Fic: The Twinkl(i)e in His Eye (Scotty & Kirk, ST(AOS), G)
Title: The Twinkl(i)e in His Eye
Author/Artist:
sail_aweigh/sail_aweigh
Characters: Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, James T. Kirk, Spock, Leonard McCoy
Rating: G
Warnings: abuse of the laws of physics
Summary: Scotty will break the laws of physics just to acquire his Holy Grail.
Word count: 2762
Author's notes: Written for Trekstock 2013 prompt #3: The Seven Deadly Sins. Runner Up! Also, popular voting by all LJ users is open for the three favorite works for Trekstock is up here. Go give my fics some love, thank you!
Scotty adjusted the controls of the transporter carefully. If all his calculations were correct, this was the setting he would need. Now that he'd tested it on inanimate objects, he didn't have anything animate to test it on except himself. The punishment meted out by Admiral Archer had cured him of grabbing the first (very irritating) thing on hand for his trial run. Well, there was the tribble that the doc had resurrected, so he figured if once was a charm...but the captain had claimed the little furball for himself and Scotty'd already done his time on Delta Vega, ta.
Taking a deep breath and setting the transporter on fifteen second delay to give him time to get to the transporter pad, Scotty looked over his settings one more time and slowly pushed the handle up.
"Energize," he said under his breath. Mission: Sponge Cake was a go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scotty scooped the spongy yellow packages into his duffel as fast as he could. This was the fourth night in a row that he'd made a clandestine trip planetside for his contraband. His locker aboard ship had room for one more bagfull before it would be overflowing.
While he shoveled, he congratulated himself on his development of the new equations that allowed these trips; they'd proved the validity of his theory that time travel could be linked with transporter technology. After all, parts of the transwarp equation were dependent on time, but they had only been able to manipulate that component on a limited scale, over linear space, up until now. It was the science department's charting the phenomenon of the black hole left by the Narada incident that had given him the necessary tools to calculate the transtimewarp equation. Using curved space and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle increased the time differential exponentially, allowing power consumption to remain constant over time, the one thing that had held them back from true time travel. He thought to himself smugly, Time warp, now that's something they'll be singing about when he published it. Scotty let out a small cackle. Time warp. He should get Keenser over for a movie night, introduce him to Frank N. Furter, Rocky, Magenta and the rest.
Looking at his chronometer, Scotty saw he had five minutes left before the transporter routine was set to recover him from his little side-trip to the early 21st century. He patted the duffel, well pleased with his night's work. As he waited, his mouth started watering as he cataloged all the different ways he was going to enjoy the fruits of his labors. He felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as the transporter beam pulled him back to the Enterprise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"But, but, Captain...Jim! They're the Holy Grail of snackfood," he whined. Scotty clasped the duffel bag close to his chest with both arms. "Ye canna be serious? To deprive me, er, us of such an opportunity would be sacrilege."
Jim lifted one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers before looking up at the ceiling with an unspoken plea on his lips for guidance. "Scotty, it's theft. Plain and simple. Even if you never get caught, I'll know you did it." Scotty could see the look of disappointment on the captain's face, and while it made him sad to see, he stood stalwart with his prize.
"Please, Jim. Don't make me take them back. Not all of them. They're as precious as...as latinum, today. They're antiques, a legend in their time. And ours! I've only seen pictures in books of these things, but the praise for them is superlative. Why, it's said they could cure cancer!" Scotty pulled a package out of the duffel and held it up with a dramatic flourish, as if awarding someone the Nobel Prize.
"Scotty, we have the cure for most cancers, today and those things are not a part of it. Plus, you stole them." Jim held out his hand for the duffel bag, which Scotty slowly lowered to the floor with one hand. He shook his head.
"I canna. Can't cross my own time stream." Scotty stood his ground, refusing to release his grip on the duffel.
Jim snorted. "Pull the other one. Old Spock tried that one on me; I'm not going to fall for it again." He tugged his tunic down in a way that told Scotty he was done taking his shit. It was his last word and Scotty wasn't going to be treated with any more leniency. Giving the duffel an agonized look, he pushed it over toward the captain.
Jim's posture sagged in relief. Taking the bag, he looked back at Scotty. "Is this all of them?" Scotty stilled, his eyes darting around the transporter room while he fumbled his words.
"Ayyyeee." The rising inflection on his answer made it less than convincing and Scotty knew it. Honesty, or at least partial honesty, might throw the captain off his trail. "I, ah, thought of making more than one trip. But ye caught me fair and square, captain." He bobbed his head firmly just once. There, that was believable.
"Scotty, Scotty. What am I going to do with you?" Jim picked up the bag of snacks, moving over to the transporter control console. "Show me how to set this so we can take them back. You do realize you've revolutionized transwarp beaming, don't you? You should be proud of that; it's worth more than these things will ever be."
"Aye, but I canna tell anyone if I don't want my invention stolen from me the way the original one was. I dinna trust Starfleet to use it wisely." Scotty crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Jim. "At least all I'm doing is helping the company who made these take out the trash."
Jim cocked his head. "What do you mean by that?"
Scotty picked up the package he'd pulled out of the duffel earlier and pointed at the printed label on the product. "It's seconds. See the printing, it's smudged and off center. This would be thrown out and it would be written off as waste. It's not theft if it's something they dinna want anyway. Just, try one before you make me take them back," he pleaded.
Jim looked at the package that Scotty held out to him. He reached up tentatively to take it out of Scotty's hand. The package crinkled under his touch, the spongy mass squishing temptingly between his fingers. It was soft and even through the package gave off a sugary scent that Scotty knew was making his taste buds tingle and his mouth water. Eying the package askance, Jim slowly pulled one end of the package open and reached in to extract the treat.
Scotty watched in anticipation as Jim raised the spongy treat and took a sniff of it. His nostrils flared and he opened his mouth to take a little evaluating lick at the end of the cake. Apparently passing some standard of taste, Jim's lips slowly opened so he could insert the tubular treat into his mouth. He bit into it. Jim's eyes widened as the cake dissolved in his mouth and the creamy filling bursting with sugar exploded in his mouth. A moan came out of his throat. Bingo.
Four packages of spongy cake later, Scotty and Jim sat on the edge of the transporter platform giggling at a story Scotty recounted about the first time Keenser had tried some of his home-distilled whiskey. He'd rigged a still out of cooling fluid lines in the power plant on Delta Vega.
"But weren't you worried about accidentally confusing one of the actual cooling lines with your still? And how did you even make booze out of those nasty protein bars they supplied you with? Was there enough carbohydrates in those to get some sort of fermentation going?" Jim burst into another helpless fit of giggles. Scotty snorted around a mouthful of cake, crumbs spewing across the floor.
"Not totally impossible, no. I had to make a mash out of them, like you would with corn or potatoes. Then I added water and boiled it until the oils and broken proteins floated to the top, drained the liquid out of the bottom. Added some of Keenser's beans, they were high in carbs, and fermented those. Couldna take too many. Even as few of those as he ate, I couldna take his entire food supply. Ran the results of the second fermentation through the still. It was foul, verra foul. But it was booze and a better use for the protein bars than actually eating them." Scotty giggled again at his words.
Jim poked Scotty in the side. "You are a fucking genius. A fucking mad genius and I'm glad I've got you on my crew."
Scotty bowed at the waist, his head almost hitting his knees as they both erupted into laughter again that continued unchecked until a loud voice interrupted them
"What in bloody blue blazes have you two miscreants gotten up to now?" The two conspirators startled at the noise, looking over to see Doctor McCoy and Spock standing just inside the door of the transporter room. Jim finished cramming a yellow tube into his mouth, his voice muffled by the spongy cake, "Nothin'. Tellin' war stora, commitherating on the exigenthies of Delta Vega." He swallowed convulsively, like a snake engulfing a rat whole. A large belch came out when the sweet settled in his stomach. Jim covered his mouth with one fist, giving the group a sheepish look.
Leonard's strides brought him quickly over to the duffel bag spilling out packages in an unrestrained fountain, a veritable cornucopia of creme-filled cakes. He picked up one of the treats and his eyes bugged out when he read the name. Squeezing the package in his fist, he shook it at Scotty and Jim.
"Do you know what's in this? Each cake has 220mg of sodium, Jim! How many of those have you had to eat so far? Do you realize what these could do to your blood pressure?" Leonard moaned as he continued reading the ingredients label. "No one even knows what sodium acid pyrophosphate is. An independent chemist attempted to analyze one of these things when a cache of them was found after the Eugenics Wars; his mass spec kept giving him an invalid error!"
Spock came to stand behind Leonard's shoulder, his impassive gaze focused on the treat held in the doctor's hand. "Is there an unknown nutritional merit in these items that made you seek them out, Mr. Scott? From Dr. McCoy's statements, it would appear that you and the captain are embarked in an unwise endeavor to poison yourselves." Bending down, he picked up one of the treats, turning it over in his hands to study it. Scotty heard him give a slight sniff as he lifted it up closer to his face to read the label.
"We were going to take them back to the factory, but we thought we should test them for quality before we did that, in case transporting them through time had some adverse effect on them," Jim said as he tore another package open with his teeth, shaking the sweet out of the package and straight into his mouth. Scotty thought the captain could use a little practise in prevarication. At least he wasn't that bad, the captain still believed this was the only bag of treats.
Leonard turned red in the face. "Jim! Are you insane? You could be killing yourself. Again! Once wasn't enough for you?" He covered his face with both hands in denial.
Jim choked and Scotty pounded him on the back, giving Leonard a dark look. "Breathe, laddie. The good doctor is just joking; no one on your crew would ever doubt your mental condition. Would they, Doctor McCoy?"
Scotty was prevented from continuing, if he'd had anything else to say other than glaring daggers at Doctor McCoy, by Spock, who had come to stand over him with his head tilted to one side inquisitively. Unlike his usual stance of hands behind his back, he stood in front of Scotty with the package of sponge cake clasped between his hands, his fingers twitching at the seam running along the end, slowly picking it apart. "Time travel, Mr. Scott? Are you sure you didn't find an old manufacturing site that survived the wars?"
"No, Mr. Spock. I tested my theory out with a number of probes that brought back other items from the past: a few newspapers and magazines with dates on them, some coins, accidentally picked up some kind of communication device. I looked it up in Popular Electronics and it looks like it's what they called a cellular phone from the 1980s. A huge brick of a thing, I dinna ken how they carried the things at all, so what was the point?" Scotty shrugged and stuffed another cake in his mouth. He grinned around the treat as he watched Mr. Spock extract his cake from the package and bring it up to his mouth to take a small bite.
"Addictive, aren't they?" Jim grinned up at Spock and tossed another cake at him; Spock fielded it easily, nodding his thanks. Leonard looked on in dismay from off to one side.
"Madness," he muttered, as he tore into the package that he'd been mangling earlier. The other men all watched as he sniffed it, held his tricorder up to it, squinted at it, pinched a piece off and touched it to the tip of his tongue. His eyes widened and they all watched as he broke off a larger piece and popped it, too, in his mouth. Leonard's eyes closed in ecstasy, only to fly open again at the titters coming from the transporter platform. He gave the two men there a dark glare, then looked over to Spock, whose mouth was raised at one corner. Leonard pointed a finger at him, "Don't you dare. You'll break something in me if you laugh, too." He stuffed the rest of the treat into his mouth and reached down to the duffel bag. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scotty and Jim looked down at the pan of golden brown cakes. They looked at each other, then back at the cakes again. "Well, they look sorta like them," Jim offered.
"Aye. The proof is in the pudding, though, as they say. I dinna know about this. On three?"
They both picked up a cake as Scotty counted down, "Three, two, one." Two set of white teeth bit off half a cake each. Two mouths chewed slowly. One hemmed, the other hawed. The cakes were set back down in the pan. Scotty dusted his hands off and Jim wiped his hands on the towel hanging off the oven door.
"Not the same at all," sighed Jim.
"Nay, not even close," agreed Scotty.
"Any chance we can go back..."
Scotty interrupted with a disapproving shake of his head. "We promised Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy we wouldn't indulge in these things anymore. This is the recipe the doctor provided for us with nutritionally sound ingredients as developed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Snackfood Addicts."
Jim's shoulders sagged. "Damn. I'd sell my soul for just one more of the real thing."
Scotty looked around the deserted kitchen, then spoke to him in a confiding tone, "Captain, Jim, if you'd like to drop by my quarters later, I believe I have just what the doctor didn't order in a secure location." He winked at Jim.
A slow smile spread over Jim's face. "Scotty, you sly dog. I knew recruiting you for this crew was one of the smartest things I've ever done." Scotty staggered a little at the slap on the back as Jim left the kitchen with a spring in his step.
Two hours later there was a knock on Scotty's door. He let Jim in, walked over to his locker, extracted a package and handed it to Jim.
Jim looked down at the package and then back up at Scotty. "The real McCoy."
"Aye. There is nothing in the universe like it. Long may it live." He looked down at the package with it's bright red banner reading "Twinkies: the sweetest comeback in the history of ever."
No substitute for the real McCoy, but it will do in a pinch
This ship is excitin'!
The proof is in the pudding.
Creamy goodness inside!
Here, look closer.
That'll do, pig.
Also on AO3
Author/Artist:
sail_aweigh/sail_aweigh
Characters: Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, James T. Kirk, Spock, Leonard McCoy
Rating: G
Warnings: abuse of the laws of physics
Summary: Scotty will break the laws of physics just to acquire his Holy Grail.
Word count: 2762
Author's notes: Written for Trekstock 2013 prompt #3: The Seven Deadly Sins. Runner Up! Also, popular voting by all LJ users is open for the three favorite works for Trekstock is up here. Go give my fics some love, thank you!
Scotty adjusted the controls of the transporter carefully. If all his calculations were correct, this was the setting he would need. Now that he'd tested it on inanimate objects, he didn't have anything animate to test it on except himself. The punishment meted out by Admiral Archer had cured him of grabbing the first (very irritating) thing on hand for his trial run. Well, there was the tribble that the doc had resurrected, so he figured if once was a charm...but the captain had claimed the little furball for himself and Scotty'd already done his time on Delta Vega, ta.
Taking a deep breath and setting the transporter on fifteen second delay to give him time to get to the transporter pad, Scotty looked over his settings one more time and slowly pushed the handle up.
"Energize," he said under his breath. Mission: Sponge Cake was a go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scotty scooped the spongy yellow packages into his duffel as fast as he could. This was the fourth night in a row that he'd made a clandestine trip planetside for his contraband. His locker aboard ship had room for one more bagfull before it would be overflowing.
While he shoveled, he congratulated himself on his development of the new equations that allowed these trips; they'd proved the validity of his theory that time travel could be linked with transporter technology. After all, parts of the transwarp equation were dependent on time, but they had only been able to manipulate that component on a limited scale, over linear space, up until now. It was the science department's charting the phenomenon of the black hole left by the Narada incident that had given him the necessary tools to calculate the transtimewarp equation. Using curved space and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle increased the time differential exponentially, allowing power consumption to remain constant over time, the one thing that had held them back from true time travel. He thought to himself smugly, Time warp, now that's something they'll be singing about when he published it. Scotty let out a small cackle. Time warp. He should get Keenser over for a movie night, introduce him to Frank N. Furter, Rocky, Magenta and the rest.
Looking at his chronometer, Scotty saw he had five minutes left before the transporter routine was set to recover him from his little side-trip to the early 21st century. He patted the duffel, well pleased with his night's work. As he waited, his mouth started watering as he cataloged all the different ways he was going to enjoy the fruits of his labors. He felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as the transporter beam pulled him back to the Enterprise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"But, but, Captain...Jim! They're the Holy Grail of snackfood," he whined. Scotty clasped the duffel bag close to his chest with both arms. "Ye canna be serious? To deprive me, er, us of such an opportunity would be sacrilege."
Jim lifted one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers before looking up at the ceiling with an unspoken plea on his lips for guidance. "Scotty, it's theft. Plain and simple. Even if you never get caught, I'll know you did it." Scotty could see the look of disappointment on the captain's face, and while it made him sad to see, he stood stalwart with his prize.
"Please, Jim. Don't make me take them back. Not all of them. They're as precious as...as latinum, today. They're antiques, a legend in their time. And ours! I've only seen pictures in books of these things, but the praise for them is superlative. Why, it's said they could cure cancer!" Scotty pulled a package out of the duffel and held it up with a dramatic flourish, as if awarding someone the Nobel Prize.
"Scotty, we have the cure for most cancers, today and those things are not a part of it. Plus, you stole them." Jim held out his hand for the duffel bag, which Scotty slowly lowered to the floor with one hand. He shook his head.
"I canna. Can't cross my own time stream." Scotty stood his ground, refusing to release his grip on the duffel.
Jim snorted. "Pull the other one. Old Spock tried that one on me; I'm not going to fall for it again." He tugged his tunic down in a way that told Scotty he was done taking his shit. It was his last word and Scotty wasn't going to be treated with any more leniency. Giving the duffel an agonized look, he pushed it over toward the captain.
Jim's posture sagged in relief. Taking the bag, he looked back at Scotty. "Is this all of them?" Scotty stilled, his eyes darting around the transporter room while he fumbled his words.
"Ayyyeee." The rising inflection on his answer made it less than convincing and Scotty knew it. Honesty, or at least partial honesty, might throw the captain off his trail. "I, ah, thought of making more than one trip. But ye caught me fair and square, captain." He bobbed his head firmly just once. There, that was believable.
"Scotty, Scotty. What am I going to do with you?" Jim picked up the bag of snacks, moving over to the transporter control console. "Show me how to set this so we can take them back. You do realize you've revolutionized transwarp beaming, don't you? You should be proud of that; it's worth more than these things will ever be."
"Aye, but I canna tell anyone if I don't want my invention stolen from me the way the original one was. I dinna trust Starfleet to use it wisely." Scotty crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Jim. "At least all I'm doing is helping the company who made these take out the trash."
Jim cocked his head. "What do you mean by that?"
Scotty picked up the package he'd pulled out of the duffel earlier and pointed at the printed label on the product. "It's seconds. See the printing, it's smudged and off center. This would be thrown out and it would be written off as waste. It's not theft if it's something they dinna want anyway. Just, try one before you make me take them back," he pleaded.
Jim looked at the package that Scotty held out to him. He reached up tentatively to take it out of Scotty's hand. The package crinkled under his touch, the spongy mass squishing temptingly between his fingers. It was soft and even through the package gave off a sugary scent that Scotty knew was making his taste buds tingle and his mouth water. Eying the package askance, Jim slowly pulled one end of the package open and reached in to extract the treat.
Scotty watched in anticipation as Jim raised the spongy treat and took a sniff of it. His nostrils flared and he opened his mouth to take a little evaluating lick at the end of the cake. Apparently passing some standard of taste, Jim's lips slowly opened so he could insert the tubular treat into his mouth. He bit into it. Jim's eyes widened as the cake dissolved in his mouth and the creamy filling bursting with sugar exploded in his mouth. A moan came out of his throat. Bingo.
Four packages of spongy cake later, Scotty and Jim sat on the edge of the transporter platform giggling at a story Scotty recounted about the first time Keenser had tried some of his home-distilled whiskey. He'd rigged a still out of cooling fluid lines in the power plant on Delta Vega.
"But weren't you worried about accidentally confusing one of the actual cooling lines with your still? And how did you even make booze out of those nasty protein bars they supplied you with? Was there enough carbohydrates in those to get some sort of fermentation going?" Jim burst into another helpless fit of giggles. Scotty snorted around a mouthful of cake, crumbs spewing across the floor.
"Not totally impossible, no. I had to make a mash out of them, like you would with corn or potatoes. Then I added water and boiled it until the oils and broken proteins floated to the top, drained the liquid out of the bottom. Added some of Keenser's beans, they were high in carbs, and fermented those. Couldna take too many. Even as few of those as he ate, I couldna take his entire food supply. Ran the results of the second fermentation through the still. It was foul, verra foul. But it was booze and a better use for the protein bars than actually eating them." Scotty giggled again at his words.
Jim poked Scotty in the side. "You are a fucking genius. A fucking mad genius and I'm glad I've got you on my crew."
Scotty bowed at the waist, his head almost hitting his knees as they both erupted into laughter again that continued unchecked until a loud voice interrupted them
"What in bloody blue blazes have you two miscreants gotten up to now?" The two conspirators startled at the noise, looking over to see Doctor McCoy and Spock standing just inside the door of the transporter room. Jim finished cramming a yellow tube into his mouth, his voice muffled by the spongy cake, "Nothin'. Tellin' war stora, commitherating on the exigenthies of Delta Vega." He swallowed convulsively, like a snake engulfing a rat whole. A large belch came out when the sweet settled in his stomach. Jim covered his mouth with one fist, giving the group a sheepish look.
Leonard's strides brought him quickly over to the duffel bag spilling out packages in an unrestrained fountain, a veritable cornucopia of creme-filled cakes. He picked up one of the treats and his eyes bugged out when he read the name. Squeezing the package in his fist, he shook it at Scotty and Jim.
"Do you know what's in this? Each cake has 220mg of sodium, Jim! How many of those have you had to eat so far? Do you realize what these could do to your blood pressure?" Leonard moaned as he continued reading the ingredients label. "No one even knows what sodium acid pyrophosphate is. An independent chemist attempted to analyze one of these things when a cache of them was found after the Eugenics Wars; his mass spec kept giving him an invalid error!"
Spock came to stand behind Leonard's shoulder, his impassive gaze focused on the treat held in the doctor's hand. "Is there an unknown nutritional merit in these items that made you seek them out, Mr. Scott? From Dr. McCoy's statements, it would appear that you and the captain are embarked in an unwise endeavor to poison yourselves." Bending down, he picked up one of the treats, turning it over in his hands to study it. Scotty heard him give a slight sniff as he lifted it up closer to his face to read the label.
"We were going to take them back to the factory, but we thought we should test them for quality before we did that, in case transporting them through time had some adverse effect on them," Jim said as he tore another package open with his teeth, shaking the sweet out of the package and straight into his mouth. Scotty thought the captain could use a little practise in prevarication. At least he wasn't that bad, the captain still believed this was the only bag of treats.
Leonard turned red in the face. "Jim! Are you insane? You could be killing yourself. Again! Once wasn't enough for you?" He covered his face with both hands in denial.
Jim choked and Scotty pounded him on the back, giving Leonard a dark look. "Breathe, laddie. The good doctor is just joking; no one on your crew would ever doubt your mental condition. Would they, Doctor McCoy?"
Scotty was prevented from continuing, if he'd had anything else to say other than glaring daggers at Doctor McCoy, by Spock, who had come to stand over him with his head tilted to one side inquisitively. Unlike his usual stance of hands behind his back, he stood in front of Scotty with the package of sponge cake clasped between his hands, his fingers twitching at the seam running along the end, slowly picking it apart. "Time travel, Mr. Scott? Are you sure you didn't find an old manufacturing site that survived the wars?"
"No, Mr. Spock. I tested my theory out with a number of probes that brought back other items from the past: a few newspapers and magazines with dates on them, some coins, accidentally picked up some kind of communication device. I looked it up in Popular Electronics and it looks like it's what they called a cellular phone from the 1980s. A huge brick of a thing, I dinna ken how they carried the things at all, so what was the point?" Scotty shrugged and stuffed another cake in his mouth. He grinned around the treat as he watched Mr. Spock extract his cake from the package and bring it up to his mouth to take a small bite.
"Addictive, aren't they?" Jim grinned up at Spock and tossed another cake at him; Spock fielded it easily, nodding his thanks. Leonard looked on in dismay from off to one side.
"Madness," he muttered, as he tore into the package that he'd been mangling earlier. The other men all watched as he sniffed it, held his tricorder up to it, squinted at it, pinched a piece off and touched it to the tip of his tongue. His eyes widened and they all watched as he broke off a larger piece and popped it, too, in his mouth. Leonard's eyes closed in ecstasy, only to fly open again at the titters coming from the transporter platform. He gave the two men there a dark glare, then looked over to Spock, whose mouth was raised at one corner. Leonard pointed a finger at him, "Don't you dare. You'll break something in me if you laugh, too." He stuffed the rest of the treat into his mouth and reached down to the duffel bag. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scotty and Jim looked down at the pan of golden brown cakes. They looked at each other, then back at the cakes again. "Well, they look sorta like them," Jim offered.
"Aye. The proof is in the pudding, though, as they say. I dinna know about this. On three?"
They both picked up a cake as Scotty counted down, "Three, two, one." Two set of white teeth bit off half a cake each. Two mouths chewed slowly. One hemmed, the other hawed. The cakes were set back down in the pan. Scotty dusted his hands off and Jim wiped his hands on the towel hanging off the oven door.
"Not the same at all," sighed Jim.
"Nay, not even close," agreed Scotty.
"Any chance we can go back..."
Scotty interrupted with a disapproving shake of his head. "We promised Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy we wouldn't indulge in these things anymore. This is the recipe the doctor provided for us with nutritionally sound ingredients as developed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Snackfood Addicts."
Jim's shoulders sagged. "Damn. I'd sell my soul for just one more of the real thing."
Scotty looked around the deserted kitchen, then spoke to him in a confiding tone, "Captain, Jim, if you'd like to drop by my quarters later, I believe I have just what the doctor didn't order in a secure location." He winked at Jim.
A slow smile spread over Jim's face. "Scotty, you sly dog. I knew recruiting you for this crew was one of the smartest things I've ever done." Scotty staggered a little at the slap on the back as Jim left the kitchen with a spring in his step.
Two hours later there was a knock on Scotty's door. He let Jim in, walked over to his locker, extracted a package and handed it to Jim.
Jim looked down at the package and then back up at Scotty. "The real McCoy."
"Aye. There is nothing in the universe like it. Long may it live." He looked down at the package with it's bright red banner reading "Twinkies: the sweetest comeback in the history of ever."
No substitute for the real McCoy, but it will do in a pinch
This ship is excitin'!
The proof is in the pudding.
Creamy goodness inside!
Here, look closer.
That'll do, pig.
Also on AO3