Twice Shy: Part 1 of 4
Title: Twice Shy
Fandom: Star Trek XI
More details in the Masterpost.
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Twice Shy: Part One
Jim wriggles into his side, unconsciously seeking warmth in his sleep, and Bones sighs before pulling him closer with one arm, trying to ignore his throbbing erection and the way the air is heavy with Jim's scent, dark and spicy and un-fucking-mistakeable.
He'd honestly thought that it was a myth. He'd loved Jocelyn, married her, had a child with her, had a life with her, but she'd never smelled particularly delicious to him. Good, always good, what with expensive perfumes and bunches of lavender folded into the clothes in her drawers, but never sweet enough that just being around her felt like taking in air after staying underwater for too long.
Jim, on the other hand, had reeked of blood, sweat, cigarette smoke, and too much time spent in the same clothes when they first met, in a shuttle full of other people's scents, and it hadn't been until halfway through the ride, when Jim had leaned in to squeeze his knee and say something inane about the risk of dying in a shuttle accident that Bones had felt the air around him clear, the anxiety at the bottom of his stomach dissipating like a fog on a sunny morning.
He'd known he was fucked only two days later, when Jim had made it abundantly clear that he intended to spend his time at the Academy having as much and varied fun as humanly possible. Of course he'd tried to steer clear of the kid after that, but Jim, being Jim, wasn't having it. It was delicious torture, watching Jim Kirk cut such a considerable swathe through the student body that he was nearly an instant celebrity on campus, when all Bones really wanted most of the time was to throw the kid down on the nearest flat surface and claim him as his own.
He's been doing really well so far. Until tonight, of course, when Jim had shown up on his doorstep already drunk, waving a whiskey bottle and rambling something about Bones being his best friend ever. He had, in his defense, sat the kid down and tried to sober him up, tried to pry the reason for Jim's seemingly random bout of alcoholism out of him, but then the kid had more or less face-planted onto his dick and his self-control had abruptly snapped.
At least they hadn't fucked. That is something. Bones is pretty sure he can deal with being a drunken blowjob, but being a drunken fuck would have been too much. Hell, he's not sure how he'll manage with the blowjob bit, now that he's forced to admit to himself that the stories about werewolves being able to scent their mates are, clearly, true.
He's known this for a while, though he's only now admitting to himself for the first time that Jim Kirk, the Casanova of the Starfleet Academy Campus, is his mate, damn his luck to hell and fucking back. He'd thought, considering his previous relationships, that it couldn't be true, even if he'd been nervous about it as a kid. At least back then, he'd assumed that if he were to find his mate through scent, his mate would be able to recognize him back. Yeah, not so much.
He figures he probably ought to know fucking better than this by now; he'd been eleven the first time he assumed something about the legends to his detriment, but it still seems he's made a habit of underestimating the accuracy of myth.
At least when he tries to look on the bright side, he does have the advantage of actually knowing, down to the minute, just when his life became this fucking complicated, though that comfort is cold at best when he considers his current and longstanding predicament.
And now they've had sex, in a sense, Lord help him. But he'd had a lot of sex before he even met Jim Kirk, so the stories about werewolves mating for life are clearly untrue.
Right?
+++
Werewolves mate for life.
He can tell the first time Jim shows up for class reeking of sex with someone else - that is, two days after That Incident They Are Not Discussing.
He has to fight to keep his wolf under control and he's fucking glad he has been pretty diligent about going off for his change rather than suppressing it, because if he was already fighting to keep it back, this is one fight he would have lost.
And while it's true that he hasn't claimed Jim - and doesn't that sound delightfully clichéd and disturbing - his wolf is making its feelings on the subject quite clear: Jim Kirk is his.
Except Bones knows, very well, that Jim Kirk is not his, not at all, and never will be. It takes some getting used to, now that his sense of smell where Jim is concerned is heightened, but in the end he manages to suppress the longing.
He still wants, still longs for Jim, but he knows that Jim doesn't feel the same way about him and he can't let himself take something to which he has no right. So he trains, goes off for his change at every full moon, knowing that the more leeway he gives his wolf, the more strength he'll have to fight his instincts when push comes to shove.
Jim wonders about his absences, but Bones has figured out that the quickest way to shut Jim up is to say that it's a family thing. He's showered enough with Jim to feel slightly guilty about that, knowing as he does that the other man's back is a canvas of faint red and white lines that speak of something that Bones cannot contemplate, or he'll grow furious enough to do actual harm to other human beings.
Perhaps this is why, when Jim is trying to face the prospect of being left behind on Earth while everyone he knows sails off into battle, that Bones cannot find it within himself to leave him behind. He may be a bastard, but he's not a bastard with any illusions; he knows very well what he means to Kirk, and he knows very well what Kirk means to him; when it comes down to it, it's a no-brainer.
That it turns out to be a no-brainer that saves the planet is beside the point.
+++
He'd figured that in space, he'd be free from the influence of the moon. It'd been the one thing he'd counted in favor of the big black, and it therefore comes as an unpleasant surprise when he turns out to be wrong.
True, he is free from the waxing and waning of the moon - but that does not, apparently, free him from the effects of a moon. He'd sometimes cursed his inability to keep track of the lunar cycles on earth, but that was child's play in comparison with exploring worlds that are circled by three moons or four, when some of them affect him and others do not, with no discernable patterns that he can figure out.
He would have been forced to spend most of his free time in lupine form and locked up in his quarters, so that he would have the wherewithal to keep his wolf from making any unscheduled appearances during duty hours, had help not arrived from an… unexpected source.
They've been out from Earth for barely a fortnight, making a couple of milk runs, carting diplomats around; they’re being started out easy and Jim is in his element, tackling every smallest challenge as if it is a matter of life and death. Bones supposes the novelty will wear off soon enough - probably too soon, since he knows that the first time Jim Kirk loses a member of his crew, he'll be devastated.
They're still trying to get the crew to gel, trying to shake together their honestly ridiculously young command staff with the more experienced enlisted crewmembers. There have been a few fights, some screaming matches, and at least one instance of near-mutiny, but nothing that can't be dealt with.
And then the Enterprise had taken some damage in the engagement with the Narada, and apparently some flaws just won't show up unless they're going Warp 8, which Bones considers evidence enough for his opinion that they're stuck on a flying deathtrap, no matter how much Jim pets the goddamn ship - and he's caught him doing that at least five times now.
He's coming back from a coffee break and heading for his office when Nurse Chapel intercepts him. "Doctor, Lieutenant Uhura is waiting for you in the exam room. She requested you speak with her privately."
"Thank you," he says and amends his course, wondering what the Lieutenant wants and sincerely hoping it has nothing to do with her sex life, considering that she's apparently dating the First Officer. He thinks it'll take him a while yet to forgive Spock for leaving Jim behind on Delta Vega, though he has to admit that the man is good at what he does, and while he is frustrating to have a conversation with, there is also something very nearly soothing about him. When he is silent, that is. And not looking at Bones.
Uhura is sitting on a bio-bed in the exam room, perusing something on a PADD, but she looks up when the door closes behind him and smiles. She looks serene and composed at first glance, though her fingers are curled pretty tightly around the plastic casing of the datapad.
"What is it you wanted to talk to me about?" he asks, stepping up to the bed and reaching for a tricorder to take her readings.
She stops him with a hand on his wrist. "My medical history…" she starts - and then her eyes widen and she stares at him in surprise.
He figures it out as soon as he takes a breath to ask her what's wrong - she's been alone in the room for a while and he's standing close enough to smell her hair; she's disguised it well but beneath the layers of vanilla and white musk he detects the scent of another werewolf.
"You're…" he says, then stops. It seems unnecessary to state the obvious.
"And here I thought I was going to have to give you the Werewolf 101 lecture," Uhura says, a slow smile spreading over her face. "Were you born or turned?" she adds, sounding curious.
"Turned when I was eleven," Bones replies. "You?"
"I was born," she says. "It runs in my family."
"I thought I was the only one on board," he says, not quite knowing how to feel - he wants to be relieved, but he doesn't have the best experience with other werewolves. This is Uhura, though, and he's respected her ever since she demonstrated a remarkable and consistent ability to take Kirk down a peg or fifteen back in their first year at Starfleet Academy.
"So did I," she says. "Chekov's uncle is a wolf, so we'd met before and he knows, and Spock knows, naturally, but I hadn't realized you were one of us. You should come train with us; we're about the same level of strength as a Vulcan, so you and Spock would be fairly evenly matched. You can take out your frustrations on each other more thoroughly than you're doing already," she says and winks at him.
"I'm a doctor, not a soldier," he grouses, not exactly keen on putting himself in a situation where he gets beaten up by the damn green-blooded hobgoblin, but she just smirks at him and lifts an eyebrow in a very Vulcan-like manner. "How are you doing with the…" he asks, waving a hand around to indicate the ship and space, trying to change the subject before she can get him to agree.
"Oh!" she says, "Oh, of course you don't… Spock and Chekov have put together a dataset to predict how and when I'll be affected. It is only about 87% accurate, much to their continued vexation…" she grins cheekily at him and he can't help but smile back at the mental image of Spock feeling vexed, "but it is absolutely better than nothing, so mostly I know when to expect the pull. We'll get you in the loop." She gets a faraway look on her face, like she's concentrating on listening to something she can barely hear, before she turns back to him. "Spock would welcome you to our training sessions," she says, tilting her head as if to take his measure. "He says he finds sparring with me somewhat disconcerting. And he's sending the information he has about our next two destinations to your comm now."
He stares at her, taken aback. "Did you just…" he starts, and then it clicks. "He's your mate."
She smiles, gently, happily, and it's the most beautiful he's ever seen her. "Yeah," she replies, and he'd swear she's a little embarrassed, except he's fairly confident that were he to make anything of it, he'd probably only barely escape with his life.
Well, at least that explains why he finds Spock's presence soothing. It's probably his scent. He wonders what Uhura can tell from Jim's smell.
"Have you ever…" Uhura starts, as if she's read his mind, and he's not quick enough to turn away and hide his frown. She's smart, ridiculously smart, and it takes her no time at all to figure it out.
"Oh. Oh," she says, staring at him. "It's Kirk, isn't it?"
He nods.
"Does he know?"
"None of it," he says, bitterly. "He knows nothing; he's never going to know any of it, okay? He's told me often enough he's not made for monogamy and he abhors any romantic notions of love. Why do you think he keeps hitting on you?"
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "I just assumed he was a reprobate."
He stares at her for a moment, all the bitterness leaving him in a rush, and he can't help it; he laughs.
+++
He and Spock do turn out to be quite evenly matched; Spock has better technique, but Bones is less hesitant to fight dirty, which has Uhura telling sly jokes about Kirk 'rubbing off on him'. It's all the more annoying because it's probably true. He also discovers why Spock finds sparring with Uhura "somewhat disconcerting;" it's because she can wipe the floor with both their asses.
Chekov has an epiphany about magnetospheres and while the predictions do become more accurate, their models stubbornly refuse to improve past 93% accuracy - "93.39667% to be precise," according to Spock.
Kirk sleeps with an ensign from the Astro lab, a lieutenant from Engineering, and Gaila. Uhura glowers at him more than usual, not that Kirk notices.
There is a minor explosion in the engine room, and for four days sickbay is full of people with minor injuries who need to be kept under observation.
Five away missions go reasonably well. Two get them more or less nowhere. One is an unmitigated disaster - and of course that was the one where they were only supposed to retrieve samples from an uninhabited world.
There's an outbreak of Etran flu which takes down two-thirds of the crew at once ("63.47%" Spock tells him, from his own sickbed, mind) and that includes his medical staff.
Sulu tries to teach Chekov to fence. It's not pretty.
Three members of the crew somehow develop an unfortunate skin rash in a delicate location shortly after they've last docked for supplies. Miraculously, Kirk does not manage to sleep with any of them before they come in for treatment.
It's Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, as usual - and then Lerant III happens.
+++
It takes a little while to register that something is wrong. Breakfast in the guesthouse they've been assigned to on Lerant is served buffet-style, so people wander in and out as they please depending on when they wake up and how hungry they are, and their contact team is spread all throughout the room. It isn't until after Jim has had two cups of coffee - and it's likely that the cups of coffee had something to do with his realization - that he leans over to Bones and whispers, "Is it just me or is Governor Phlen looking more twitchy today than he was yesterday?"
Since Governor Phlen chooses that exact moment to giggle nervously at something Lieutenant Calder has said, Bones can't exactly argue with the sentiment, and the man is visibly perspiring, looking often towards the doors of the room, like he wants to escape.
"Have all our people shown up for breakfast yet?" he asks, wondering what could have the Governor so anxious and hoping that it's got nothing to do with them, though with their luck that's not very likely.
"Everyone except for Chekov and Ensign Buckley," Uhura says from the other side of the table. McCoy knows full well that even if Jim probably thinks his whisper didn't travel across to her and Spock, Uhura's hearing is phenomenal, even better than his own, and she picked up every word.
"We should check on them," Jim says, but when he moves to stand up, Governor Phlen frantically makes his way over to them, tugging a young woman along and immediately launching into introductions and a discussion of Lerant's mineral deposits, which are the reason the Federation really wants Lerant III as an ally.
The Governor's rather obvious and somewhat heavy-handed distraction has handily tied up Jim, Spock and Uhura, but McCoy doesn't know shit about mineral deposits and neither does he care; besides, Jim is giving him the 'go now' look that says that he's not required to be polite.
The Governor stammers and tries to change the subject when Bones excuses himself to go, but Uhura forestalls him with a translation question, so he rounds up an ensign from the Security team and goes to try to figure out what the hell is going on.
It doesn't take long to figure at least part of it out; the room that Chekov and Buckley had been assigned to for the night, along with Lieutenant Calder and Ensign Denara, looks like it was hit by a tornado. They'd posted guards in the hallway during the night, but since he saw both Calder and Denara at breakfast, whatever happened probably happened quickly, quietly, and after everyone had woken up.
Why the world has it in for the kid, Bones does not know.
They're making their way back down the stairs to inform Jim and confront that bastard of a Governor when the doors to the house are flung open; there are men in uniform storming inside, guns raised, and he makes a split second decision, flipping his communicator open and pinging Scotty.
"Beam us up, all of us, right now," he says, and the world dissolves around him a moment later.
+++
"I find this proposition most illogical," Spock says levelly, and by now Bones has figured out how to read his lack of expression.
"What he means to say, Jim, is; 'are you suicidal?'" he says, glaring at Kirk who looks, for his part, like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
"Wait, are you agreeing with Spock?" Jim throws back vehemently. "We can't sit around and talk about this, we left Chekov and Buckley down there and we have no fucking idea what's happening to them. I'm sure they'd appreciate a prompt rescue."
Uhura leans forward. "Yes, and to that effect, I'm sure they'd prefer we succeed on the first try." She must be taking lessons in stoic calm from Spock, because she manages to keep her voice almost entirely free of sarcasm.
"If we take a strike force…" Jim starts, again, but Spock intervenes. "Captain, the limited communication we had with the Lerantians indicated that Chekov was taken due to his prodigious intellect, which they would like to utilize for the betterment of their… society." Next to Spock, Uhura's lips twist slightly and Bones smirks to himself - it is sometimes easier to read Spock's opinions off Uhura's face, and her disgust is palpable.
"They had also intended to capture more of us, and make sure that the others were in no state to retrieve those taken, but due to Dr. McCoy's swift action they were unable to achieve this goal. Judging from their statements and the interest they had already expressed in certain individuals among the contact party, I would surmise their underlying goal to be technological advancement."
"Get to the point," Jim growls, slamming a hand down on the table.
"Indeed, my point is that I believe Ensigns Chekov and Buckley are most likely being held at their Cloister of Enlightenment; not only is it the most logical place to keep Chekov if they truly intend to make use of his talents, it is also the most defensible building in their city."
"Great," Jim says, "So we know where they are. What are we waiting for?" He stands up and looks at them, as if he's waiting for them to spring into action on his say so.
"It's a rabbit warren, Jim," McCoy bites out. "Damn place has been built room by room for over fifteen centuries. They took us in there and three doors down I couldn't have found my ass with both hands."
"The complex is also extremely large, and sprawled out over a great area. A room by room search, in the unlikely event we were able to overcome any opposition to such an activity, would take us approximately twenty-nine days, based on my observations of the building, and that is provided we were able to commit to no less than six search parties of four each," Spock states. Jim looks at Spock, then at Bones, then back at Spock.
"You two need to stop agreeing with each other," he says. "It is very creepy." He does sit down again though. "So what are you suggesting we do, negotiate? I'm all ears, here."
Spock looks like he's about to inquire about that particular colloquialism, but Uhura jumps in first.
"Negotiating might work as a distraction," she says. She's looking at McCoy, strangely, and then she winks and taps her nose. He gets her point immediately.
"If we pretend we're willing to trade other people to get Chekov back they might buy it," McCoy says. "In the meantime, we can go and get them."
"You should stay in sickbay," Uhura replies. "Just in case."
"You should not go alone," Spock says. "At least you will require someone with you to bring supplies for the captives."
"You need to be there for the negotiations," she fires back.
"You're too memorable," Bones agrees. "They'll get suspicious if you're missing from the negotiations team."
"I could take Sulu," Uhura says, thinking out loud. "He's light on his feet and his overall coloring would help him blend in with the natives."
Spock tilts his head, considering. "If we were to dress him in some of my Vulcan garments, I believe he would pass muster unless someone were to get extremely close."
There is a deep breath from the end of the table before Jim finally explodes. "Okay, STOP!" Bones is actually amazed it took him this long.
"I gather we have a plan?" Jim asks sardonically. "Which somehow involves Lieutenants Sulu and Uhura here, attacking the Cloister?"
"It's not an attack, it's more of a 'sneak-in-sneak-out' operation," Uhura replies.
"And how are you going to find them?" Jim looks triumphant, as if Spock and Uhura would have forgotten about such an important detail.
"Why, sir," Uhura grins wickedly, "with my nose."
+++
"You knew about this?" Jim sounds so honestly betrayed that Bones has to bite the inside of his cheek, hard, not to laugh out loud.
Uhura in wolf form is a beautiful animal, sleek and elegant, her build almost delicate despite her size. He's seen her before, of course, they've run together when they've had the chance, but there's something surreal about seeing her under the bright blue-cast lights of the transporter pad. Her fur, which normally looks warm, reddish and black, looks now almost blue and she looks oddly ethereal.
Also, she's wearing a collar with a communicator affixed to it. It's there so that Scotty can beam her up immediately in case of trouble, but just the sight of a collar makes Bones uneasy.
Sulu is standing next to her with a burlap sack over one shoulder. The sack is a disguise for their spare weaponry and extra robes for Chekov and Buckley, since the Federation uniforms tend to stand out too much on worlds like Lerant, which favor dark clothing. He keeps shifting the bag and darting small glances down at Uhura, like he's absolutely sure he's gone nuts and she's not really there. He had known about werewolves in theory - apparently Chekov had told him things about his uncle - but he's still clearly stunned to find himself standing next to one, preparing to beam down onto a hostile world and sneak into a cloister.
"Did you know about this, Bones?" Jim asks again and Christ, has he brought out the pout? He has.
"Of course I knew about this," he snaps. "It's medically relevant information, and subject to doctor-patient confidentiality. Stop bugging me." He looks towards the transporter pad again, where Spock is giving what looks like a goodbye ear-scritch to Uhura. "Lieutenants," Bones says, making Uhura look up, "the weakest part of any public institution is its service entrance, especially when it's busy. Just waltz right in like you belong there and nobody will say a word."
Sulu looks startled but nods, while Jim's eyebrows rise halfway to his hairline. "What? You think you're the only one here with wasted youth?" he asks, annoyed. He doesn't like that everybody else is going, but Uhura was right, this could get ugly fast and he needs to be where he is most useful.
Jim and Spock beam down to the planet once Scotty has dropped Uhura and Sulu somewhere isolated, along with a whole bunch of ensigns who are there to pretend to get traded for Chekov. Bones kind of wishes he could see this negotiation - Jim is going to be outrageous - but he makes his way to sickbay instead and makes sure they're all set for tragedy, just in case.
+++
It's a tense few hours until they hear back from Sulu and Uhura. There is, of course, the regular chatter between the 'negotiators' and the ship, which Scotty, God love him, has patched straight into a communications console in Bones's office, so he doesn't need to be calling down to the transporter pad to ask all the time.
The entire crew seems to be holding their breath, so things are slow in sickbay as well. He's just handing Ensign Leroy his weekly portion of synthesized O-negative when the communication console beeps and Sulu's voice comes through.
"Lieutenant Sulu to Enterprise, we've located Buckley. He appears drugged; can you transport him from here?"
There's a slight pause before Scotty replies. "Negative, too much interference from the building, but only just barely. If you get him to a courtyard or somewhere with no roof, we're in business."
"Affirmative. Stand by," Sulu replies, and the communicator crackles.
"Scotty to McCoy," comes through seconds later.
"McCoy here," Bones replies. His fingernails are cutting into the flesh of his palms from the tension.
"I'm monitoring their signals and I'm beaming up Buckley as soon as I have him for certain. They said he was drugged, so I'll be beaming him directly to you."
"We'll be standing by," Bones replies. "I'll be listening in on this channel."
"Righty-ho," Scotty says, and then adds, "You really knew about Uhura?"
"Focus, Scotty," he answers, gruffly. Things are going to get interesting, now that the whole ship knows about her.
A few minutes later, Ensign Buckley is beamed aboard, and Bones finally has something to do to keep himself distracted. The drug in his system is just a basic sedative, but as it is of alien provenance and they're not operating under the wire, Bones just gives him a few things to help him flush it out of his system, rather than a direct antidote.
When he gets to his office, Uhura and Sulu have evidently located Chekov and are in the process of getting him out of a room where some Lerantians are asking him - from what Sulu says - some incredibly dumb questions. He can hear Uhura growling in the background and the hiss of phaser fire, and then running footsteps.
Then Scotty shouts, "Gotcha, stop right there," and the communicator whines as it starts disintegrating for transport.
Bones hurries down to the transporter lab and is there early enough to see a grinning Chekov step down off the pad. He's got a black eye and a split lip, but seems otherwise fine. "We didn't even have to shoot them," he says, grinning to Sulu, who is folding up his katana as he walks off the pad. Uhura looks ruffled but fine, too, jumping gracefully down and bounding over to nose at Chekov.
Scotty is talking into his communicator and a moment later the transport pad flashes as the negotiations team starts materializing, Kirk clearly at the front, holding a phaser in a threatening position.
"Oh, hi everybody," he says, once he's registered his change of locale, then grins down at Chekov, who has just unbuckled Uhura's collar. "I see we're all back safely?"
+++
"They wanted to know some things about physics, Keptin," Chekov explains, sitting on a bio-bed, Bones running the dermal regenerator over the young man's face. "Mostly very basic things… but is groundwork for things like transporter theory, and beaming, and intergalactic travel."
"They didn't threaten you physically?" Kirk asks, staring at the faint yellow smudge of the still-healing shiner.
"They backhanded me once - one of their security personnel. I got black eye when they took me from the guesthouse. Then I think they needed the Governor and all security people to deal with your negotiation, because I was left with just scientists and one guard. Scientists are, what is the word… wusses?" He smirks, then looks around until he finds Sulu.
"Hikaru… Lieutenant Sulu only needed to wave his sword once, and Uhura to growl, then they were too scared to do anything. They just let us go. The guard came after us but he was too slow - I think he first time in the Cloister, just as lost as I was. Then we were in courtyard and Mr. Scott beamed us up."
Kirk nods and turns to Sulu, and does a double take when Uhura is standing next to him, already changed. "Damn," he mutters. "I was hoping to see you do that."
Uhura smirks. "Admit it, Captain," she says. "You were hoping that I wouldn't have any clothes on." She's barefoot and wearing a simple shift dress, her hair loose over her shoulders, and McCoy turns his head away and grins a little, getting an answering grin and a wink from Chekov. Fortunately, Jim's back is turned.
"Of course not, Lieutenant," he says, and manages to sound hurt, though everybody in the room knows well enough that she was right. "I am merely curious about how all of this works. Now that I know werewolves exist." He says the last bit with a certain emphasis and Bones just knows that Jim has turned around to glare at his back.
"Confidential patient information, Captain," he says, not turning around from healing Chekov's split lip. "Sorry."
There is a long silence before Jim lets it go. "You encountered no difficulties in finding them?" he asks Uhura and Sulu.
"Apart from the place being completely impossible to navigate? No," Sulu replies. "If it hadn't been for Uhura, I don't know how we would have found them at all, Captain."
"And you encountered no one once inside?" Jim presses.
"My sense of smell and my hearing usually give me some advance warning when people are approaching, sir," Uhura says. "We were lucky in that we always managed to hide."
"So, all in all, an extremely successful retrieval mission," Jim says with relish. "Well done, everyone. Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, take the next shift off. Mr. Spock, please take the bridge and get us out of here. Bones, can I have a word with you in your office?"
As soon as his office door swishes closed behind them, Jim turns to him. "I need to see everything you have on werewolves."
"Jim," he replies, annoyed. "I'm not here to assuage your curiosity…"
Jim stops him with a glare. "It's not curiosity, it's tactics. I need to know what my crew can do; their strengths, their weaknesses, and how I can best take advantage of their talents in any given situation. Uhura is a werewolf - okay, it's her business - but now that I know, now that we all know, I need to know what that means for this crew. Okay?"
Oh, this is going to go to hell very fucking fast, but Kirk, damn him, is right. "Okay, I'll put together what information I have," he sighs, then sits down at his desk and leans back in the chair, suddenly exhausted.
"Hey," Jim adds, suddenly serious. "You did good down there, this morning, having Scotty beam us out. Quick thinking."
"Thanks," he replies. "Captain."
"I meant that as your friend too, you know," Jim says, sitting down in the visitor's chair - which might as well be known as 'Jim's chair'.
There's a long silence before Bones pulls out his whiskey and two glasses and pours them each a drink. "I know," he says. And he does.
+++
Oddly enough the whole ship now knowing about Uhura makes Bones's life more difficult. She's suddenly a minor celebrity, and people start paying attention to lunar cycles and where she spends her time. Everybody seems to understand that she likes to spar with Spock, once people get that she's stronger than your average human, but it's harder to explain what Bones is doing in their practice sessions, until Sulu - who has been let in on the secret at Chekov's behest - suggests that he start obviously carrying a medkit. After all, they do their practice in private, so nobody has any idea what goes on in there; they might just as well be tearing strips out of each other and needing immediate medical attention afterwards.
This seems like a good idea, and is one, for the most part - until Jim gets his teeth into the rumor going around that these sessions get bloody.
Jim's tenacity is usually one of his bigger strengths, but he's driving Bones nuts with his questions. No matter how many times he tells Jim that he's just there as a precaution, Jim seems convinced that something more sinister is going on, until he finally takes him along to a session, in which he sits around reading medical journals while Uhura wipes the floor with Spock, much to Jim's delight.
That, however, gets Jim interested in figuring out how werewolf mating habits work, since Uhura and Spock are never quite as obviously connected as they are when they are sparring. He can understand the fascination; they captivate Bones, too, but he could really do without all the questions about the whole 'mating for life' stuff, from Jim, of all people.
"But, what if one of them gets attracted to someone else?" Jim asks, one evening over dinner.
Bones sighs. "I think that between the werewolf mating bond and the Vulcan lifebond, the chances of that happening are exceedingly slim."
"Yes, but… you mean they can't be attracted to anybody else?"
"I think their attraction to each other would outweigh any fleeting attraction to someone else," he says, trying not to sound as frustrated as he feels. He is far too familiar with this aspect of the mating bond, and since his mate is oblivious, he's been having a very intimate relationship with his right hand for a while now.
"So they can't have sex with anybody but each other?" Jim asks, shooting a glance over to where Uhura and Spock are sharing their evening meal.
"They could, theoretically, but it would never be as enjoyable as with each other," he replies, wondering why the hell he's still answering these questions - though a part of him, the part that wants Jim so bad he hurts, knows exactly why he keeps trying to explain it to him.
But then Jim says, guilelessly, "Wow, that has got to suck," and breaks his heart into a million pieces.
+++
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Fandom: Star Trek XI
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Twice Shy: Part One
Jim wriggles into his side, unconsciously seeking warmth in his sleep, and Bones sighs before pulling him closer with one arm, trying to ignore his throbbing erection and the way the air is heavy with Jim's scent, dark and spicy and un-fucking-mistakeable.
He'd honestly thought that it was a myth. He'd loved Jocelyn, married her, had a child with her, had a life with her, but she'd never smelled particularly delicious to him. Good, always good, what with expensive perfumes and bunches of lavender folded into the clothes in her drawers, but never sweet enough that just being around her felt like taking in air after staying underwater for too long.
Jim, on the other hand, had reeked of blood, sweat, cigarette smoke, and too much time spent in the same clothes when they first met, in a shuttle full of other people's scents, and it hadn't been until halfway through the ride, when Jim had leaned in to squeeze his knee and say something inane about the risk of dying in a shuttle accident that Bones had felt the air around him clear, the anxiety at the bottom of his stomach dissipating like a fog on a sunny morning.
He'd known he was fucked only two days later, when Jim had made it abundantly clear that he intended to spend his time at the Academy having as much and varied fun as humanly possible. Of course he'd tried to steer clear of the kid after that, but Jim, being Jim, wasn't having it. It was delicious torture, watching Jim Kirk cut such a considerable swathe through the student body that he was nearly an instant celebrity on campus, when all Bones really wanted most of the time was to throw the kid down on the nearest flat surface and claim him as his own.
He's been doing really well so far. Until tonight, of course, when Jim had shown up on his doorstep already drunk, waving a whiskey bottle and rambling something about Bones being his best friend ever. He had, in his defense, sat the kid down and tried to sober him up, tried to pry the reason for Jim's seemingly random bout of alcoholism out of him, but then the kid had more or less face-planted onto his dick and his self-control had abruptly snapped.
At least they hadn't fucked. That is something. Bones is pretty sure he can deal with being a drunken blowjob, but being a drunken fuck would have been too much. Hell, he's not sure how he'll manage with the blowjob bit, now that he's forced to admit to himself that the stories about werewolves being able to scent their mates are, clearly, true.
He's known this for a while, though he's only now admitting to himself for the first time that Jim Kirk, the Casanova of the Starfleet Academy Campus, is his mate, damn his luck to hell and fucking back. He'd thought, considering his previous relationships, that it couldn't be true, even if he'd been nervous about it as a kid. At least back then, he'd assumed that if he were to find his mate through scent, his mate would be able to recognize him back. Yeah, not so much.
He figures he probably ought to know fucking better than this by now; he'd been eleven the first time he assumed something about the legends to his detriment, but it still seems he's made a habit of underestimating the accuracy of myth.
At least when he tries to look on the bright side, he does have the advantage of actually knowing, down to the minute, just when his life became this fucking complicated, though that comfort is cold at best when he considers his current and longstanding predicament.
And now they've had sex, in a sense, Lord help him. But he'd had a lot of sex before he even met Jim Kirk, so the stories about werewolves mating for life are clearly untrue.
Right?
+++
Werewolves mate for life.
He can tell the first time Jim shows up for class reeking of sex with someone else - that is, two days after That Incident They Are Not Discussing.
He has to fight to keep his wolf under control and he's fucking glad he has been pretty diligent about going off for his change rather than suppressing it, because if he was already fighting to keep it back, this is one fight he would have lost.
And while it's true that he hasn't claimed Jim - and doesn't that sound delightfully clichéd and disturbing - his wolf is making its feelings on the subject quite clear: Jim Kirk is his.
Except Bones knows, very well, that Jim Kirk is not his, not at all, and never will be. It takes some getting used to, now that his sense of smell where Jim is concerned is heightened, but in the end he manages to suppress the longing.
He still wants, still longs for Jim, but he knows that Jim doesn't feel the same way about him and he can't let himself take something to which he has no right. So he trains, goes off for his change at every full moon, knowing that the more leeway he gives his wolf, the more strength he'll have to fight his instincts when push comes to shove.
Jim wonders about his absences, but Bones has figured out that the quickest way to shut Jim up is to say that it's a family thing. He's showered enough with Jim to feel slightly guilty about that, knowing as he does that the other man's back is a canvas of faint red and white lines that speak of something that Bones cannot contemplate, or he'll grow furious enough to do actual harm to other human beings.
Perhaps this is why, when Jim is trying to face the prospect of being left behind on Earth while everyone he knows sails off into battle, that Bones cannot find it within himself to leave him behind. He may be a bastard, but he's not a bastard with any illusions; he knows very well what he means to Kirk, and he knows very well what Kirk means to him; when it comes down to it, it's a no-brainer.
That it turns out to be a no-brainer that saves the planet is beside the point.
+++
He'd figured that in space, he'd be free from the influence of the moon. It'd been the one thing he'd counted in favor of the big black, and it therefore comes as an unpleasant surprise when he turns out to be wrong.
True, he is free from the waxing and waning of the moon - but that does not, apparently, free him from the effects of a moon. He'd sometimes cursed his inability to keep track of the lunar cycles on earth, but that was child's play in comparison with exploring worlds that are circled by three moons or four, when some of them affect him and others do not, with no discernable patterns that he can figure out.
He would have been forced to spend most of his free time in lupine form and locked up in his quarters, so that he would have the wherewithal to keep his wolf from making any unscheduled appearances during duty hours, had help not arrived from an… unexpected source.
They've been out from Earth for barely a fortnight, making a couple of milk runs, carting diplomats around; they’re being started out easy and Jim is in his element, tackling every smallest challenge as if it is a matter of life and death. Bones supposes the novelty will wear off soon enough - probably too soon, since he knows that the first time Jim Kirk loses a member of his crew, he'll be devastated.
They're still trying to get the crew to gel, trying to shake together their honestly ridiculously young command staff with the more experienced enlisted crewmembers. There have been a few fights, some screaming matches, and at least one instance of near-mutiny, but nothing that can't be dealt with.
And then the Enterprise had taken some damage in the engagement with the Narada, and apparently some flaws just won't show up unless they're going Warp 8, which Bones considers evidence enough for his opinion that they're stuck on a flying deathtrap, no matter how much Jim pets the goddamn ship - and he's caught him doing that at least five times now.
He's coming back from a coffee break and heading for his office when Nurse Chapel intercepts him. "Doctor, Lieutenant Uhura is waiting for you in the exam room. She requested you speak with her privately."
"Thank you," he says and amends his course, wondering what the Lieutenant wants and sincerely hoping it has nothing to do with her sex life, considering that she's apparently dating the First Officer. He thinks it'll take him a while yet to forgive Spock for leaving Jim behind on Delta Vega, though he has to admit that the man is good at what he does, and while he is frustrating to have a conversation with, there is also something very nearly soothing about him. When he is silent, that is. And not looking at Bones.
Uhura is sitting on a bio-bed in the exam room, perusing something on a PADD, but she looks up when the door closes behind him and smiles. She looks serene and composed at first glance, though her fingers are curled pretty tightly around the plastic casing of the datapad.
"What is it you wanted to talk to me about?" he asks, stepping up to the bed and reaching for a tricorder to take her readings.
She stops him with a hand on his wrist. "My medical history…" she starts - and then her eyes widen and she stares at him in surprise.
He figures it out as soon as he takes a breath to ask her what's wrong - she's been alone in the room for a while and he's standing close enough to smell her hair; she's disguised it well but beneath the layers of vanilla and white musk he detects the scent of another werewolf.
"You're…" he says, then stops. It seems unnecessary to state the obvious.
"And here I thought I was going to have to give you the Werewolf 101 lecture," Uhura says, a slow smile spreading over her face. "Were you born or turned?" she adds, sounding curious.
"Turned when I was eleven," Bones replies. "You?"
"I was born," she says. "It runs in my family."
"I thought I was the only one on board," he says, not quite knowing how to feel - he wants to be relieved, but he doesn't have the best experience with other werewolves. This is Uhura, though, and he's respected her ever since she demonstrated a remarkable and consistent ability to take Kirk down a peg or fifteen back in their first year at Starfleet Academy.
"So did I," she says. "Chekov's uncle is a wolf, so we'd met before and he knows, and Spock knows, naturally, but I hadn't realized you were one of us. You should come train with us; we're about the same level of strength as a Vulcan, so you and Spock would be fairly evenly matched. You can take out your frustrations on each other more thoroughly than you're doing already," she says and winks at him.
"I'm a doctor, not a soldier," he grouses, not exactly keen on putting himself in a situation where he gets beaten up by the damn green-blooded hobgoblin, but she just smirks at him and lifts an eyebrow in a very Vulcan-like manner. "How are you doing with the…" he asks, waving a hand around to indicate the ship and space, trying to change the subject before she can get him to agree.
"Oh!" she says, "Oh, of course you don't… Spock and Chekov have put together a dataset to predict how and when I'll be affected. It is only about 87% accurate, much to their continued vexation…" she grins cheekily at him and he can't help but smile back at the mental image of Spock feeling vexed, "but it is absolutely better than nothing, so mostly I know when to expect the pull. We'll get you in the loop." She gets a faraway look on her face, like she's concentrating on listening to something she can barely hear, before she turns back to him. "Spock would welcome you to our training sessions," she says, tilting her head as if to take his measure. "He says he finds sparring with me somewhat disconcerting. And he's sending the information he has about our next two destinations to your comm now."
He stares at her, taken aback. "Did you just…" he starts, and then it clicks. "He's your mate."
She smiles, gently, happily, and it's the most beautiful he's ever seen her. "Yeah," she replies, and he'd swear she's a little embarrassed, except he's fairly confident that were he to make anything of it, he'd probably only barely escape with his life.
Well, at least that explains why he finds Spock's presence soothing. It's probably his scent. He wonders what Uhura can tell from Jim's smell.
"Have you ever…" Uhura starts, as if she's read his mind, and he's not quick enough to turn away and hide his frown. She's smart, ridiculously smart, and it takes her no time at all to figure it out.
"Oh. Oh," she says, staring at him. "It's Kirk, isn't it?"
He nods.
"Does he know?"
"None of it," he says, bitterly. "He knows nothing; he's never going to know any of it, okay? He's told me often enough he's not made for monogamy and he abhors any romantic notions of love. Why do you think he keeps hitting on you?"
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "I just assumed he was a reprobate."
He stares at her for a moment, all the bitterness leaving him in a rush, and he can't help it; he laughs.
+++
He and Spock do turn out to be quite evenly matched; Spock has better technique, but Bones is less hesitant to fight dirty, which has Uhura telling sly jokes about Kirk 'rubbing off on him'. It's all the more annoying because it's probably true. He also discovers why Spock finds sparring with Uhura "somewhat disconcerting;" it's because she can wipe the floor with both their asses.
Chekov has an epiphany about magnetospheres and while the predictions do become more accurate, their models stubbornly refuse to improve past 93% accuracy - "93.39667% to be precise," according to Spock.
Kirk sleeps with an ensign from the Astro lab, a lieutenant from Engineering, and Gaila. Uhura glowers at him more than usual, not that Kirk notices.
There is a minor explosion in the engine room, and for four days sickbay is full of people with minor injuries who need to be kept under observation.
Five away missions go reasonably well. Two get them more or less nowhere. One is an unmitigated disaster - and of course that was the one where they were only supposed to retrieve samples from an uninhabited world.
There's an outbreak of Etran flu which takes down two-thirds of the crew at once ("63.47%" Spock tells him, from his own sickbed, mind) and that includes his medical staff.
Sulu tries to teach Chekov to fence. It's not pretty.
Three members of the crew somehow develop an unfortunate skin rash in a delicate location shortly after they've last docked for supplies. Miraculously, Kirk does not manage to sleep with any of them before they come in for treatment.
It's Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, as usual - and then Lerant III happens.
+++
It takes a little while to register that something is wrong. Breakfast in the guesthouse they've been assigned to on Lerant is served buffet-style, so people wander in and out as they please depending on when they wake up and how hungry they are, and their contact team is spread all throughout the room. It isn't until after Jim has had two cups of coffee - and it's likely that the cups of coffee had something to do with his realization - that he leans over to Bones and whispers, "Is it just me or is Governor Phlen looking more twitchy today than he was yesterday?"
Since Governor Phlen chooses that exact moment to giggle nervously at something Lieutenant Calder has said, Bones can't exactly argue with the sentiment, and the man is visibly perspiring, looking often towards the doors of the room, like he wants to escape.
"Have all our people shown up for breakfast yet?" he asks, wondering what could have the Governor so anxious and hoping that it's got nothing to do with them, though with their luck that's not very likely.
"Everyone except for Chekov and Ensign Buckley," Uhura says from the other side of the table. McCoy knows full well that even if Jim probably thinks his whisper didn't travel across to her and Spock, Uhura's hearing is phenomenal, even better than his own, and she picked up every word.
"We should check on them," Jim says, but when he moves to stand up, Governor Phlen frantically makes his way over to them, tugging a young woman along and immediately launching into introductions and a discussion of Lerant's mineral deposits, which are the reason the Federation really wants Lerant III as an ally.
The Governor's rather obvious and somewhat heavy-handed distraction has handily tied up Jim, Spock and Uhura, but McCoy doesn't know shit about mineral deposits and neither does he care; besides, Jim is giving him the 'go now' look that says that he's not required to be polite.
The Governor stammers and tries to change the subject when Bones excuses himself to go, but Uhura forestalls him with a translation question, so he rounds up an ensign from the Security team and goes to try to figure out what the hell is going on.
It doesn't take long to figure at least part of it out; the room that Chekov and Buckley had been assigned to for the night, along with Lieutenant Calder and Ensign Denara, looks like it was hit by a tornado. They'd posted guards in the hallway during the night, but since he saw both Calder and Denara at breakfast, whatever happened probably happened quickly, quietly, and after everyone had woken up.
Why the world has it in for the kid, Bones does not know.
They're making their way back down the stairs to inform Jim and confront that bastard of a Governor when the doors to the house are flung open; there are men in uniform storming inside, guns raised, and he makes a split second decision, flipping his communicator open and pinging Scotty.
"Beam us up, all of us, right now," he says, and the world dissolves around him a moment later.
+++
"I find this proposition most illogical," Spock says levelly, and by now Bones has figured out how to read his lack of expression.
"What he means to say, Jim, is; 'are you suicidal?'" he says, glaring at Kirk who looks, for his part, like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
"Wait, are you agreeing with Spock?" Jim throws back vehemently. "We can't sit around and talk about this, we left Chekov and Buckley down there and we have no fucking idea what's happening to them. I'm sure they'd appreciate a prompt rescue."
Uhura leans forward. "Yes, and to that effect, I'm sure they'd prefer we succeed on the first try." She must be taking lessons in stoic calm from Spock, because she manages to keep her voice almost entirely free of sarcasm.
"If we take a strike force…" Jim starts, again, but Spock intervenes. "Captain, the limited communication we had with the Lerantians indicated that Chekov was taken due to his prodigious intellect, which they would like to utilize for the betterment of their… society." Next to Spock, Uhura's lips twist slightly and Bones smirks to himself - it is sometimes easier to read Spock's opinions off Uhura's face, and her disgust is palpable.
"They had also intended to capture more of us, and make sure that the others were in no state to retrieve those taken, but due to Dr. McCoy's swift action they were unable to achieve this goal. Judging from their statements and the interest they had already expressed in certain individuals among the contact party, I would surmise their underlying goal to be technological advancement."
"Get to the point," Jim growls, slamming a hand down on the table.
"Indeed, my point is that I believe Ensigns Chekov and Buckley are most likely being held at their Cloister of Enlightenment; not only is it the most logical place to keep Chekov if they truly intend to make use of his talents, it is also the most defensible building in their city."
"Great," Jim says, "So we know where they are. What are we waiting for?" He stands up and looks at them, as if he's waiting for them to spring into action on his say so.
"It's a rabbit warren, Jim," McCoy bites out. "Damn place has been built room by room for over fifteen centuries. They took us in there and three doors down I couldn't have found my ass with both hands."
"The complex is also extremely large, and sprawled out over a great area. A room by room search, in the unlikely event we were able to overcome any opposition to such an activity, would take us approximately twenty-nine days, based on my observations of the building, and that is provided we were able to commit to no less than six search parties of four each," Spock states. Jim looks at Spock, then at Bones, then back at Spock.
"You two need to stop agreeing with each other," he says. "It is very creepy." He does sit down again though. "So what are you suggesting we do, negotiate? I'm all ears, here."
Spock looks like he's about to inquire about that particular colloquialism, but Uhura jumps in first.
"Negotiating might work as a distraction," she says. She's looking at McCoy, strangely, and then she winks and taps her nose. He gets her point immediately.
"If we pretend we're willing to trade other people to get Chekov back they might buy it," McCoy says. "In the meantime, we can go and get them."
"You should stay in sickbay," Uhura replies. "Just in case."
"You should not go alone," Spock says. "At least you will require someone with you to bring supplies for the captives."
"You need to be there for the negotiations," she fires back.
"You're too memorable," Bones agrees. "They'll get suspicious if you're missing from the negotiations team."
"I could take Sulu," Uhura says, thinking out loud. "He's light on his feet and his overall coloring would help him blend in with the natives."
Spock tilts his head, considering. "If we were to dress him in some of my Vulcan garments, I believe he would pass muster unless someone were to get extremely close."
There is a deep breath from the end of the table before Jim finally explodes. "Okay, STOP!" Bones is actually amazed it took him this long.
"I gather we have a plan?" Jim asks sardonically. "Which somehow involves Lieutenants Sulu and Uhura here, attacking the Cloister?"
"It's not an attack, it's more of a 'sneak-in-sneak-out' operation," Uhura replies.
"And how are you going to find them?" Jim looks triumphant, as if Spock and Uhura would have forgotten about such an important detail.
"Why, sir," Uhura grins wickedly, "with my nose."
+++
"You knew about this?" Jim sounds so honestly betrayed that Bones has to bite the inside of his cheek, hard, not to laugh out loud.
Uhura in wolf form is a beautiful animal, sleek and elegant, her build almost delicate despite her size. He's seen her before, of course, they've run together when they've had the chance, but there's something surreal about seeing her under the bright blue-cast lights of the transporter pad. Her fur, which normally looks warm, reddish and black, looks now almost blue and she looks oddly ethereal.
Also, she's wearing a collar with a communicator affixed to it. It's there so that Scotty can beam her up immediately in case of trouble, but just the sight of a collar makes Bones uneasy.
Sulu is standing next to her with a burlap sack over one shoulder. The sack is a disguise for their spare weaponry and extra robes for Chekov and Buckley, since the Federation uniforms tend to stand out too much on worlds like Lerant, which favor dark clothing. He keeps shifting the bag and darting small glances down at Uhura, like he's absolutely sure he's gone nuts and she's not really there. He had known about werewolves in theory - apparently Chekov had told him things about his uncle - but he's still clearly stunned to find himself standing next to one, preparing to beam down onto a hostile world and sneak into a cloister.
"Did you know about this, Bones?" Jim asks again and Christ, has he brought out the pout? He has.
"Of course I knew about this," he snaps. "It's medically relevant information, and subject to doctor-patient confidentiality. Stop bugging me." He looks towards the transporter pad again, where Spock is giving what looks like a goodbye ear-scritch to Uhura. "Lieutenants," Bones says, making Uhura look up, "the weakest part of any public institution is its service entrance, especially when it's busy. Just waltz right in like you belong there and nobody will say a word."
Sulu looks startled but nods, while Jim's eyebrows rise halfway to his hairline. "What? You think you're the only one here with wasted youth?" he asks, annoyed. He doesn't like that everybody else is going, but Uhura was right, this could get ugly fast and he needs to be where he is most useful.
Jim and Spock beam down to the planet once Scotty has dropped Uhura and Sulu somewhere isolated, along with a whole bunch of ensigns who are there to pretend to get traded for Chekov. Bones kind of wishes he could see this negotiation - Jim is going to be outrageous - but he makes his way to sickbay instead and makes sure they're all set for tragedy, just in case.
+++
It's a tense few hours until they hear back from Sulu and Uhura. There is, of course, the regular chatter between the 'negotiators' and the ship, which Scotty, God love him, has patched straight into a communications console in Bones's office, so he doesn't need to be calling down to the transporter pad to ask all the time.
The entire crew seems to be holding their breath, so things are slow in sickbay as well. He's just handing Ensign Leroy his weekly portion of synthesized O-negative when the communication console beeps and Sulu's voice comes through.
"Lieutenant Sulu to Enterprise, we've located Buckley. He appears drugged; can you transport him from here?"
There's a slight pause before Scotty replies. "Negative, too much interference from the building, but only just barely. If you get him to a courtyard or somewhere with no roof, we're in business."
"Affirmative. Stand by," Sulu replies, and the communicator crackles.
"Scotty to McCoy," comes through seconds later.
"McCoy here," Bones replies. His fingernails are cutting into the flesh of his palms from the tension.
"I'm monitoring their signals and I'm beaming up Buckley as soon as I have him for certain. They said he was drugged, so I'll be beaming him directly to you."
"We'll be standing by," Bones replies. "I'll be listening in on this channel."
"Righty-ho," Scotty says, and then adds, "You really knew about Uhura?"
"Focus, Scotty," he answers, gruffly. Things are going to get interesting, now that the whole ship knows about her.
A few minutes later, Ensign Buckley is beamed aboard, and Bones finally has something to do to keep himself distracted. The drug in his system is just a basic sedative, but as it is of alien provenance and they're not operating under the wire, Bones just gives him a few things to help him flush it out of his system, rather than a direct antidote.
When he gets to his office, Uhura and Sulu have evidently located Chekov and are in the process of getting him out of a room where some Lerantians are asking him - from what Sulu says - some incredibly dumb questions. He can hear Uhura growling in the background and the hiss of phaser fire, and then running footsteps.
Then Scotty shouts, "Gotcha, stop right there," and the communicator whines as it starts disintegrating for transport.
Bones hurries down to the transporter lab and is there early enough to see a grinning Chekov step down off the pad. He's got a black eye and a split lip, but seems otherwise fine. "We didn't even have to shoot them," he says, grinning to Sulu, who is folding up his katana as he walks off the pad. Uhura looks ruffled but fine, too, jumping gracefully down and bounding over to nose at Chekov.
Scotty is talking into his communicator and a moment later the transport pad flashes as the negotiations team starts materializing, Kirk clearly at the front, holding a phaser in a threatening position.
"Oh, hi everybody," he says, once he's registered his change of locale, then grins down at Chekov, who has just unbuckled Uhura's collar. "I see we're all back safely?"
+++
"They wanted to know some things about physics, Keptin," Chekov explains, sitting on a bio-bed, Bones running the dermal regenerator over the young man's face. "Mostly very basic things… but is groundwork for things like transporter theory, and beaming, and intergalactic travel."
"They didn't threaten you physically?" Kirk asks, staring at the faint yellow smudge of the still-healing shiner.
"They backhanded me once - one of their security personnel. I got black eye when they took me from the guesthouse. Then I think they needed the Governor and all security people to deal with your negotiation, because I was left with just scientists and one guard. Scientists are, what is the word… wusses?" He smirks, then looks around until he finds Sulu.
"Hikaru… Lieutenant Sulu only needed to wave his sword once, and Uhura to growl, then they were too scared to do anything. They just let us go. The guard came after us but he was too slow - I think he first time in the Cloister, just as lost as I was. Then we were in courtyard and Mr. Scott beamed us up."
Kirk nods and turns to Sulu, and does a double take when Uhura is standing next to him, already changed. "Damn," he mutters. "I was hoping to see you do that."
Uhura smirks. "Admit it, Captain," she says. "You were hoping that I wouldn't have any clothes on." She's barefoot and wearing a simple shift dress, her hair loose over her shoulders, and McCoy turns his head away and grins a little, getting an answering grin and a wink from Chekov. Fortunately, Jim's back is turned.
"Of course not, Lieutenant," he says, and manages to sound hurt, though everybody in the room knows well enough that she was right. "I am merely curious about how all of this works. Now that I know werewolves exist." He says the last bit with a certain emphasis and Bones just knows that Jim has turned around to glare at his back.
"Confidential patient information, Captain," he says, not turning around from healing Chekov's split lip. "Sorry."
There is a long silence before Jim lets it go. "You encountered no difficulties in finding them?" he asks Uhura and Sulu.
"Apart from the place being completely impossible to navigate? No," Sulu replies. "If it hadn't been for Uhura, I don't know how we would have found them at all, Captain."
"And you encountered no one once inside?" Jim presses.
"My sense of smell and my hearing usually give me some advance warning when people are approaching, sir," Uhura says. "We were lucky in that we always managed to hide."
"So, all in all, an extremely successful retrieval mission," Jim says with relish. "Well done, everyone. Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, take the next shift off. Mr. Spock, please take the bridge and get us out of here. Bones, can I have a word with you in your office?"
As soon as his office door swishes closed behind them, Jim turns to him. "I need to see everything you have on werewolves."
"Jim," he replies, annoyed. "I'm not here to assuage your curiosity…"
Jim stops him with a glare. "It's not curiosity, it's tactics. I need to know what my crew can do; their strengths, their weaknesses, and how I can best take advantage of their talents in any given situation. Uhura is a werewolf - okay, it's her business - but now that I know, now that we all know, I need to know what that means for this crew. Okay?"
Oh, this is going to go to hell very fucking fast, but Kirk, damn him, is right. "Okay, I'll put together what information I have," he sighs, then sits down at his desk and leans back in the chair, suddenly exhausted.
"Hey," Jim adds, suddenly serious. "You did good down there, this morning, having Scotty beam us out. Quick thinking."
"Thanks," he replies. "Captain."
"I meant that as your friend too, you know," Jim says, sitting down in the visitor's chair - which might as well be known as 'Jim's chair'.
There's a long silence before Bones pulls out his whiskey and two glasses and pours them each a drink. "I know," he says. And he does.
+++
Oddly enough the whole ship now knowing about Uhura makes Bones's life more difficult. She's suddenly a minor celebrity, and people start paying attention to lunar cycles and where she spends her time. Everybody seems to understand that she likes to spar with Spock, once people get that she's stronger than your average human, but it's harder to explain what Bones is doing in their practice sessions, until Sulu - who has been let in on the secret at Chekov's behest - suggests that he start obviously carrying a medkit. After all, they do their practice in private, so nobody has any idea what goes on in there; they might just as well be tearing strips out of each other and needing immediate medical attention afterwards.
This seems like a good idea, and is one, for the most part - until Jim gets his teeth into the rumor going around that these sessions get bloody.
Jim's tenacity is usually one of his bigger strengths, but he's driving Bones nuts with his questions. No matter how many times he tells Jim that he's just there as a precaution, Jim seems convinced that something more sinister is going on, until he finally takes him along to a session, in which he sits around reading medical journals while Uhura wipes the floor with Spock, much to Jim's delight.
That, however, gets Jim interested in figuring out how werewolf mating habits work, since Uhura and Spock are never quite as obviously connected as they are when they are sparring. He can understand the fascination; they captivate Bones, too, but he could really do without all the questions about the whole 'mating for life' stuff, from Jim, of all people.
"But, what if one of them gets attracted to someone else?" Jim asks, one evening over dinner.
Bones sighs. "I think that between the werewolf mating bond and the Vulcan lifebond, the chances of that happening are exceedingly slim."
"Yes, but… you mean they can't be attracted to anybody else?"
"I think their attraction to each other would outweigh any fleeting attraction to someone else," he says, trying not to sound as frustrated as he feels. He is far too familiar with this aspect of the mating bond, and since his mate is oblivious, he's been having a very intimate relationship with his right hand for a while now.
"So they can't have sex with anybody but each other?" Jim asks, shooting a glance over to where Uhura and Spock are sharing their evening meal.
"They could, theoretically, but it would never be as enjoyable as with each other," he replies, wondering why the hell he's still answering these questions - though a part of him, the part that wants Jim so bad he hurts, knows exactly why he keeps trying to explain it to him.
But then Jim says, guilelessly, "Wow, that has got to suck," and breaks his heart into a million pieces.
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Masterpost || One || Two || Three || Epilogue
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Masterpost || One || Two || Three || Epilogue