The Company of Legends
May. 11th, 2025 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamerMain Points:
Star Trek (the 2009!movie verse) Cambion AU (New Genesis)
Summary: Doctor Leonard McCoy gets to hear all the gossip and then meet the legendary figures for himself.
Word Count: 1929
Rating: Gen
Oh, he’s managed to manufacture some probably pretty convincing facsimile, but it’s all hollow. He hadn’t bothered to unpack, still, and it’s been years. The walls of his apartment are almost completely barren, not that he’d spent too much time there in the first place. The best he’d managed to form is a routine. He’d formed superficial connections with his community, but he can’t recall the last honest conversation he’d had with a person, and while they are sorry to see him go, on the grounds of someone else having to pick up all the shifts now, they’re not pretending to wail in the streets or rend their clothes or whatever signs of actual sorrow might be popular these days.
Instead, they spend most of their time gossiping about his new fancy ride coming in a week. Manufactured shortly before the Romulan attack, supposedly, with all the latest bells and whistles and shiny lights. The personnel are all heroes and practically deities, from the way his staff with nothing better to do whisper about them—a bunch of cadets that managed to escape Earth and the Federation in one fell swoop. Promoted sooner than they should’ve been, if you ask McCoy, not that anyone does. And then they start making a fuss about the whole crew, but particularly the Captain—he’s single, he’s extraordinarily handsome, Leonard is still single, but for that matter the entire command staff is good-looking, like there’s something about being ‘Fleet that makes you special (which gets uncomfortably close to old thoughts about eugenics, for McCoy’s taste, and anyway it’s probably a recruiting tactic to get other young fools to sign up, ignoring he’d done the same; at least he’d done it since he’d had no other choice, rather than for glory or anything else). He insists they stay professional at least while he’s here, but they only stop talking about it in his line of sight. He can still hear them giggling in the other room right up until he leaves, and one of them even has the audacity to ask if he’d get an autograph or five.
He self-medicates with a flask he’d filled with the last of one of his bottles and expects a disapproving stare from the shuttle pilot that comes to get him, like what he’d experienced when he’d first joined up. His expectations are again completely thwarted, because that’s far from what happens; the man is friendly, nonjudgmental, and awfully interested in McCoy, more than makes sense. It’s not like a doctor is a dying breed. He doesn’t understand what’s so interesting about him.
It maybe starts to make a little more sense when he finally lands and the legendary Captain Kirk’s waiting to greet him personally, dressed up like he’s meeting royalty. He begins to suspect that the orders included some kind of preferential treatment, something to try to entice him to take a starship assignment or at the very least not entertain thoughts of leaving Starfleet. And at least some of the stories were correct, anyhow. The blond’s far younger than a starship captain should be, practically glowing in the outfit, and far too pretty for his own good. Having a star’s looks probably does wonders for their recruitment, like he’d suspected.
“I might throw up on you if you get too close,” Leonard warns, trying to steady himself coming out of the shuttle, and the fabled James T. Kirk just smiles at him like the pronouncement is charming, relaxing a little in the process.
“Go ahead. It gives me an excuse to set fire to this thing, and then I’m free until the next time they can throw together a choking collar and incredibly uncomfortable fabric,” he suggests impishly, like they’re already old friends and McCoy’s already signed up for all kinds of tomfoolery.
McCoy’s baleful glare doesn’t make a dent in the man’s smile, either. “If you hate wearing it, then why the hell did you bother dressing up for me? I’m just an old country doctor.”
“Not that old,” the Captain counters; he’s being discreet but he’s probably already started checking McCoy out. The stories of his sexual exploits, truthfully, might be far more accurate than the ones about his heroics. “Let me know when you’re feeling a little less nauseous. You’re probably going to be on the Enterprise for at least a couple weeks; you should get to know her.” The pride in his voice is at least a little more stereotypically Captain-like than the rest of it.
Leonard nods and focuses on breathing, willing the nausea to pass. He’d rather just go to whatever cabin’s been designated his own and preferably sleep the entire experience of space away, but that’s highly impractical and Kirk’s plan has some merit. Though he feels a mite less settled when he realizes the technicians in the shuttle bay are staring, too, though they quickly busy themselves when he glances in their direction. Surely they aren’t so starved for entertainment as all that, here up chasing danger and death. Why, there’s over four hundred personnel serving aboard this ship. You could probably serve your entire posting here without meeting each and every single one of them. A new face shouldn’t be as interesting as all that.
And yet, they’re all doing it, every single crewmember they pass, once Leonard’s feeling stable enough to take the tour. Some of them try to talk, too, and it’s hard to decide whether he prefers this or the silent watching. Briefly he wonders if it’s the novelty of Kirk actually coming down from his lofty station to visit the lowly peons, but quickly discards that notion, between the way the man actually addresses everyone they pass by name as he briefly greets them before spouting off yet another fact Leonard has no inclination to remember (thanks to the booze and lingering panic attack, his head’s throbbing) and the fact that enough of the stares seem focused on McCoy specifically to form a pattern. Most of them are trying not to be too blatant about it, but most beings of any kind tend to overestimate how subtle their actions are. They’re all friendly enough, but it’s getting to be downright uncanny.
He does have to admit, too, that it’s not just the good looks. Kirk is one of those folks that’s genuinely charismatic, with the kind of intense, compassionate focus that says nothing in his world is as interesting as talking to and learning about the person he’s talking to. Leonard had started to get highly uncomfortable about that, too, until they’re stopped by a crewman, and Kirk apologizes and then turns that same laser focus on dealing with whatever complex interpersonal problem the man’s facing (well, it’s not too complex, probably, but McCoy might be having a few problems following along, at present). Having that kind of attention aimed in your direction on a regular basis could get addicting quick.
So he meets the overly enthusiastic Scotty, and also learns where he might find an illicit source of alcohol, if he feels like traveling back in time to the days of Prohibition (Kirk looks a little stern and disappointed, for once, but all he says is “make sure you’re not making anything lethal, Scotty”). Which makes McCoy, in turn, wonder how much experience the engineer has had, making bathtub alcohol. The chef (an actual chef named Schaefer that suggests Kirk might be as idiosyncratic as McCoy is) is more than happy to cater to a Southern palette. The garden only confirms that hypothesis, and also confirms that he’s not the only idiosyncratic one on this crazy ship, since his helmsman (Sulu) is just sitting there contentedly maintaining it (and also McCoy has to be warned away from one of the plants which is apparently carnivorous and there’s just a rapier sitting there leaning up against the wall). Most of his chief officers appear to be off duty in the rec room, and he is actually kind of astounded to see a hobgoblin—er, Vulcan named Spock—playing an instrument with Uhura (the comms officer) singing along. When they finish, the kid (they’re all young, but Chekov is practically an infant) starts telling everyone in hearing the song is Russian in origin even though that makes absolutely no sense. Most just ignore him. At least they’re a little too caught up in their own bullshit to worry about watching Leonard too closely. He’s putting faces to all the gossip, and, well. They’re larger than life, he’ll say that much.
Kirk seems a mite defensive, but he’s also doggedly refusing to be embarrassed by any of it. That’s the kind of attitude Leonard can grudgingly respect. It’s not as if the man’s utterly incapable of nervousness, at least, though he’s extremely discreet about it, occasionally fidgeting when he thinks McCoy’s not looking. And there are certainly points he should be ashamed and just isn’t, like the point he says something flirtatious to a woman in front of her partner in the mess hall, particularly since the woman flirts right back. Chandra doesn’t make a fuss and doesn’t seem upset about the whole thing, but McCoy can’t quite tell if that just means no one thinks they can push back against the Captain. He resolves to keep an eye on that.
The food is great, and Schaefer must have learned that, at least, from a bonafide Southern cook (it’s unlikely she’d actually lived in the South, due to the lack of accent), which has Kirk grinning that grin again. Leonard’s appetite had come back a smidge, apparently, and all the walking had actually been good for his actually metabolizing the contents of that flask.
Afterwards, they head up to the command deck to briefly make the acquaintance of the likes of Bailey and Haas. By this point, it’s unsurprising that Kirk knows each of them on sight. Despite the nerves from sitting this close to glass being the only thing between him and an agonizing death, he has to admit it’s a pretty view.
“I saved the best for last,” Kirk tells him, and very briefly McCoy wonders, because it’s clear that the man loves the bustle of the corridors and the power of the command deck and the peace (however odd) of the garden, but then he walks Leonard into what is probably one of the most obviously well-funded medical facilities McCoy has had the privilege of visiting. He can look smug all he wants; he’s actually earned this one. McCoy probably makes a nuisance of himself asking questions and poking around, but he tries not to actively get in the way of the treatment of actual patients, though, thankfully, for the moment it seems to be more in the way of actual physicals and treating chronic conditions than any of the danger Leonard had been concerned about.
Star Trek (the 2009!movie verse) Cambion AU (New Genesis)
Summary: Doctor Leonard McCoy gets to hear all the gossip and then meet the legendary figures for himself.
Word Count: 1929
Rating: Gen
McCoy’s mouth has gotten him plenty of places he hadn’t really planned on being (divorced, for one in a very long line), so perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised when it happens again. No one with any sense listens to any of his grousing in the first place. He does it like most men breathe, but not everyone knows that about him, particularly ones he doesn’t talk to often enough for them to have a fix on how he operates. He shouldn’t be surprised, really, but he’s taken aback anyway. He’d say he’d finally started to get settled only to have the good ground snatched under him again, but that would absolutely be a lie.
Oh, he’s managed to manufacture some probably pretty convincing facsimile, but it’s all hollow. He hadn’t bothered to unpack, still, and it’s been years. The walls of his apartment are almost completely barren, not that he’d spent too much time there in the first place. The best he’d managed to form is a routine. He’d formed superficial connections with his community, but he can’t recall the last honest conversation he’d had with a person, and while they are sorry to see him go, on the grounds of someone else having to pick up all the shifts now, they’re not pretending to wail in the streets or rend their clothes or whatever signs of actual sorrow might be popular these days.
Instead, they spend most of their time gossiping about his new fancy ride coming in a week. Manufactured shortly before the Romulan attack, supposedly, with all the latest bells and whistles and shiny lights. The personnel are all heroes and practically deities, from the way his staff with nothing better to do whisper about them—a bunch of cadets that managed to escape Earth and the Federation in one fell swoop. Promoted sooner than they should’ve been, if you ask McCoy, not that anyone does. And then they start making a fuss about the whole crew, but particularly the Captain—he’s single, he’s extraordinarily handsome, Leonard is still single, but for that matter the entire command staff is good-looking, like there’s something about being ‘Fleet that makes you special (which gets uncomfortably close to old thoughts about eugenics, for McCoy’s taste, and anyway it’s probably a recruiting tactic to get other young fools to sign up, ignoring he’d done the same; at least he’d done it since he’d had no other choice, rather than for glory or anything else). He insists they stay professional at least while he’s here, but they only stop talking about it in his line of sight. He can still hear them giggling in the other room right up until he leaves, and one of them even has the audacity to ask if he’d get an autograph or five.
He self-medicates with a flask he’d filled with the last of one of his bottles and expects a disapproving stare from the shuttle pilot that comes to get him, like what he’d experienced when he’d first joined up. His expectations are again completely thwarted, because that’s far from what happens; the man is friendly, nonjudgmental, and awfully interested in McCoy, more than makes sense. It’s not like a doctor is a dying breed. He doesn’t understand what’s so interesting about him.
It maybe starts to make a little more sense when he finally lands and the legendary Captain Kirk’s waiting to greet him personally, dressed up like he’s meeting royalty. He begins to suspect that the orders included some kind of preferential treatment, something to try to entice him to take a starship assignment or at the very least not entertain thoughts of leaving Starfleet. And at least some of the stories were correct, anyhow. The blond’s far younger than a starship captain should be, practically glowing in the outfit, and far too pretty for his own good. Having a star’s looks probably does wonders for their recruitment, like he’d suspected.
“I might throw up on you if you get too close,” Leonard warns, trying to steady himself coming out of the shuttle, and the fabled James T. Kirk just smiles at him like the pronouncement is charming, relaxing a little in the process.
“Go ahead. It gives me an excuse to set fire to this thing, and then I’m free until the next time they can throw together a choking collar and incredibly uncomfortable fabric,” he suggests impishly, like they’re already old friends and McCoy’s already signed up for all kinds of tomfoolery.
McCoy’s baleful glare doesn’t make a dent in the man’s smile, either. “If you hate wearing it, then why the hell did you bother dressing up for me? I’m just an old country doctor.”
“Not that old,” the Captain counters; he’s being discreet but he’s probably already started checking McCoy out. The stories of his sexual exploits, truthfully, might be far more accurate than the ones about his heroics. “Let me know when you’re feeling a little less nauseous. You’re probably going to be on the Enterprise for at least a couple weeks; you should get to know her.” The pride in his voice is at least a little more stereotypically Captain-like than the rest of it.
Leonard nods and focuses on breathing, willing the nausea to pass. He’d rather just go to whatever cabin’s been designated his own and preferably sleep the entire experience of space away, but that’s highly impractical and Kirk’s plan has some merit. Though he feels a mite less settled when he realizes the technicians in the shuttle bay are staring, too, though they quickly busy themselves when he glances in their direction. Surely they aren’t so starved for entertainment as all that, here up chasing danger and death. Why, there’s over four hundred personnel serving aboard this ship. You could probably serve your entire posting here without meeting each and every single one of them. A new face shouldn’t be as interesting as all that.
And yet, they’re all doing it, every single crewmember they pass, once Leonard’s feeling stable enough to take the tour. Some of them try to talk, too, and it’s hard to decide whether he prefers this or the silent watching. Briefly he wonders if it’s the novelty of Kirk actually coming down from his lofty station to visit the lowly peons, but quickly discards that notion, between the way the man actually addresses everyone they pass by name as he briefly greets them before spouting off yet another fact Leonard has no inclination to remember (thanks to the booze and lingering panic attack, his head’s throbbing) and the fact that enough of the stares seem focused on McCoy specifically to form a pattern. Most of them are trying not to be too blatant about it, but most beings of any kind tend to overestimate how subtle their actions are. They’re all friendly enough, but it’s getting to be downright uncanny.
He does have to admit, too, that it’s not just the good looks. Kirk is one of those folks that’s genuinely charismatic, with the kind of intense, compassionate focus that says nothing in his world is as interesting as talking to and learning about the person he’s talking to. Leonard had started to get highly uncomfortable about that, too, until they’re stopped by a crewman, and Kirk apologizes and then turns that same laser focus on dealing with whatever complex interpersonal problem the man’s facing (well, it’s not too complex, probably, but McCoy might be having a few problems following along, at present). Having that kind of attention aimed in your direction on a regular basis could get addicting quick.
So he meets the overly enthusiastic Scotty, and also learns where he might find an illicit source of alcohol, if he feels like traveling back in time to the days of Prohibition (Kirk looks a little stern and disappointed, for once, but all he says is “make sure you’re not making anything lethal, Scotty”). Which makes McCoy, in turn, wonder how much experience the engineer has had, making bathtub alcohol. The chef (an actual chef named Schaefer that suggests Kirk might be as idiosyncratic as McCoy is) is more than happy to cater to a Southern palette. The garden only confirms that hypothesis, and also confirms that he’s not the only idiosyncratic one on this crazy ship, since his helmsman (Sulu) is just sitting there contentedly maintaining it (and also McCoy has to be warned away from one of the plants which is apparently carnivorous and there’s just a rapier sitting there leaning up against the wall). Most of his chief officers appear to be off duty in the rec room, and he is actually kind of astounded to see a hobgoblin—er, Vulcan named Spock—playing an instrument with Uhura (the comms officer) singing along. When they finish, the kid (they’re all young, but Chekov is practically an infant) starts telling everyone in hearing the song is Russian in origin even though that makes absolutely no sense. Most just ignore him. At least they’re a little too caught up in their own bullshit to worry about watching Leonard too closely. He’s putting faces to all the gossip, and, well. They’re larger than life, he’ll say that much.
Kirk seems a mite defensive, but he’s also doggedly refusing to be embarrassed by any of it. That’s the kind of attitude Leonard can grudgingly respect. It’s not as if the man’s utterly incapable of nervousness, at least, though he’s extremely discreet about it, occasionally fidgeting when he thinks McCoy’s not looking. And there are certainly points he should be ashamed and just isn’t, like the point he says something flirtatious to a woman in front of her partner in the mess hall, particularly since the woman flirts right back. Chandra doesn’t make a fuss and doesn’t seem upset about the whole thing, but McCoy can’t quite tell if that just means no one thinks they can push back against the Captain. He resolves to keep an eye on that.
The food is great, and Schaefer must have learned that, at least, from a bonafide Southern cook (it’s unlikely she’d actually lived in the South, due to the lack of accent), which has Kirk grinning that grin again. Leonard’s appetite had come back a smidge, apparently, and all the walking had actually been good for his actually metabolizing the contents of that flask.
Afterwards, they head up to the command deck to briefly make the acquaintance of the likes of Bailey and Haas. By this point, it’s unsurprising that Kirk knows each of them on sight. Despite the nerves from sitting this close to glass being the only thing between him and an agonizing death, he has to admit it’s a pretty view.
“I saved the best for last,” Kirk tells him, and very briefly McCoy wonders, because it’s clear that the man loves the bustle of the corridors and the power of the command deck and the peace (however odd) of the garden, but then he walks Leonard into what is probably one of the most obviously well-funded medical facilities McCoy has had the privilege of visiting. He can look smug all he wants; he’s actually earned this one. McCoy probably makes a nuisance of himself asking questions and poking around, but he tries not to actively get in the way of the treatment of actual patients, though, thankfully, for the moment it seems to be more in the way of actual physicals and treating chronic conditions than any of the danger Leonard had been concerned about.
