation. But even covered in stinking mud or diseased blood, McCoy is still unbelievably sexy.)
It's a helluva body to guard, too, and Sulu has noticed.
Until recently, he simply hadn't decided what to do about this notice.
Now, as numbness spreads from his chest, to his extremities, and McCoy works quickly, calmly, almost dispassionately to save him (dispassionately except for the profuse, muttered swearing, and holy crow, does the doctor have a way filthier mouth than anyone ever thought), Sulu's only regret is that he waited so long to get proactive.
And that he'd never finished his culmination gift, the one that would've surely won the doctor over: the dionaea muscipula.
If anyone can save him, McCoy can, but Sulu's a realist. At any second the renegades could get a leg up, and then he and the doctor are dead, and the thought of the doctor-McCoy--Leonard dying hurts more than the distant ache that is the bolt in his chest. Makes the dicey bet that is breathing impossible, and his formerly numb limbs go cold and tight with convulsing muscles and sluggish circulation.
There's no more time for regrets because everything-body, breath, mind, space-time-everything shuts down.
The Chieftains: Water From The Well
After five days, of tension, glaring, snarking, and truncated pissing matches, Sulu's glad to be out of Sickbay.
In his small botany lab, amongst his plants and clippings, he feels alive again. Much more than he'd felt laid up in a bio-bed, getting cosseted by Chapel, and bitched at by McCoy. Though the visits from the Captain, Chekov, Uhura, and Scotty were nice. Even Spock'd stopped in briefly to see how he was doing, stiff and uncomfortable till McCoy harangued him out the door.
Sulu'd almost laughed till McCoy turned that glare and tongue on him, and as sexy as the doctor is when irritated, Sulu's had more than enough time to discover that there's a ceiling on that sexiness. A point when getting needled by the guy you took an arrow for just isn't the bees knees anymore.
It was words to that effect--more or less--that got Sulu sprung a little early. That, and the fact that life-saving aside, McCoy couldn't stand the sight of him, or the sound of his voice. Was just itching for an excuse to get rid of him, just like Sulu'd been itching to stop feeling a confusing combination of turned-on, angry, and hurt.
McCoy hadn't even come out of his office to say 'good-bye', or even 'get out of my Sickbay, you goddamned malingering fly-boy'.
Nothing. And as Chapel wheeled him out the Sickbay doors, Sulu looking back every two seconds, expecting to see McCoy stalking toward them agitatedly, he'd known then what he would say to McCoy, if he could.
I don't know what the right words are, Doctor, I only know that I'm not trying to make you angry. That I'd die for you, and almost did. And even after the past five days, I'd gladly do it all over again. I've never been in love, but I think I love you, and I don't want to fight with you. If you can't love me back, can we please, please, just go back to the way it was?
Plain and simple. For all the good it'd do.
But he'd still kept glancing behind him all the way to his room, barely noticing the congratulations and admiration of crewmates they passed. He was in his own grumpy sort of funk, and the only thing that'd make him feel better apparently didn't give two shits that he wasn't dead.
“The more he cares, the worse he is about showing it, and the more he blusters and bitches. In other words: he's a man, Lieutenant. Don't crucify him for his nature,” Chapel had said, and finally, Sulu sat back in the chair and refused to look back anymore. Instead, he looked up at Chapel. She'd practically glowed with good health, and a quiet beauty even Sulu could appreciate.
“If he's a bitch to the ones he cares about, then I must be high on his Christmas-card list, right after Kirk.”
Chapel had giggled a little, and snorted, but kept her blue eyes aimed dead-ahead. “Look, don't tell anyone I told you, but . . . the doctor didn't leave Sickbay once until you regained consciousness. Didn't sleep, didn't eat, just sat vigil, smelled bad, looked like hell, and ignored everyone. Wouldn't let anyone near you till you were stable. And even then, no one except me.”
“That's because you're one of the few people on the Enterprise he doesn't think is a hopeless fuck-up,” Sulu had said, remembering the idle conversations he and McCoy used to have about the people in their respective departments. McCoy'd never had anything but praise for his Head Nurse's talent and common sense. "I agree with him, by the way. About you being a hell of a nurse."
“Well, thank you, Lieutenant. But you're missing my point . . . the doctor's only like that when it comes to one other patient: Captain Kirk. Only I've never seen him wait till he thinks no one's looking to kiss the Captain's hand when he's unconscious. And I've never seen him look at the Captain like he hung the moon, either.”
“Sheesh, you're worse than Pavel.” Sulu had rolled his eyes, and silence had reigned over the rest of their brief journey. When they got to his empty quarters, Chapel had helped him into bed, with a reminder to comm Sickbay if he had any problems or needed anything. But by then, despite the new information whirling around his brain, Sulu was already mostly asleep. And when he woke up, almost eight hours later, it'd been with the clear-headed understanding that whatever a sleep-deprived McCoy might have done could be chalked up to just that. Sleep deprivation.
That alleged kiss on the hand? Had surely been the closest to a 'thanks, Sulu,' he'd ever get. And even that, McCoy'd been too brittle to do except when Sulu was unconscious and lingering at death's door.
It's time, at last, to take this stupid infatuation by the hand, and lead it around to the back of the barn.
Now, taking up his laser clipper, he approaches the dionaea muscipula, which has grown in his week-long absence. As he nears it, its head orients slowly toward him, its toothy mouth opening and ready to snap. It reminds him, in passing, of McCoy.
Gritting his teeth, Sulu gets to work. At first his arms shake just a bit, but then they firm.
Soon, it's like no time has passed, and nothing else exists. Especially not Leonard fucking McCoy.
Nirvana: Mexican Seafood
Not bad enough that he feels weird in his own skin, that he randomly itches, especially his hands and face (a legacy of the poison, which'll be in his system for another week, according to McCoy), that it burns when he pees (emerald green), like the worst case of VD ever. Not bad enough that he looks kind of like the living dead, all grey-faced and dull-eyed.
Not bad enough that though he's well enough to be back in his own quarters, he's not yet not well enough to be back at the helm.
Not bad enough that he's now taking more meds than he had in his whole life combined-and still has to go to Sickbay for hypos, treatments, and a horrible, system-cleansing “shake” that tastes like sweaty gym socks and looks like something that came out of the wrong end of a Tarkalean wildebeast.
(Not bad enough that McCoy hasn't said more than three words to him since he got discharged, and those three words had all been health-related.)
None of this shit is, on its own or together, bad enough, no. The universe has to throw a persistently mother-henning best friend, and that best friend's boyfriend into the mix.
Five days out of Sickbay, and between the godawful borscht Chekov keeps bringing, and Scotty's crazy-strong hot toddies, Sulu is both tipsy, and fucking tired of goddamn everything. He finally loses it-for Sulu, anyway-when he winds up with a lapful of toddy, and borsht, in a tag-team mother-henning effort gone horribly awry.
All three of them stare into Sulu's soupy-boozy lap for a long time, till Sulu, himself, finally looks up at the dear, dear friends hovering over his sick-bed and says, evenly: “I love you guys, but if you don't get out, like, five minutes ago, Security will never find your bodies.”
Chekov and Scotty share the kind of glance that only passes between two people who've lived in each other's back pockets for the better part of two years. Then Scotty looks down, clearing his throat and whipping away the wet blanket (ignoring Sulu's “hey!”, and covering of his boxer shorts). He tosses it door-ward, and sits on the right side of the bed. Chekov sits on the left, meeting Sulu's gaze sheepishly and patting his knee.
“We are sorry to be so annoying, Hikaru, but Dr. McCoy ordered us to keep an eye on you and report back.”
It takes a moment to trickle through, but trickle it does. “He what?”
“More like he threatened us with grievous bodily injury and court-martialing, actually, if we didnae glom ont' ye like a fungus,” Scotty clarifies, and Chekov nods, adding: “He even comms us ewery few hours to find out how you are. And if we do not comm him back--”
“--he hunts us down, whenever, wherever,” Scotty finishes, turning extremely red. “He's, em, already used his override t' barge into our quarters when we wouldnae answer the door, and--”
“--we were having sex, Hikaru.” Chekov makes the saddest of his sad-puppy faces. “He would not join in, but he would not go avay either, till we told him how you'd been when we last saw you.”
“Aye, that man's obsession wi' you is fecking unhealthy, and a wee bit scary,” Scotty decides, and Chekov clucks reprovingly.
“Sveetheart, is not unhealthy or scary. Is in love. Hikaru's feelings are finally returned!” he exclaims, the sad-puppy face quickly replaced by the happy-puppy face. He reaches out for Scotty's hand and Scotty meets him halfway. They look sappily at each other, his closest friends--disgustingly, irrevocably in love, and determined to see him similarly paired off--then they look at him, expectantly.
“Well. I suppose this means the ball's in your court, eh, laddy?” Scotty waggles his eyebrows in a fairly ridiculous way, and Chekov heaves a happy little sigh. “Is so romantic! And so exciting! Tell us what you will do next!” They both lean forward, eyes alight, and Sulu pinches the bridge of his nose.
The borscht he can do without, but a toddy'd be nice, right about now. His eyebrows've already started growing back from the last one.
“I'm gonna . . . take a nap.”
Postal Service: This Place Is A Prison
After kicking out a disturbingly prurient Chekov and Scotty, Sulu doesn't nap. He can't. He's too wound up and confused.
One restless hour later, half-hard but too irritated and frustrated to jerk off, he's about to swallow his pride and call Scotty back at least (he could really, really use that hot toddy), when the computer softly alerts him that there's been an unauthorized entry into his botany bay.
*
He doesn't expect to find that McCoy's the intruder.
He's just in his blacks, like Sulu, so off-duty, and he's examining the plants without touching, or getting too close. Sulu just watches him from the doorway. Watches him smile at some plants, mouthing their Latin names from the labels, and finally, when he comes to the dionaea muscipula, he stops. Frowns at it. Seeing it with an objective observer's eyes, it has gotten big. The head alone is the size of a beach-ball.
“This your venus flytrap, then?”
Stepping into the bay, Sulu lets the door close behind him. His muscles are still rubbery, but not as bad as they'd been yesterday. “Actually, its yours.” When McCoy looks up at him, he's smiling bemusedly. His hair's a little mussy, like he's run his hand through it a lot, and he could use a shave, but then Sulu's never minded stubble. “Well. One of its offspring was gonna be, anyway. Been trying to breed a less predatory species, but it hasn't been going well. And this guy, just as is . . . he's apt to bite your face off. Um. You may not wanna lean so close, Doc.”
McCoy moves back down along the table, till he's in front of a much less dangerous plant-well, they're bluebells, for all intents and purposes, but Sulu hasn't named them yet-and his eyebrow quirks up in that way, the one that used to drive Sulu up a wall. It does so now, just not as much as it does when he's not a big bag of poison, chemicals, and irritation. “Charming gift, Lieutenant.”
“'Interesting' was what I was going for, actually.” Sulu crosses the small bay-ancillary, and a gift from the captain since it wasn't being used, anyway-and doesn't stop till he's leaning on the console across from McCoy and the bluebells. The doctor's still smiling, kind of. He doesn't look annoyed, at any rate. “After almost a week in your Sickbay, I have to say you strike me as a man who's charm-resistant, and who moreover doesn't like to be charmed, period.”
“I don't like bein' manipulated,” McCoy corrects, looking angry for a moment, then sighing. “But I'll allow that I don't mind bein' charmed in . . . in low doses.”
“I see.” Sulu looks down at both of their feet. Tries to figure out why, exactly, they're not snapping at each other, and is at a loss for answers. This is the first civil conversation they've had since the dinner ceremony from Hell. “Do, um. Do you think I'm charming?”
“Lord, no.” McCoy snorts, but before Sulu has a chance to wither and die, he goes on. “But you're sweet in your own strange way. Cute, funny, sexy. Plus there's the negligible matter of you taking an arrow for me.”
This's almost a question, but another one Sulu has no answer to. He'd risk his life for any crewmate. That's how he's wired. What makes the doctor different isn't that Sulu has risked his life, but the reason why.
But he can't quite tell the doctor that. Not yet, if ever. It's better just to step over pesky things like whys. “Look, Doc . . . I really like you a lot.”
“I imagine you do.” McCoy laughs briefly. He doesn't sound particularly amused. “And fight it though I have, the feeling is mutual, Mr. Sulu. It is intensely, distractingly mutual. Ignoring it is taking its toll.”
“Ditto.” Sulu shifts nervously then bites his lip. When he looks up, McCoy isn't smiling, but watching him like he's trying to solve a perplexing puzzle. “So what happens now?”
“Ah, damned if I know, Lieutenant. It's been years since I was anything more than a one night stand or convenience-fuck . . . or am I assuming too much here?” McCoy asks with prickly dignity, but he looks faintly embarrassed, too. Something about that look, or maybe the tone, has Sulu closing the physical distance between them without clearing it with his brain, but his brain has no problem with that.
Neither, apparently, does the doctor, who doesn't object when Sulu's hands settle on his hips, with clear intentions of moving around to his ass. Their bodies fit quite well together, despite the height difference, and they're both unmistakably hard.
“God, you smell good. Like kudzu and mint,” he murmurs, looking up into McCoy's dark, dark eyes. And for all that Sulu's one of the fastest, most skilled pilots in the galaxy, it's sure taken him a hell of a long time to get to this destination. “I want a lot more than one night, Doc, and if I wanted convenient. . . .”
“. . . you wouldn't have come sniffin' around me, yeah, I guess that makes a certain sense, Lieutenant,” McCoy huffs quietly, angling his head down to meet Sulu's kiss and return it with matching ardor. He tastes like the ghosts of coffee past, and mouthwash present, and he's not shy about using his tongue and owning the kiss. Every time he moans, it makes the nerves in Sulu's teeth vibrate.
His hands slide under Sulu's shirt and up his chest, pinching his nipples hard enough to make Sulu gasp, to make him pliant in McCoy's arms for a short time. . . .
Then he's pushing McCoy back against the specimen table hard, almost hard enough to knock pots out of their holders. McCoy swears and starts to complain till Sulu makes himself at home against one of the doctor's thighs. After a few seconds, McCoy does the same, staring down into Sulu's eyes, his own half-lidded. He's smirking, just a little. It sends a jolt straight to Sulu's already hard cock.
“You know, there's a reason I didn't clear you for duty, yet, Lieutenant,” he says breathlessly as they rock against each other. Sulu braces his hands on the table for better leverage and rocks a bit harder, like he's in a dead heat race to see who comes in their pants first.
“That reason would be because I'm too sexy for the helm, too sexy for the helm--yeah, Doc, just like that.” For a little while, all that can be heard is rhythmic rocking and the knocking of the table against the wall, and grunting and gasping. At least till Sulu pins McCoy's hips with his hands and drives against him hard enough that an empty pot actually does fall on the floor and shatter. There's even a gentle rain of dirt from most of the occupied pots.
McCoy's head drops back for a few moments--more than enough time for Sulu to lick a wet, rasping trail from jugular to chin, and steal a quick kiss--and he laughs a little. “Mary and Joseph, you're aggressive. You top exclusively?”
“Um. Sort of.” Every time he's ever had sex, actually. He looks up into McCoy's eyes warily, and hopes this isn't another block for them to stumble on. “Wait--why? Is that a, uh, problem? Because I've never bottomed before, but I guess I could try, and . . . fuck, I really wanna fuck you.”
McCoy rolls his eyes, but takes this hopefully brief lull as an opportunity rub Sulu slow and hard through his trousers. “Relax, Lieutenant, I prefer bottoming. A like it. A lot. I'm just askin' because . . . look, you're still too weak for this kind of strenuous activity. Plus, you still have a fairly high level of that damned Xi'ibu toxin tryin' to eat its way through your endocrine system, never mind what it'd do to a condom, or my ass. I ain't too keen on havin' to wreck a perfectly good afterglow by goin' into toxic shock or havin' to pump myself fulla epinephrine.”
“Yeah, that--oh, yeah . . . that doesn't sound like fun.” Understatement of the year. Having just had a near-death experience, he doesn't wish it on anyone, for any reason. And certainly not on the guy whose palm he's humping.
Sulu pushes up McCoy's shirt, jams his hand down the doctor's pants and--wow--silk boxer briefs, and gets his own handful of thick, hard, damp cock. Doesn't once look away from McCoy's face and is rewarded by the doctor's eyes fluttering shut, and white teeth biting into a swollen lower lip.
"We shouldn't be doin' this. You're still recoverin', and you could relap--oh, Lord, yes," he exhales as Sulu's thumb sweeps across the tip of his cock repeatedly. He's breathing hard, and there's a fine sheen of sweat on his brow.
He's gorgeous, and it feels as if Sulu's never wanted anything half so much. Not even the Black.
“I'll wait as long as you want me to, Doc.” It's mortifying blurting it out, but that doesn't make it not true. And even though McCoy's eyes are still shut, by unspoken agreement they lean toward each other to kiss again.
There's really nothing to it, nothing to write home, or brag to Chekov about, and yet . . . it's the best kiss Sulu's ever had. It turns his beehive thoughts into white-noise bliss, and when it ends, the first thing Sulu thinks comes tumbling out of his mouth.
“Considering how long I've been waiting, five days is zero perspiration.”
“Exactly how long're we talkin'?” McCoy asks softly, searching Sulu's eyes. Sulu sways them a little, looking away. He isn't ready to say out loud just how invested he is in this, but he can't stay silent, either. He's never been much of a liar.
“Just . . . long,” he says quietly, and McCoy doesn't push for once, merely leans their foreheads together, then kisses him again. This kiss is everything the other wasn't: fast, wet, hot, tongue-y. And long . . . at least till Sulu gets pushed away.
“Goddamnit,” McCoy swears, grabbing him by one arm and dragging him to the only available chair in the bay. He pushes a startled, but amused Sulu down into it and sinks to his knees between Sulu's legs. He doesn't look angry so much as best-not-fucked-with. At least in a certain sense. “I apparently ain't any kinda doctor at all, because you're about to get the blowjob of your life, Mr. Sulu.”
“I, uh, am?”
“Yeah, you, uh, am. And you'll forgive me if I don't let you come in my mouth, this time. Again, I ain't too keen on windin' up in my own Sickbay, havin' to explain how I got the toxin in my system.” Dark eyes gaze hotly into his own as his fly's undone, his boxers navigated and yes, fuck yes, McCoy's hand is tugging him out, pulling him free of his trousers. He doesn't even pause for reflection, just applies his mouth where the applying is good.
And it. Is. So good.
“Oh, shit. You sure I'm not too weak for this?” Sulu asks, bucking up into McCoy's big, perfect hand and so-not-shy mouth. McCoy gives him one of those narrow-eyed looks, and suddenly slides off his cock with a wet, slurping-sucking noise that nearly gets him a faceful of probably emerald-green come.
“I'd thought you weren't, Lieutenant, but if you feel you're unable to go on with this, I'll certainly sto--” the bastard even starts to stands up, bracing his hands on Sulu's thighs.
“No, I was just kidding-I'm sorry.” Sulu leans forward and instead of grabbing McCoy's hands, he cups McCoy's face in his own. The man's so handsome, it doesn't even make sense on at least fifty different levels, and there are times just looking at him makes Sulu want to cry. And he never cries. Not even when there's an arrow in his lung. “Please, stay. I want this, and you so much. So stay, stop scowling . . . and please keep sucking my dick?”
“You're--really not charming at all. Not even a little, and still. . . .” McCoy sighs ruefully, shaking his head, but settling on the floor again, scowling. The last little bit of Sulu's anger at the thoughtless, hurtful high-handedness that's been McCoy's default since the Xi'ibu Incident comes boiling to the surface, along with everything he's been fighting not to say.
“Jesus, do you know how much I've thought about you going down on me? About me going down on you? Do you know how much I've wanted you?” Sulu runs his finger through the doctor's hair, clenches tight on a handful and tugs until he's looking into those dark, stormy eyes. Wills them to understand what he wants to say, without him actually saying it. But if McCoy's got Betazoid in him, Sulu will eat the Enterprise from Bridge to warp drive. “I may not be charming, but I'm completely sincere when I say I've wanted you since the day we met. You've been my stroke-fantasy for over two years. You have so many alien plants named after you, and registered with the Federation, your ears must be constantly burning. According to Pavel I'm falling in fucking love with you, and I'm starting to think he's right, because it feels like I can't breathe when I'm near you, and it's worse when I'm not. I want you so bad, I can barely think straight and I raise wood on a fucking dime just hearing your voice. If I can't have you, Doctor, I'm probably gonna park the Enterprise in an asteroid sooner or later, just because I'm so distracted all the goddamn time! And did I mention the part where I'd literally step between you and certain death because I can't bear the thought of losing you, even though I don't really have you? Charm, Doc? What the fuck d'you want with charm, when you could have all of this?!” Sulu rants, gesturing at his slumped down body in its half-dressed, purplely turgid state.
McCoy blinks at him, clearly taken aback. It's the longest thing anyone on Enterprise's heard Sulu say, and likely the longest thing he's ever said period.
“Wow, Lieutenant, that's . . . uh, quite a bit to digest, after a ten-hour shift.” McCoy clears his throat, and it looks like he's trying not to laugh. His cheeks are really red, and dimples that are rarely ever seen, are out in force. Sexy fucking bastard, and no amount of fake-scowling can hide that. “One caveat: if you yank my hair again for any reason, I'll circumcise you with my teeth.”
Still breathing hard, Sulu grins. It's probably ghastly, and he knows his hair is sticking up in all directions and he must look insane, but he doesn't care. Simply lifts his hips so McCoy can pull down his pants and underwear. The alloy of the chair is cold on his ass, but he won't be noticing it for long, not when that warm, wet, fucking gorgeous mouth takes him in. “I won't yank on your hair, but fuck-yeah, I like teeth.”
McCoy quirks both eyebrows now. Wets his lips with a tantalizing tip of tongue. “I do believe we'll get along just fine, Mr. Sulu.”
“Hikaru.”
“Leonard.” McCoy licks his name onto the head of Sulu's cock, then lets it rest on his lips. His eyes close slowly like he's savoring the taste, and he just . . . breathes on Sulu's dick, humid and soft.
It's easily the hottest thing Sulu's experienced in a long time. Maybe ever.
“Well, that's the name-thing, all squared away. As you were, Leonard,” Sulu squeaks, six octaves higher than normal, then leans back in the chair, shaking body belaying the steadiness of his sixth grade voice. At least till McCoy proceeds to suck the pigment off his cock.
QoTSA: Go With The Flow
Some hours later:
Sulu has to pin McCoy's hips to the bed, for the way he thrashes about while getting blown.
And even though his jaw and arms are getting tired, and his gag reflex is getting a run for its money, Sulu's happier than he's ever been. Everything feels slow and eternal in the pitch black of McCoy's quarters and the firmness of his big-enough-for-three bed. McCoy is all he can taste, feel, and smell. All his senses will ever need.
The universe is silent and deep and just . . . perfect. The way it should've been, all along.
“Fuck me, damnit,” McCoy starts chanting mindlessly, forcing himself to stop thrashing, though he keens and his whole body shakes when Sulu to pushes one finger, then two into him. McCoy's hands clench in and yank on Sulu's hair, like he wants to scalp the Fleet's most decorated helmsman while fucking his face. “God, please, yes, damnit, fuck me, need you, fuck me, please, Hikaru. . . .”
But of course, Sulu can't. Not till he's stopped coming bright green. As bad as he wants to be inside the body that's shaking and clenching welcome-tight around his fingers . . . he can't. Not yet. But there are other things they can do. Kinky things, things with toys, or just things like this, which they both seem to be enjoying.
“. . . need you, baby, oh, God, please, don't care, epi-pen and condoms in my night-table, just fuck me, just fuck-oh! Oh!” And with that loud, hoarse yell, McCoy's coming, hot and heavy, and Sulu's swallowing as fast as he can, and mostly managing not to drool. His spit-wet fingers press relentlessly on McCoy's prostate till the doctor stops shaking and spurting, and simply goes limp.
Sulu, still hard but tired, too, pulls out and off slowly, and rests his head on McCoy's stomach. Lazy fingers comb through his hair, and he kisses McCoy's damp skin, idly massaging his jaw.
McCoy's fingers feel really good in his hair . . . just . . . magical.
“Charm c'n take a long walk off a short pier,” McCoy declares, shifting his leg just so he can slide his foot tortuously up and teasingly down Sulu's erection. “There's somethin' to be said for a man who can suck m' brains out through m' cock.”
McCoy keeps (expertly; he's so done this before) playing the old skin-flute with his toes, and Sulu . . . keeps letting him. “This is-God, I love that you're such a fucking freak--what I've said all along. Charm is overrated.”
“Point to you, then." McCoy yanks once, but not that hard, on Sulu's hair. Foreplay-hard, and Sulu's so down with that. "And you should know that on the day you get the all-clear, you're gonna be called into the CMO's office for a final check-up. And the CMO fully expects to get bent over his desk like a naughty schoolboy.”
Sulu yelps and swats away McCoy's foot, applying pressure to the base of his cock. He recites the Fibonacci Sequence (Chekov says it works for him) to stave off his orgasm, though he doesn't know why. He's not going to be allowed to come in McCoy for at least another seven days, and he means to come in proximity to McCoy at least thirty or forty times till then.
Though he'd cheerfully trade in all those times for just five minutes in that powerful, demanding body, pounding away till--
“I can hear ya poutin', ya big baby. Quit humpin' my foot, and get up here. Lemme take care of you,” McCoy commands, but kindly. Somehow Sulu finds the energy to obey, dragging his damn-near painful erection up McCoy's leg. When McCoy's breath sighs past his temple, Sulu stops and leans in for a kiss hello that McCoy immediately takes control of, his tongue mapping Sulu's and counting all his teeth. Till Sulu's mouth doesn't even taste like come anymore. Well, not much.
“Hey,” he says, and McCoy smiles against his lips, grabbing his cock none-too-gently. So-long foreplay, hello main-show.
“Hey, yourself.” They kiss, and McCoy cock-teases the way he cock-sucks: slowly, thoroughly-like it's a lost art-form that he's determined to revive singlehandedly. Tired as he is, it isn't long before Sulu's gasping McCoy's name into their kiss. A warning, because they may not be romantics, either of them, but there's unromantic, and then there's shooting green, quite literally burning come all over your lover's hand.
"Oh, fuck, Len--"
“Ready to come?” McCoy asks almost playfully, and Sulu's now beyond forming words, even if the words are Leonard, and ohfuckyes, so he simply nods. Lets McCoy roll them both onto their sides, and spoon up behind him. His grip tightens and speeds up, finishing Sulu off fast, and efficiently. Which shouldn't be sexy but it is, when coupled with McCoy's hoarse-voiced, dirty encouragement in his ear.
Predictably, it burns when Sulu comes, worse than when he pees, but the burn? So worth it. Just so. Absolutely. Fucking. Worth it.
Afterward McCoy kisses his neck and ear, whispering things like fuck and hot, and. . . .
“You know, we should maybe strip and change the linen before my green acid-jizz eats through your bedding.” Though Sulu makes no move to leave the haven of McCoy's arms. In fact, he's ready to go to sleep.
“Nah, it'd dry long before it did that. So if you even think about getting out of this bed, Lieutenant, I'll hypo you, and hog-tie you.” McCoy kisses the back of Sulu's head and gives his cock a possessive squeeze before kicking the acid-jizz blanket onto the floor at the foot of the bed. He then drags a cool, pleasantly jizz-free sheet over them and lays back down, pulling Sulu back into his embrace. His arms are big, warm, strong, everything Sulu imagined they'd be, and their legs tangle together comfortably.
And even though he's always the big spoon on the rare occasions he spends the night with a guy, this feels . . . good.
“There. Happy, now?" It's a grumble that's kissed into Sulu's neck.
"Mmhm. Very."
"I . . . huh. Well. Go to sleep, then.”
Which is pretty sound medical advice. And Sulu's doing just that, lulled by minutes of spoon-y warmth, when McCoy cuddles closer, squeezing him tighter and gasping quietly, shakily in his hair. For, like, awhile.
Even though Sulu knows he's supposed to be asleep and not witnessing this, he can't just lay there and let McCoy suffer. If only because he, himself, would never get to sleep.
And two people who've just had ridiculous-good sex laying there and suffering is just not cool. Not when for once, Sulu can solve both their problems.
“Heyya, Doc?” he yawns, and squeezes McCoy's hand. Behind him, the gasping stops and the body against Sulu's own freezes.
“What, Lieutenant?”
Not exactly a welcoming 'what, Lieutenant', but Sulu caps the yawn with a mini-stretch, settling even more bonelessly in McCoy's arms. He is utterly content, in the way only a man who's about to get everything he's been wanting can be. “You did a great job saving my life.”
Stiff, startled silence until Sulu's almost asleep again. Then McCoy relaxes completely, and covers him, like the best blanket ever. Anchors him to reality even as he's swept away by some feeling that's far too huge and endless for him to quantify or name . . . though he's sure Chekov could.
“You . . . you did a real fine job of savin' mine, Hikaru,” McCoy breathes, tucking his warm, wet face into the crook of Sulu's neck and rocking them both.
In a few minutes, McCoy's face has stopped being wet, and Sulu has stopped being awake. But a rough-voiced, heartfelt: thank you so much, makes itself at home in his dreams.
*
In the morning, when they walk into Sickbay together, holding hands-early for Sulu's next round of treatments, but right on time for McCoy's next shift--no one says anything, and no one seems surprised. Least of all Head Nurse Chapel.