Back When They Were Strangers
Title: Back When They Were Strangers
Rating: G
Pairing: very slight Scotty/McCoy
Summary/Note: Written for the prompt Scotty/McCoy. A chance meeting when they were younger, just a passing flirtation at st_tos_kink.
Word count: 3593
Eight hours to go. The transport has been making funny, slurring noises ever since it started. Perhaps that’s normal. The noise has been constant at least, even if it doesn’t sound like it belongs. Montgomery Scott isn’t familiar with this kind of bus - quite possible that it’s powered by an engine he hasn’t encountered yet, unlikely as that may be. After all, this is America, and in the brief time he has been staying here, he’s found out that in some respects it differs from his native Scotland so much he could well be on a different planet.
Inhabited by aliens.
The woman beside him is absentmindedly picking her teeth with her nails. She ignores him completely. Even his attempt to start a conversation, or at least get an introduction out of the pretty lass he was going to spend all day sharing a bank with has been answered with a shrug, a non-committal sound and a telling look in the other direction. Pretty, but impolite. Scotty doesn’t like her, and he doesn’t like feeling rejected.
She looks bored. Serves her well. He could have entertained her well enough.
The two women behind him are silent now. They appeared to know each other well, and in the three hours they’ve been on the bus, Scotty has heard them talk in hushed, quiet words impossible to make out over the slurring of the engine. They giggled, then they growled. Later they snapped. Eventually they fell silent. While Scotty still tries not to pay attention to them, one leaves her seat and sits at the other end at the bus.
The young man two rows behind him is still staring out of the window. As far as Scotty can tell he hasn’t done anything much except watch the landscape go by. He’s sitting alone, and the woman looking for an escape from her ex-friend doesn’t take the seat beside him, but rather joins with the three unshaven but quite happy looking guys in the back row. Scotty can sympathise. That guy is transmitting a warning to leave him alone so strongly he can almost see it spelled out in the air.
And that without doing anything but sitting perfectly still and peacefully looking out of the window. It’s an ability Scotty believes his ignorant neighbour would like to have.
The driver is humming softly. Either that, or she’s saying a prayer in an alien language that the damn bus won’t die. Because to Scotty’s trained ear, the slurring noise isn’t a good noise. It doesn’t fit with the melody this old, weathered bus is making.
-
Seven hours to go. Scotty’s bored. He’s feeling uncomfortable sitting beside the lass who apparently wishes the air would suddenly leave the planet in a locally extremely limited phenomenon and suck him into space. He would pick another seat, but there’s only the one deserted by the woman who broke up with her girlfriend while he was listening, and the one beside the guy who’s just waiting for someone to get into his vicinity so he can eat their head. Or something.
Scotty sighs, tries to appreciate the sight outside the windows and fails. Tries to read the technical journal he’s brought for the journey, but what it’s trying to teach him he already knows and it doesn’t capture his attention. He longs for a drink, and a bit of conversation, but this bus is filled only with ignorants and cannibals. He sighs again, louder, hoping to rise the attention, even in pity, of the lass beside him. No luck. That’s why he prefers the company of engines. They speak a language he understands. And this engine, if he’s not completely mistaken, is screaming for help.
Very loudly.
“Excuse me,” he says to the driver after making his way over to her. “Your engine is screaming for help.”
“Our company’s engines are in perfect condition and the transporters perfectly safe.” She gives him a blinding smile straight out of the box. “Please return to your seat.”
Scotty returns to his seat. He wonders if the engine will make it another seven hours. He continues to be bored.
-
Six hours and fifty-one minutes to go. The engines slur one more time, cough and give up. The bus lands, not too softy, on the road that consist of far too much sand. One of the guys from the backseats shouts in surprise. One of the females shrieks. The lass beside Scotty nearly falls out of her seat. The solitary man braces himself against he back of the seat in front of him. Other than that, his only reaction consists of closing his eyes, briefly, in something that looks like either desperation or resignation or both.
Scotty is out of the bus in a second. An engine is in need, and he is all too willing to be her knight in shining armour.
-
Seventy-five days to go. If they would walk. Which might become their only alternative to starving beside the bus.
Scotty doesn’t know if that would be so much worse than starving on the road, far from the bus. He for his part is determined to stay with this old little transport until the bitter end.
The driver’s hands are clasped behind the back of her head. She looks completely out of her dept, and her bus is smoking. For miles and miles and miles there’s nothing around. Hardly anyone uses this road anymore, and all communication devices inside the bus have died with the engine.
The other guests are leaving no doubt that the driver is to blame, except the woman who refused to acknowledge Scotty’s existence and the silent man. They are standing in the background, the lass watching with a frown on her pretty face, and the lad just watching.
At least the young lady is finally taking notice of him. Everyone does. Scotty is the centre of attention as he kneels in front of the smoking engine and tries to estimate the damage in all the mess.
“I need my bag,” he tells the driver, a small lady with grey in her hair and nervous eyes. She nods and hurries off to get it from the locked storage.
“I hope you’ve got a phaser in there,” one of the backseat-guys mutters while she is gone. “I feel like shooting someone.” Scotty ignores him, concentrating on the machinery in front of him. It looks bad. Spare parts would really help.
“Do you happen to have a communication device with you that works?” the driver asks without hope when she hands him the bag. “Anyone?”
No one does. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they rely on the communicator in the bus. The one now dead.
“I’ve got something better,” Scotty promises. With a smile he pulls his toolbox out of the bag and shows it to everyone to admire. One of the guys, the blond one who wanted to kill the driver, grimaces at it.
“Better get away from there,” he says. “You’ll make it worse.”
“How?” a quiet voice asks, drily. Scotty hears this one for the first time, so it must be the young man from the back, but he’s too busy studying his new project to look.
“I happen to be an engineer,” he explains, cheerfully. Actually, he finds, he’s a lot more happy than he was ten minutes ago with nothing to do and no one to talk to.
Finally back in the world he belongs to, he begins to work.
-
It’s hot. Scotty doesn’t mind. He’s lying half under the bus, where no sun reaches him. Of course, it’s still hot. Inside the small bus it’s not much cooler, so everyone has gathered outside, where they are either sitting around in the shadow of the rocks by the road, or standing behind Scotty, to see what he’s doing. Not that they’d understand. Scotty doesn’t mind that either, as long as they don’t get in his way.
“Can you fix it?” the driver whispers nervously. He nods.
“But I’ll need at least six hours, maybe seven.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she tells him. “There’s help coming. When they lost contact, the company must have sent someone for us.”
“But that’ll take hours,” the blond guy complains. He’s beginning to get on Scotty’s nerves, and that usually takes some effort. “I’m starting at the Academy today. I’ll miss my first classes!”
“Don’t worry,” the quiet guy says in a comforting voice. “I’m sure they will be able to manage without you.”
Scotty hears someone chuckle. “Can somebody hand me the clamp?” he asks, holding out his hand, but nobody hands him anything, so he has to crawl out and get it himself.
The blond is standing in front of the dark haired guy with the quiet voice. He is about Scotty’s age, the engineer notices, while the blond is a couple of years younger. Starting at the academy today, probably straight out of school. Tall and strong and looming over the man sitting on a rock, he seems ready to let out his frustration in a physical fight.
“Shut up, unless you have something useful to contribute,” he snaps. The older man raises a single eyebrow at him in a manner that would put a Vulcan to shame.
“Like you?” he asks, and doesn’t seem to feel threatened at all. If anything, he sounds slightly amused, though he has to know that provoking this guy can’t be a good idea. He is very thin, Scotty sees now, and his hair is slightly too long, as if he stopped caring enough for his appearance to have it cut. Perhaps he’s aching for a fight as much as the other one. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
“I’m sure help will be here soon,” the driver says in an attempt to pacify the blond. “They will send a faster car, and you will all reach your destination without much delay.”
“Without much delay?” The attention of the blond is back on the driver, and she looks like she regrets having opened her mouth. “Even five minutes might screw up my future. Not that you’d care! I haven’t seen you do anything to help us yet.”
“What’s she supposed to do?” the older man asks. He’s rising from his rock, but his movements are lazy, as if he just wants to stretch his legs. “Carry you?”
The blond glares at him, then obviously decides that he’s not worth the effort. He grunts something, turns and stalks away briskly, to the privacy of the other side of the bus. The driver, standing in his way, gets shoved aside hard enough to end up on the ground.
Scowling at the boy’s retreating back, Scotty is torn between continuing his work, going after him and teach him a lesson for treating a lady like that, and being a gentlemen and help up the lady in question. The dark haired man beats him to the latter. Scotty thought he was one of those who don’t care for anyone as long as they are left alone, so he’s quite surprised to see him hurry over and offer a hand. He gently pulls her to her feet.
“Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head, but holds her right arm at the elbow, looking distressed, hot and miserable. Scotty can’t blame her. None of the other passengers seem to have any problems with that guy’s behaviour.
“Let me look at that.” The man who helped her up draws her attention from the onlookers to himself. And then he adds, with a glance at Scotty, “I happen to be a doctor.”
She offers a shaky smile. It is, admittedly, not as bright as the one she gave Scotty when she told him everything was okay with the engines.
“Let’s go into the bus, out of the sun” the doctor (somehow, Scotty doesn’t doubt for a second that he really is one) tells her and leads her into the stranded vehicle, away from the boring stares of the stranded passengers. Scotty sighs and picks one of the two choices left for him.
There’ll be enough time to fix this engine after he’s worked out his anger with the future Starfleet cadet.
-
Ten minutes later, Scotty has bruised knuckles and sand in his eyes, and feels a lot better. His opponent has shuffled off with a bloody nose and a very damaged ego, and even though they were hidden from everyone’s view and nobody even cares, Scotty feels like the hero of the day. Now he’ll only have to fix the engine and maybe the rest of the group will appreciate his heroism.
Or not. He sits on the ground and lacks the enthusiasm to get up. Suddenly he feels the heat, and his eyes are still full of sand.
This is not how he imagined his last day of freedom.
There are footsteps, coming closer until they stop right behind him. Scotty looks up and squints against the far too bright sky.
He offers a half-hearted grin. “You should have seen the other guy,” he says, because that’s what one says in situations like this. The doctor frowns at him.
“I did. Show me your hand.” When he speaks, his words are slightly slurred. Scotty noticed it before, because it reminds him of the noise the engine made before it died. He wonders what would be necessary to fix this one.
He gets to his feet and sees that the man is a good bit taller than him, and that his eyes are blue. Really, really blue, a kind of sky blue Scotty hasn’t seen ever before. It’s not like he looks into people’s eyes a lot, though. Usually he only looks at machinery.
He looks into these eyes, or would have were the eyes not looking at his hand. The doc takes out a little tool and holds it over Scotty’s knuckles where the skin is broken.
“This is going to regenerate your skin,” he says. “The spot will be a little sore for a while. Don’t punch anything again today.”
“There’ll be no need, unless that engine is giving me trouble.” Scotty gives him a grin. “Sometimes a good kick works wonders where tools fail.”
The doctor grimaces. “Your engines are remarkably like my patients. But kicking them usually causes them to use their newfound strength for granting you a malpractice hearing.”
“That’s why I prefer engines.” Scotty claps his hands. “All right. Back to work.”
“Is there any use in that? If you need another six hours, rescue will be here long before you finished.”
“Well, I might have been a little pessimistic in my estimation,” Scotty admits. “I think I might make it in half the time, given someone can find it in them to hand me the damn tools.”
The doc rolls his eyes. “Ah. Oh well.” He starts towards the bus with Scotty in tow. “I recognize a job offer when I hear one. Let’s get this done, then.”
-
One hour later the air conditioning inside the bus is working again, causing the rest of their little group to get inside and out of their hair. Thirty minutes later the bus is lifting off the ground. The driver is quite exited and grateful. The lass Scotty has been sitting beside earlier goes so far as to nod at him, thereby officially acknowledging that he is present and breathing. He sits beside the doctor for the rest of the way.
The doctor tells him his name is Leonard. The engineer tells the doctor his name is Scotty. Somehow, they come to the silent agreement that this is all they need to know about each other, really.
“You’re at Starfleet Academy?” Scotty asks once they are all settled and the landscape is passing outside the window at increasing speed. Leonard smirks.
“In a bus going only to the academy, that guess wasn’t hard to make.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Scotty protests. “I’m going there to move on to my new ship.” He grins, suddenly overcome by the enthusiasm that has temporarily been swallowed by the hot sand. “My first post after finishing with the academy. By the end of this day I will be engineer on the flagship, no less!”
The doctor raises an eyebrow to that. “The flagship? Not bad, for a first assignment.”
“Aren’t you right! Well, I’m very good at fixing things.”
“No doubt you are.”
“What about you? How many semesters until they send you out to space?”
Leonard grimaces. “All of them. I’m only just starting today.”
For some reason, this surprises Scotty, and it shouldn’t. Not everyone enters the academy right after school, and especially medical doctors are expected to have a certain basic knowledge by the time they start. There is a reason why all doctors serving on starships are said to be ‘dirty old men’.
Still, there is something about Leonard that makes Scotty think he must have been everywhere at least once, including this place. The nervous energy surrounding the other new cadets on the bus is simply not there.
“I did something else before,” Leonard offers by way of explanation when Scotty’s silence stretches too long.
“Being a doctor?”
A lopsided smirk. “I’m impressed by your power of deduction.”
“And a darn fine one, I daresay,” Scotty judges with all the expertise of half a day of acquaintance.
“That’s what I used to believe, anyway.” Leonard isn’t looking at him, but Scotty knows it would break the limits of their unwritten rules to ask. One second later the smirk is back. “How would you know?” The doctor seems amused by his assumption, and whatever moment just passed is gone. “I fixed your hand. A child with a band-aid would be about as useful.”
Looking down onto his fixed hand, Scotty flexes his fingers, testing. He likes his hands. They are quite important to him.
“True. But there’s something about the way you approached me, and the poor lass over there.” He nods in the direction of the driver. “How shall I put it… you made us feel like living beings, not jobs to be done. Not every doctor bothers to do that, and I’ve seen a few in my time. To you I’d come again.” He realises how that sounds, but decides to let the words stand as they are.
Len grins at him and doesn’t seem to mind. The shadow remains in his eyes, though, and Scotty accepts that this isn’t a good topic. Years later he will suspect that he might have gotten an answer if he’d asked, back then when they were strangers. But that thought is far away, and in the present he respects this doctor’s privacy and lets the chance slip away.
“Starfleet can need some more good doctors,” he says instead. “Most of them are dirty old men.”
“By the time I finish academy, I will be an old man myself.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad. I got through it just fine.”
“But then, you are very good at what you do,” Len reminds him of his own words.
“True enough.” Scotty knows what he’s worth. “Never really had any doubt about ending up in space and getting married to a starship.”
“Can’t say the same about me.” The doc looks somewhat sourly. “This came as a surprise. In fact, space was the last place I ever thought I’d go.”
“Didn’t come for love of the stars, then, I suppose?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I’m just not too fond of the spaces between.” A sigh, resigned. “Well, at least in space they always need someone to fix people, so I won’t be out of a job after two years.”
Scotty looks at him; the clean shaven but hollow cheeks, the uncut hair and tired eyes. “Can you fix yourself?” he hears his own voice ask though he had no intention of saying the words.
Leonard looks at him for a long moment, and then out the window at the world passing by. “I’m trying.”
Scotty wonders, because he hasn’t asked, what could have happened to drive this man from the planet he obviously belongs to, and doesn’t know that he will wonder for decades.
Perhaps someone died, he thinks, and Leonard feels guilty. He seems like the kind of man who cares too much. Silently, Scotty vows once again to take care of his new ship the best he can - which is pretty damn good - so he will never have to feel responsible for the death of a crew.
“At least,” Leonard says after a second with the life back in his voice, “it’s going to be a challenge. And fearing for my life all the time should be a pretty good distraction.”
It’s said lightly, but Scotty suddenly feels challenged in his pride as an engineer.
“These ships are safe,” he promises. “A good engineer can keep them going forever.”
“I have no doubt that you could take a starship all the way through the great barrier and back without it getting a single power failure,” Len assures him. “But you’re not on every ship in the fleet, and the chance of me being assigned to the one you happen to be on is rather slim, don’t you think?”
“Aye, that it is,” Scotty admits with some regret that comes from knowing he will probably never see this man again once they reach their destination. “But it would be nice if it happened.”
September 29, 2009
Rating: G
Pairing: very slight Scotty/McCoy
Summary/Note: Written for the prompt Scotty/McCoy. A chance meeting when they were younger, just a passing flirtation at st_tos_kink.
Word count: 3593
Eight hours to go. The transport has been making funny, slurring noises ever since it started. Perhaps that’s normal. The noise has been constant at least, even if it doesn’t sound like it belongs. Montgomery Scott isn’t familiar with this kind of bus - quite possible that it’s powered by an engine he hasn’t encountered yet, unlikely as that may be. After all, this is America, and in the brief time he has been staying here, he’s found out that in some respects it differs from his native Scotland so much he could well be on a different planet.
Inhabited by aliens.
The woman beside him is absentmindedly picking her teeth with her nails. She ignores him completely. Even his attempt to start a conversation, or at least get an introduction out of the pretty lass he was going to spend all day sharing a bank with has been answered with a shrug, a non-committal sound and a telling look in the other direction. Pretty, but impolite. Scotty doesn’t like her, and he doesn’t like feeling rejected.
She looks bored. Serves her well. He could have entertained her well enough.
The two women behind him are silent now. They appeared to know each other well, and in the three hours they’ve been on the bus, Scotty has heard them talk in hushed, quiet words impossible to make out over the slurring of the engine. They giggled, then they growled. Later they snapped. Eventually they fell silent. While Scotty still tries not to pay attention to them, one leaves her seat and sits at the other end at the bus.
The young man two rows behind him is still staring out of the window. As far as Scotty can tell he hasn’t done anything much except watch the landscape go by. He’s sitting alone, and the woman looking for an escape from her ex-friend doesn’t take the seat beside him, but rather joins with the three unshaven but quite happy looking guys in the back row. Scotty can sympathise. That guy is transmitting a warning to leave him alone so strongly he can almost see it spelled out in the air.
And that without doing anything but sitting perfectly still and peacefully looking out of the window. It’s an ability Scotty believes his ignorant neighbour would like to have.
The driver is humming softly. Either that, or she’s saying a prayer in an alien language that the damn bus won’t die. Because to Scotty’s trained ear, the slurring noise isn’t a good noise. It doesn’t fit with the melody this old, weathered bus is making.
-
Seven hours to go. Scotty’s bored. He’s feeling uncomfortable sitting beside the lass who apparently wishes the air would suddenly leave the planet in a locally extremely limited phenomenon and suck him into space. He would pick another seat, but there’s only the one deserted by the woman who broke up with her girlfriend while he was listening, and the one beside the guy who’s just waiting for someone to get into his vicinity so he can eat their head. Or something.
Scotty sighs, tries to appreciate the sight outside the windows and fails. Tries to read the technical journal he’s brought for the journey, but what it’s trying to teach him he already knows and it doesn’t capture his attention. He longs for a drink, and a bit of conversation, but this bus is filled only with ignorants and cannibals. He sighs again, louder, hoping to rise the attention, even in pity, of the lass beside him. No luck. That’s why he prefers the company of engines. They speak a language he understands. And this engine, if he’s not completely mistaken, is screaming for help.
Very loudly.
“Excuse me,” he says to the driver after making his way over to her. “Your engine is screaming for help.”
“Our company’s engines are in perfect condition and the transporters perfectly safe.” She gives him a blinding smile straight out of the box. “Please return to your seat.”
Scotty returns to his seat. He wonders if the engine will make it another seven hours. He continues to be bored.
-
Six hours and fifty-one minutes to go. The engines slur one more time, cough and give up. The bus lands, not too softy, on the road that consist of far too much sand. One of the guys from the backseats shouts in surprise. One of the females shrieks. The lass beside Scotty nearly falls out of her seat. The solitary man braces himself against he back of the seat in front of him. Other than that, his only reaction consists of closing his eyes, briefly, in something that looks like either desperation or resignation or both.
Scotty is out of the bus in a second. An engine is in need, and he is all too willing to be her knight in shining armour.
-
Seventy-five days to go. If they would walk. Which might become their only alternative to starving beside the bus.
Scotty doesn’t know if that would be so much worse than starving on the road, far from the bus. He for his part is determined to stay with this old little transport until the bitter end.
The driver’s hands are clasped behind the back of her head. She looks completely out of her dept, and her bus is smoking. For miles and miles and miles there’s nothing around. Hardly anyone uses this road anymore, and all communication devices inside the bus have died with the engine.
The other guests are leaving no doubt that the driver is to blame, except the woman who refused to acknowledge Scotty’s existence and the silent man. They are standing in the background, the lass watching with a frown on her pretty face, and the lad just watching.
At least the young lady is finally taking notice of him. Everyone does. Scotty is the centre of attention as he kneels in front of the smoking engine and tries to estimate the damage in all the mess.
“I need my bag,” he tells the driver, a small lady with grey in her hair and nervous eyes. She nods and hurries off to get it from the locked storage.
“I hope you’ve got a phaser in there,” one of the backseat-guys mutters while she is gone. “I feel like shooting someone.” Scotty ignores him, concentrating on the machinery in front of him. It looks bad. Spare parts would really help.
“Do you happen to have a communication device with you that works?” the driver asks without hope when she hands him the bag. “Anyone?”
No one does. Out here in the middle of nowhere, they rely on the communicator in the bus. The one now dead.
“I’ve got something better,” Scotty promises. With a smile he pulls his toolbox out of the bag and shows it to everyone to admire. One of the guys, the blond one who wanted to kill the driver, grimaces at it.
“Better get away from there,” he says. “You’ll make it worse.”
“How?” a quiet voice asks, drily. Scotty hears this one for the first time, so it must be the young man from the back, but he’s too busy studying his new project to look.
“I happen to be an engineer,” he explains, cheerfully. Actually, he finds, he’s a lot more happy than he was ten minutes ago with nothing to do and no one to talk to.
Finally back in the world he belongs to, he begins to work.
-
It’s hot. Scotty doesn’t mind. He’s lying half under the bus, where no sun reaches him. Of course, it’s still hot. Inside the small bus it’s not much cooler, so everyone has gathered outside, where they are either sitting around in the shadow of the rocks by the road, or standing behind Scotty, to see what he’s doing. Not that they’d understand. Scotty doesn’t mind that either, as long as they don’t get in his way.
“Can you fix it?” the driver whispers nervously. He nods.
“But I’ll need at least six hours, maybe seven.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she tells him. “There’s help coming. When they lost contact, the company must have sent someone for us.”
“But that’ll take hours,” the blond guy complains. He’s beginning to get on Scotty’s nerves, and that usually takes some effort. “I’m starting at the Academy today. I’ll miss my first classes!”
“Don’t worry,” the quiet guy says in a comforting voice. “I’m sure they will be able to manage without you.”
Scotty hears someone chuckle. “Can somebody hand me the clamp?” he asks, holding out his hand, but nobody hands him anything, so he has to crawl out and get it himself.
The blond is standing in front of the dark haired guy with the quiet voice. He is about Scotty’s age, the engineer notices, while the blond is a couple of years younger. Starting at the academy today, probably straight out of school. Tall and strong and looming over the man sitting on a rock, he seems ready to let out his frustration in a physical fight.
“Shut up, unless you have something useful to contribute,” he snaps. The older man raises a single eyebrow at him in a manner that would put a Vulcan to shame.
“Like you?” he asks, and doesn’t seem to feel threatened at all. If anything, he sounds slightly amused, though he has to know that provoking this guy can’t be a good idea. He is very thin, Scotty sees now, and his hair is slightly too long, as if he stopped caring enough for his appearance to have it cut. Perhaps he’s aching for a fight as much as the other one. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
“I’m sure help will be here soon,” the driver says in an attempt to pacify the blond. “They will send a faster car, and you will all reach your destination without much delay.”
“Without much delay?” The attention of the blond is back on the driver, and she looks like she regrets having opened her mouth. “Even five minutes might screw up my future. Not that you’d care! I haven’t seen you do anything to help us yet.”
“What’s she supposed to do?” the older man asks. He’s rising from his rock, but his movements are lazy, as if he just wants to stretch his legs. “Carry you?”
The blond glares at him, then obviously decides that he’s not worth the effort. He grunts something, turns and stalks away briskly, to the privacy of the other side of the bus. The driver, standing in his way, gets shoved aside hard enough to end up on the ground.
Scowling at the boy’s retreating back, Scotty is torn between continuing his work, going after him and teach him a lesson for treating a lady like that, and being a gentlemen and help up the lady in question. The dark haired man beats him to the latter. Scotty thought he was one of those who don’t care for anyone as long as they are left alone, so he’s quite surprised to see him hurry over and offer a hand. He gently pulls her to her feet.
“Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head, but holds her right arm at the elbow, looking distressed, hot and miserable. Scotty can’t blame her. None of the other passengers seem to have any problems with that guy’s behaviour.
“Let me look at that.” The man who helped her up draws her attention from the onlookers to himself. And then he adds, with a glance at Scotty, “I happen to be a doctor.”
She offers a shaky smile. It is, admittedly, not as bright as the one she gave Scotty when she told him everything was okay with the engines.
“Let’s go into the bus, out of the sun” the doctor (somehow, Scotty doesn’t doubt for a second that he really is one) tells her and leads her into the stranded vehicle, away from the boring stares of the stranded passengers. Scotty sighs and picks one of the two choices left for him.
There’ll be enough time to fix this engine after he’s worked out his anger with the future Starfleet cadet.
-
Ten minutes later, Scotty has bruised knuckles and sand in his eyes, and feels a lot better. His opponent has shuffled off with a bloody nose and a very damaged ego, and even though they were hidden from everyone’s view and nobody even cares, Scotty feels like the hero of the day. Now he’ll only have to fix the engine and maybe the rest of the group will appreciate his heroism.
Or not. He sits on the ground and lacks the enthusiasm to get up. Suddenly he feels the heat, and his eyes are still full of sand.
This is not how he imagined his last day of freedom.
There are footsteps, coming closer until they stop right behind him. Scotty looks up and squints against the far too bright sky.
He offers a half-hearted grin. “You should have seen the other guy,” he says, because that’s what one says in situations like this. The doctor frowns at him.
“I did. Show me your hand.” When he speaks, his words are slightly slurred. Scotty noticed it before, because it reminds him of the noise the engine made before it died. He wonders what would be necessary to fix this one.
He gets to his feet and sees that the man is a good bit taller than him, and that his eyes are blue. Really, really blue, a kind of sky blue Scotty hasn’t seen ever before. It’s not like he looks into people’s eyes a lot, though. Usually he only looks at machinery.
He looks into these eyes, or would have were the eyes not looking at his hand. The doc takes out a little tool and holds it over Scotty’s knuckles where the skin is broken.
“This is going to regenerate your skin,” he says. “The spot will be a little sore for a while. Don’t punch anything again today.”
“There’ll be no need, unless that engine is giving me trouble.” Scotty gives him a grin. “Sometimes a good kick works wonders where tools fail.”
The doctor grimaces. “Your engines are remarkably like my patients. But kicking them usually causes them to use their newfound strength for granting you a malpractice hearing.”
“That’s why I prefer engines.” Scotty claps his hands. “All right. Back to work.”
“Is there any use in that? If you need another six hours, rescue will be here long before you finished.”
“Well, I might have been a little pessimistic in my estimation,” Scotty admits. “I think I might make it in half the time, given someone can find it in them to hand me the damn tools.”
The doc rolls his eyes. “Ah. Oh well.” He starts towards the bus with Scotty in tow. “I recognize a job offer when I hear one. Let’s get this done, then.”
-
One hour later the air conditioning inside the bus is working again, causing the rest of their little group to get inside and out of their hair. Thirty minutes later the bus is lifting off the ground. The driver is quite exited and grateful. The lass Scotty has been sitting beside earlier goes so far as to nod at him, thereby officially acknowledging that he is present and breathing. He sits beside the doctor for the rest of the way.
The doctor tells him his name is Leonard. The engineer tells the doctor his name is Scotty. Somehow, they come to the silent agreement that this is all they need to know about each other, really.
“You’re at Starfleet Academy?” Scotty asks once they are all settled and the landscape is passing outside the window at increasing speed. Leonard smirks.
“In a bus going only to the academy, that guess wasn’t hard to make.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Scotty protests. “I’m going there to move on to my new ship.” He grins, suddenly overcome by the enthusiasm that has temporarily been swallowed by the hot sand. “My first post after finishing with the academy. By the end of this day I will be engineer on the flagship, no less!”
The doctor raises an eyebrow to that. “The flagship? Not bad, for a first assignment.”
“Aren’t you right! Well, I’m very good at fixing things.”
“No doubt you are.”
“What about you? How many semesters until they send you out to space?”
Leonard grimaces. “All of them. I’m only just starting today.”
For some reason, this surprises Scotty, and it shouldn’t. Not everyone enters the academy right after school, and especially medical doctors are expected to have a certain basic knowledge by the time they start. There is a reason why all doctors serving on starships are said to be ‘dirty old men’.
Still, there is something about Leonard that makes Scotty think he must have been everywhere at least once, including this place. The nervous energy surrounding the other new cadets on the bus is simply not there.
“I did something else before,” Leonard offers by way of explanation when Scotty’s silence stretches too long.
“Being a doctor?”
A lopsided smirk. “I’m impressed by your power of deduction.”
“And a darn fine one, I daresay,” Scotty judges with all the expertise of half a day of acquaintance.
“That’s what I used to believe, anyway.” Leonard isn’t looking at him, but Scotty knows it would break the limits of their unwritten rules to ask. One second later the smirk is back. “How would you know?” The doctor seems amused by his assumption, and whatever moment just passed is gone. “I fixed your hand. A child with a band-aid would be about as useful.”
Looking down onto his fixed hand, Scotty flexes his fingers, testing. He likes his hands. They are quite important to him.
“True. But there’s something about the way you approached me, and the poor lass over there.” He nods in the direction of the driver. “How shall I put it… you made us feel like living beings, not jobs to be done. Not every doctor bothers to do that, and I’ve seen a few in my time. To you I’d come again.” He realises how that sounds, but decides to let the words stand as they are.
Len grins at him and doesn’t seem to mind. The shadow remains in his eyes, though, and Scotty accepts that this isn’t a good topic. Years later he will suspect that he might have gotten an answer if he’d asked, back then when they were strangers. But that thought is far away, and in the present he respects this doctor’s privacy and lets the chance slip away.
“Starfleet can need some more good doctors,” he says instead. “Most of them are dirty old men.”
“By the time I finish academy, I will be an old man myself.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad. I got through it just fine.”
“But then, you are very good at what you do,” Len reminds him of his own words.
“True enough.” Scotty knows what he’s worth. “Never really had any doubt about ending up in space and getting married to a starship.”
“Can’t say the same about me.” The doc looks somewhat sourly. “This came as a surprise. In fact, space was the last place I ever thought I’d go.”
“Didn’t come for love of the stars, then, I suppose?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I’m just not too fond of the spaces between.” A sigh, resigned. “Well, at least in space they always need someone to fix people, so I won’t be out of a job after two years.”
Scotty looks at him; the clean shaven but hollow cheeks, the uncut hair and tired eyes. “Can you fix yourself?” he hears his own voice ask though he had no intention of saying the words.
Leonard looks at him for a long moment, and then out the window at the world passing by. “I’m trying.”
Scotty wonders, because he hasn’t asked, what could have happened to drive this man from the planet he obviously belongs to, and doesn’t know that he will wonder for decades.
Perhaps someone died, he thinks, and Leonard feels guilty. He seems like the kind of man who cares too much. Silently, Scotty vows once again to take care of his new ship the best he can - which is pretty damn good - so he will never have to feel responsible for the death of a crew.
“At least,” Leonard says after a second with the life back in his voice, “it’s going to be a challenge. And fearing for my life all the time should be a pretty good distraction.”
It’s said lightly, but Scotty suddenly feels challenged in his pride as an engineer.
“These ships are safe,” he promises. “A good engineer can keep them going forever.”
“I have no doubt that you could take a starship all the way through the great barrier and back without it getting a single power failure,” Len assures him. “But you’re not on every ship in the fleet, and the chance of me being assigned to the one you happen to be on is rather slim, don’t you think?”
“Aye, that it is,” Scotty admits with some regret that comes from knowing he will probably never see this man again once they reach their destination. “But it would be nice if it happened.”
September 29, 2009