Places of Refuge
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~ 2,300
Warnings: Spoilers for the episode “The Empath” and all the angst contained therein. Vague spoilers for the episode “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” and all of that angst. K/S/M pairing, which means slash.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: I’ll admit it-I'm a Trekkie. Not over the top, but I can quote episodes with the best of them. Bones-centric episodes are my favorite, so I had to write an aftermath-fic for “The Empath.” Being as I am, it became a threesome fic between the trio. Eh. I've been meaning to write them anyway.
Places of Refuge
The ship is dark and quiet during Gamma shift, a skeleton crew keeping her functioning. Leonard is alone in the halls, walking. He can't bring himself to stop, can't pause even for a moment or he’ll see that dark-bright laboratory again, that subterranean torture chamber that would have killed them all if not for Kirk’s persistence and pleas.
He sees the Vians whenever he closes his eyes, so he doesn’t close them.
Usually, he’s not the type to appreciate the fact that they're in space, hurtling alone at warp speed in a glorified tin can. But right now, when everything is silent and only the faintest humming of Enterprise’s engines breaks the midnight stillness, he can't bring himself to mind. They're far from the sun going nova, from the doomed planets and the one world that will be saved because of Gem’s willingness to kill herself for another.
A shudder wracks him, and Leonard pauses to shake it off. The thought of that beautiful girl, only a little older than his Joanna, pouring her power into him at the cost of her own life, makes his stomach churn with nausea. The same way, in fact, that it churns when he thinks of Kirk offering himself up for another round of torture when he hadn’t yet recovered from the first, or of Spock going with the Vians and coming back a broken shell of himself. Ninety-three percent chance of going insane, they had said. That number is too high for Leonard to contemplate. In comparison, an eighty-seven percent chance of death seems like good odds.
In the end, that eighty-seven percent chance would have been a hundred, if not for Gem’s ability and the Vians’ reconsideration of their task.
Leonard wonders why, out of all the times he’s faced death at Kirk’s side-at least once a week, it sometimes feels like, and many times more often than that-this encounter has affected him the most. Is it because the Vians were so clinical in their dealing of death? Because they thought they were doing the right thing? Because they were torturing people to second-handedly kill an innocent girl?
Whatever the reason, Leonard is shaken. It might be hard to tell from the outside, because his hands never shake and he’s just as much of a grumpy bastard as ever, but in reality his world is spinning out from under his feet and he can't regain his balance. So many times he’s seen Kirk or Spock throw themselves into something and end up in over their heads, but he had thought he was beyond that. He’s the oldest, the voice of reason, for all that Jim’s the captain and leader and Spock spouts knowledge like a fountain does water. Leonard is the one who hangs back, warns them off hurting themselves and then is there to pick them up, grumble, and stab them with hyposprays when they don’t listen to him.
He’s never been the one to jump in without knowing the water’s depth.
But there was something about the Vians, something in their eyes that he saw and rebelled against. They were far more emotionally distant than even Spock, cold in a way the Vulcan could never manage to be. Leonard can't imagine Spock taking a life the way they did to those two pitiable scientists. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It makes Leonard unspeakably grateful to know that for all the Vulcan clings to his belief of logic as supreme, he’s still a thousand times more human, for lack of a better word, than the Vians.
The doors of Sickbay slide open in front of him, and Leonard pauses in surprise. He hadn’t realized his feet were taking him down the familiar path until he reached it, but he’s glad anyway. Here, surrounded by the whirring of so many life-saving machines, with the strong antiseptic smell stinging his nose, Leonard is more at peace than anywhere else on the ship. In the same way the captain seeks out the Bridge in times of inner turmoil, or Mr. Spock closets himself away in the science labs, this is Leonard's place of refuge.
One of the Gamma shift nurses looks at him and opens her mouth, no doubt having been instructed by Chapel not to allow him to so much as set foot in Sickbay until cleared by her, but Leonard stares her down and raises an eyebrow. She’s relatively young, relatively new, and wilts in the face of his look, scurrying back around the corner before he can say anything. Leonard shakes his head in inner amusement. Chapel should pick her soldiers with more care, especially when sending them against a general higher up the food chain, he thinks, even as he makes tracks for his office. Chapel has been known to drop in unannounced if she can't sleep, just as Leonard does, and he wants to be safely out of the line of fire if that happens.
Sickbay is very much his territory, and it’s easy to get his balance back here, submerging himself in reports and requisition forms underneath the bright lights. The door to his office is closed, and it’s like stepping into a castle and pulling the drawbridge up behind him. This is his territory, and even the memories of the Vians are forbidden from entering.
Leonard glances sidelong at the small cot set up in the corner, wondering if he’s willing to risk Chapel’s wrath for a night of uninterrupted sleep here in sickbay. She’ll skin and gut him for it, without a doubt, but it might be worth it to keep the nightmares at bay. Equally tempting is the bottle of bourbon in a locked cabinet under his desk, but Leonard has been divorced before-he knows better than to think that self-medicating in that fashion will help. Besides, he’s on shift in another few hours, and for all his many faults, Leonard is a good doctor. He’d rather chop off a hand than show up to his shift tipsy. People put their lives in his hands, and he’d never risk them that way.
There's a soft hiss as the door slides open, and Leonard looks up from M’Benga’s report to see Spock standing framed in the doorway, hands clasped behind his back. There's a look on his face that Leonard isn’t familiar with, a difference from the normal impassivity that’s somewhat odd, even if Leonard can't identify it.
“Doctor,” Spock says severely. “You were not in your quarters.”
That’s probably one of the oddest things Leonard’s ever heard him say, and he raises an eyebrow. “Obviously not,” he drawls, and is glad that his voice doesn’t shake, because all he can hear for a moment is a cold, clinical voice repeating ninety-three percent. “Might be ‘cause I'm here, Mr. Spock.”
Spock raises an eyebrow in return, and with those natural angles, he can get his higher with half the effort. “You are being deliberately obtuse, Doctor. It is late. Why are you not sleeping?”
He looks about ready to rattle off some statistic about healthy sleep routines and the average amount of sleep an adult human needs, so Leonard raises a hand to cut him off. “Spock, drop it. I'm awake and I'm going to stay that way no matter what I do, so leave me in peace.”
“Not happening.” Jim steps around his first officer to stare Leonard down, brown eyes severe. “What the hell are you doing here, Bones?”
“Working,” Leonard bites back, because it’s far too late to suffer through the mother hen routine these two seem to have adopted. “You should try it sometime, Jim. It does wonders for productivity.”
It’s a low blow, because no matter how Kirk acts sometimes, he’s a damned good captain. Jim seems to know that, too, because his gaze doesn’t waver from Leonard’s. After a moment, Leonard realizes that it’s hopeless and gives in with a sigh, throwing his hands into the air. “What? What do you want from me, Jim? I'm fine!”
“Here,” Jim clarifies, crossing his arms, and Leonard curses the fact that Jim knows him so well. “But that’s why you're not in your room, because this is the only place you feel is safe.”
Of course Jim’s had to deal with things like this before, both concerning other people and himself. Leonard knows this, subconsciously, but he’s never really considered it before. He looks back and forth between the two of them, taking in the unwavering gazes and stern features, and sighs.
“All right,” he grumbles, because no one ever said anything about having to give in gracefully. “What do you two have in mind? I'm assuming it’s something, and that you're not just dragging me out of here for no reason.”
Jim grins at him, big and full of heart, and reaches out to take his arm and pull him to his feet. He manhandles Leonard between him and Spock as he leads the doctor out of sickbay, and Spock seems to be in on the plan. He steps even closer, as though he’s herding Leonard. It would be demeaning if anyone else tried, but somehow Leonard can't bring himself to mind overly much, especially when the Vulcan’s long fingers come up to rest on the nape of Leonard’s neck. The touch itself is light, almost nonexistent, but Leonard knows the significance of touch to a Vulcan and allows it without argument.
There's no one in the halls as they steer him towards officer’s quarters. Not his own, which are close to sickbay for convenience, but the bridge crew and captain’s rooms-which everyone knows the XO shares, though no one ever acknowledges their relationship outright. Kirk’s cabin turns out to be their destination, and Leonard is steered firmly inside, given no chance to argue before he’s tumbled onto the bed, boots and all, with a firm body on either side of him. Jim and Spock curl around him, cradling him between them, and simply hold on.
Leonard tries to write off the hitch in his breathing as surprise, but knows he’s fooling no one, least of all himself, as he buries his face in Jim’s chest and feels Spock press up behind him. The captain wraps his arms around him with a murmured, “Bones,” and fingers, long and deft, stroke through his hair.
There are no Vians here, not even the ghost of one.
“I don’t regret it,” Leonard says after a long while, because he has to make this clear. “I did the only thing I could do as a doctor.”
There's a quiet sigh, and Jim presses a soft kiss to the top of Leonard’s head. This is new; their friendship has never been pushed to the edges of true intimacy like this, but Leonard likes it, in a way he hasn’t liked anything in a very long time. Even with Spock, when sparks fly between them and the sexual tension is razor-edged, they’ve never strayed into this territory before. Natira and her schoolgirl crush have nothing on the warmth surrounding him now-warmth that is not just physical, but also more.
“I know,” Jim murmurs, even as Spock’s hands still in Leonard’s hair. “You wouldn’t be our Bones if you'd done anything different. Still mad at you, though.”
Leonard understands that, he really does-but his mind has caught on the ‘ours’ that Jim threw in there, and won't let it go. He raises his head to look at first Jim, then Spock, and knows his expression speaks for him.
The two senior officers also trade looks before they turn their attention to him. “Yes, Doctor,” Spock affirms. “We wish to invite you to join our relationship.”
Jim cuts Leonard off before he can demand to know what the Vulcan’s been sipping after hours, and shuts him up with a finger over his lips. “Think about it,” he urges gently. “Sleep on it. Even if you say no, we’ll always be your friends, Bones, but this whole mess has reminded us that there's too much to lose in not saying anything. Will you at least consider it?”
Leonard remembers the faint first bloom of emotion he felt with Natira, and knows that it is all but meaningless compared to what he feels for these two men who are as much a part of him as his gruff nature. There's no need for him to sleep on his decision-he already knows what it will be, whether Jim and Spock ask now or in thirty years.
Still, there's no need to tell them that right now.
Smothering a smile, he drops his head to rest on Jim’s chest and entwines his fingers with Spock’s, then closes his eyes. “Go to sleep,” he orders. “I'm scheduling you two for psychiatric checks first thing tomorrow, if you're really serious about this.”
Maybe Jim knows him too well, because he laughs, and he and Spock settle in, both looking smug. “’Night, Bones,” he says with amusement, and Spock murmurs an agreement.
Leonard rolls his eyes, regardless of whether either of the men can see it, and lets out a breath.
There are no Vians here, and Leonard s fairly certain there is no chance of them ever getting past the men on either side of him.
That’s answer enough, if Spock and Jim don’t already know what he’ll say.