Fic: "Cold Shot"
Title: Cold Shot
Summary: One shoots Pike. On purpose. Phil Boyce has to fix it.
Pairing: Pike/One
Rating: PG-13
Content Advisory: Descriptions of violence
Word Count: 1300
Notes: This fills the "relationships are hard: we always hurt the ones we love" square on my PikeOne bingo card. (In an obtuse sort of way.) I was going to post it yesterday but I decided not to, as it was both V-Day and the end of halfamoon and this story would thematically be against both, as it contains violence (although by a woman, not against her) and the story is really more about Phil than either Pike or One. So I post it an hour after midnight. So?
“Transporter room to Sickbay-Captain down. Transporting him directly to Isolation Room 2.”
Dr. Philip Boyce paused barely long enough to slam his hand on the button of the intercom unit. “Acknowledged.” He knocked a couple of padds off his desk as he rounded the corner, raced out of his office, and nearly ran into his head nurse, Lrrr. Skidding to a stop, he let her go ahead of him-she was, after all, a foot taller than he was and it was usually best not to argue with her-and then entered the isolation room. “What happened?” he asked the room generally, as he pulled out a tricorder from the pocket of his lab coat and started running it over Captain Pike.
Number One answered; he hadn’t noticed her standing in the corner. “I shot him with a phaser,” she said.
Ah. Obviously; there was a large phaser burn on the right side of his chest, just opposite the delta. It had burned through the captain’s tunic and undershirt as well as leaving a mark on his skin. Phil raised an eyebrow but didn’t react otherwise; he knew the XO well enough to know she wouldn’t have shot Chris without a good reason. “What setting?”
“Stun-eight,” she said.
Oh. That particular setting-fairly high, obviously-meant that anyone touching Chris would have been stunned as well. It also meant that he’d be unconscious for the better part of an hour. Phil nodded, twisted the end of his hypospray, and stuck Chris in the neck with various things to counteract the effects of a phaser on the human body.
Nurse Lrrr had cut the captain’s clothing and had started running the regen unit over his skin. Phil checked the numbers on the tricorder and the display on the biobed, and nodded again, satisfied that there was nothing actually wrong with the captain other than being stunned and burned. The burn would be gone in a few minutes, and-he checked Chris’s pupils with a penlight-it would be much better if he just let the captain wake up naturally.
“He’ll be fine,” Phil said.
Nurse Lrrr nodded, a motion that looked particularly unnatural on her scaly, reptilian head, but she’d picked it up from being around the mostly-human Starfleet for the last ten years. “I’ll stay with him.” She spoke Standard without any extra sibilance, though.
He heard a faint noise from the corner, and finally turned to look at Number One. She was physically unharmed, as far as he could tell, but her pupils were dilated, her hands clenched, and she held herself stiffly. Great. Chris wasn’t even badly hurt, not by his usual standards, but the incident had apparently managed to traumatize his first officer-slash-...something or other.
He turned, ran a tricorder over her briefly; no, she was actually fine. She didn’t move the entire time, though. Phil closed his eyes briefly-he’d taken two classes in psych, exactly the minimum to get through Starfleet Medical-and, after opening them, said, “Come on.” When she didn’t move, he gestured at her, and she turned, slowly, to him, and took a step forward. The next step was apparently easier, and a minute or so later, he guided her to sit in the chair opposite his desk in his office.
“What happened?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “I hesitated,” she said, a good fifteen seconds later.
“No, what happened before that?”
She wet her lips, resettled her hands on her knees, but didn’t speak.
“This isn’t a court-martial, One. I’m asking as your friend and your doctor.”
She frowned at him. “I know. It’s-we were down on the planet with Fornax and Cotter.” Two security personnel, one also an emergency responder; they weren’t in Sickbay so they were either fine or dead, and not his concern. “The locals-they call themselves the Churrhi-got the drop on us, killed Fornax and Cotter, and captured Captain Pike. I was behind a rock; I’d managed to stun all but two of them, and they were using Chris as a shield. I-” She paused. “I had a good shot on the one on the left, just over Chris’s shoulder, but I didn’t take it because I thought I might accidentally hit him in the shoulder. He yelled, ‘Just shoot!’ at me, and I lost the shot.” Another pause, this time with a deep inhale. “So the only shot I had left-and they were starting to drag him away at this point-was to shoot him dead-on and stun all of them.”
“And obviously you did.”
“I did,” she said. “And then I grabbed Chris and called for a transport.”
“He’s fine, you know,” Phil said.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve been stunned before. It’s just-“ She sighed again. “Please don’t say-“
“One. You know me better than that.” He listened. He didn’t talk. That was how it worked.
Her lips quirked with the first inkling of humor that he’d gotten out of her. “Yes, of course. We’d agreed, Chris and I, before we-before we got involved, that this wasn’t going to affect work in any way. It just affected work. I can’t hesitate and lose shots.”
“So now what?” Phil said. Great. If she’s going to try to break it off with Chris or transfer-I don’t think I have enough alcohol for that. I’m not sure the entire Federation has enough alcohol for that.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well,” Phil said, leaning back in his chair. “If it had been Cait captured by the locals, would you have hesitated?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“You would have,” he said, projecting as much certainty as he could into his voice. “Did you really think you could serve with people for a long time-could make friends with them-without having difficulty with the concept of shooting them?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” she said.
“You don’t have to be in love with Chris to hesitate at the idea of hurting him. I’m certainly not in love with him-I know him too well for that-and I don’t exactly enjoy shoving my hand into his guts when he does something exceptionally stupid.”
That got at least half a smile out of her.
“Also, he’s your commanding officer. I think I’d be a little more nervous if you didn’t flinch at the idea of shooting the captain.”
She actually laughed at that. “You’re right, Phil. Of course.” She shook her head. “I know all this intellectually, but when you’re staring at your CO flat on a biobed because you shot him directly in the chest, it’s . . . hard to remember.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m guessing you’ve never had to shoot your captain before?”
“No,” she said. “Nor, obviously, someone with whom I’m involved. When is he going to wake up?”
Phil looked at the chrono on his desk. “Probably not for another forty-five minutes or so. You have time to go clean up and check on the bridge if you need to.”
One nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that.” She stood, and he stood as well. “Thanks, Dr. Boyce.”
“No thanks needed, Commander.”
“Nonetheless. Keep me posted on the captain’s condition.”
“Of course.”
Phil watched her leave. She didn’t look nearly as stiff as she had before; her shoulders were definitely more relaxed, and her arms swung gently at her sides. Good.
* * *
Chris woke up just short of an hour later, as Phil had guessed. Phil gave him a hypo, checked to make sure there was no permanent damage, and left the emotional fallout to resolve itself.
Of course, once he got back to his office, he did turn on the audio feed to the isolation room. He wasn’t leaving everything to chance.
“You shot me,” Chris was saying.
“Yes-I-“
“Could you have at least hesitated first?” Even through the tinny speaker, Phil could hear the humor in Chris’s voice. A solid thirty seconds passed-he watched the chrono-before One burst into laughter.
That was his cue. He shut off the audio feed and went back to paperwork.
Summary: One shoots Pike. On purpose. Phil Boyce has to fix it.
Pairing: Pike/One
Rating: PG-13
Content Advisory: Descriptions of violence
Word Count: 1300
Notes: This fills the "relationships are hard: we always hurt the ones we love" square on my PikeOne bingo card. (In an obtuse sort of way.) I was going to post it yesterday but I decided not to, as it was both V-Day and the end of halfamoon and this story would thematically be against both, as it contains violence (although by a woman, not against her) and the story is really more about Phil than either Pike or One. So I post it an hour after midnight. So?
“Transporter room to Sickbay-Captain down. Transporting him directly to Isolation Room 2.”
Dr. Philip Boyce paused barely long enough to slam his hand on the button of the intercom unit. “Acknowledged.” He knocked a couple of padds off his desk as he rounded the corner, raced out of his office, and nearly ran into his head nurse, Lrrr. Skidding to a stop, he let her go ahead of him-she was, after all, a foot taller than he was and it was usually best not to argue with her-and then entered the isolation room. “What happened?” he asked the room generally, as he pulled out a tricorder from the pocket of his lab coat and started running it over Captain Pike.
Number One answered; he hadn’t noticed her standing in the corner. “I shot him with a phaser,” she said.
Ah. Obviously; there was a large phaser burn on the right side of his chest, just opposite the delta. It had burned through the captain’s tunic and undershirt as well as leaving a mark on his skin. Phil raised an eyebrow but didn’t react otherwise; he knew the XO well enough to know she wouldn’t have shot Chris without a good reason. “What setting?”
“Stun-eight,” she said.
Oh. That particular setting-fairly high, obviously-meant that anyone touching Chris would have been stunned as well. It also meant that he’d be unconscious for the better part of an hour. Phil nodded, twisted the end of his hypospray, and stuck Chris in the neck with various things to counteract the effects of a phaser on the human body.
Nurse Lrrr had cut the captain’s clothing and had started running the regen unit over his skin. Phil checked the numbers on the tricorder and the display on the biobed, and nodded again, satisfied that there was nothing actually wrong with the captain other than being stunned and burned. The burn would be gone in a few minutes, and-he checked Chris’s pupils with a penlight-it would be much better if he just let the captain wake up naturally.
“He’ll be fine,” Phil said.
Nurse Lrrr nodded, a motion that looked particularly unnatural on her scaly, reptilian head, but she’d picked it up from being around the mostly-human Starfleet for the last ten years. “I’ll stay with him.” She spoke Standard without any extra sibilance, though.
He heard a faint noise from the corner, and finally turned to look at Number One. She was physically unharmed, as far as he could tell, but her pupils were dilated, her hands clenched, and she held herself stiffly. Great. Chris wasn’t even badly hurt, not by his usual standards, but the incident had apparently managed to traumatize his first officer-slash-...something or other.
He turned, ran a tricorder over her briefly; no, she was actually fine. She didn’t move the entire time, though. Phil closed his eyes briefly-he’d taken two classes in psych, exactly the minimum to get through Starfleet Medical-and, after opening them, said, “Come on.” When she didn’t move, he gestured at her, and she turned, slowly, to him, and took a step forward. The next step was apparently easier, and a minute or so later, he guided her to sit in the chair opposite his desk in his office.
“What happened?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “I hesitated,” she said, a good fifteen seconds later.
“No, what happened before that?”
She wet her lips, resettled her hands on her knees, but didn’t speak.
“This isn’t a court-martial, One. I’m asking as your friend and your doctor.”
She frowned at him. “I know. It’s-we were down on the planet with Fornax and Cotter.” Two security personnel, one also an emergency responder; they weren’t in Sickbay so they were either fine or dead, and not his concern. “The locals-they call themselves the Churrhi-got the drop on us, killed Fornax and Cotter, and captured Captain Pike. I was behind a rock; I’d managed to stun all but two of them, and they were using Chris as a shield. I-” She paused. “I had a good shot on the one on the left, just over Chris’s shoulder, but I didn’t take it because I thought I might accidentally hit him in the shoulder. He yelled, ‘Just shoot!’ at me, and I lost the shot.” Another pause, this time with a deep inhale. “So the only shot I had left-and they were starting to drag him away at this point-was to shoot him dead-on and stun all of them.”
“And obviously you did.”
“I did,” she said. “And then I grabbed Chris and called for a transport.”
“He’s fine, you know,” Phil said.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve been stunned before. It’s just-“ She sighed again. “Please don’t say-“
“One. You know me better than that.” He listened. He didn’t talk. That was how it worked.
Her lips quirked with the first inkling of humor that he’d gotten out of her. “Yes, of course. We’d agreed, Chris and I, before we-before we got involved, that this wasn’t going to affect work in any way. It just affected work. I can’t hesitate and lose shots.”
“So now what?” Phil said. Great. If she’s going to try to break it off with Chris or transfer-I don’t think I have enough alcohol for that. I’m not sure the entire Federation has enough alcohol for that.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well,” Phil said, leaning back in his chair. “If it had been Cait captured by the locals, would you have hesitated?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“You would have,” he said, projecting as much certainty as he could into his voice. “Did you really think you could serve with people for a long time-could make friends with them-without having difficulty with the concept of shooting them?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” she said.
“You don’t have to be in love with Chris to hesitate at the idea of hurting him. I’m certainly not in love with him-I know him too well for that-and I don’t exactly enjoy shoving my hand into his guts when he does something exceptionally stupid.”
That got at least half a smile out of her.
“Also, he’s your commanding officer. I think I’d be a little more nervous if you didn’t flinch at the idea of shooting the captain.”
She actually laughed at that. “You’re right, Phil. Of course.” She shook her head. “I know all this intellectually, but when you’re staring at your CO flat on a biobed because you shot him directly in the chest, it’s . . . hard to remember.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m guessing you’ve never had to shoot your captain before?”
“No,” she said. “Nor, obviously, someone with whom I’m involved. When is he going to wake up?”
Phil looked at the chrono on his desk. “Probably not for another forty-five minutes or so. You have time to go clean up and check on the bridge if you need to.”
One nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that.” She stood, and he stood as well. “Thanks, Dr. Boyce.”
“No thanks needed, Commander.”
“Nonetheless. Keep me posted on the captain’s condition.”
“Of course.”
Phil watched her leave. She didn’t look nearly as stiff as she had before; her shoulders were definitely more relaxed, and her arms swung gently at her sides. Good.
* * *
Chris woke up just short of an hour later, as Phil had guessed. Phil gave him a hypo, checked to make sure there was no permanent damage, and left the emotional fallout to resolve itself.
Of course, once he got back to his office, he did turn on the audio feed to the isolation room. He wasn’t leaving everything to chance.
“You shot me,” Chris was saying.
“Yes-I-“
“Could you have at least hesitated first?” Even through the tinny speaker, Phil could hear the humor in Chris’s voice. A solid thirty seconds passed-he watched the chrono-before One burst into laughter.
That was his cue. He shut off the audio feed and went back to paperwork.