Title: A Surprise Visit
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Leonard’s grandmother always wanted him to be happy.

A brown-haired boy of ten entered a kitchen, sat at a table crowded with covered dishes and a basket of yellow, buttery cornbread and plucked the plastic top off one of the containers. The smell of freshly baked cookies wafted through the air. He wisely chose the two cookies with the most chocolate chips and began to devour them.

A woman with a loose ponytail and a flowery apron, turned away from him, waved a spatula in the air menacingly. “Boy, put that lid back and keep your hands to yourself. Supper ain’t ready yet.”

He replaced the lid with a smack of his hand, at the same time whining around a mouthful of cookie crumbs, “But, Granny, I’m hungry! When’re we gonna eat?”

“That’s no surprise,” his grandmother said mildly. “You’re always hungry, just like your daddy was at that age.” She sighed, but her sigh had a happy hum to it. “I expect I’ll be at this stove, slaving away to feed you, until you got sense enough to use it yourself.”

The child perked up. “I can cook.”

She snorted. “Make a mess, more like.” She stopped stirring a pot of bubbling chili to look at him, and then to glare. “Leonard Horatio McCoy, get your elbows off that table!”

Leonard did as he was told with a contrite “Yes’am.”

“Why don’t you go into the front room and visit with your Aunt Lizzy?”

The boy shook his head fiercely and hunched his shoulders in unspoken defiance, picking at the table cloth. “She’s busy with her new boyfriend.” His tone of voice was punctuated by an eye-roll.

The woman chuckled. “She’s in love, child.”

Leonard’s face showed a ten year-old’s disgust at the notion of love.

“You’ll understand some day,” his grandmother said, returning her attention to the steaming pot.

“I won’t never,” he protested. “Can we eat now?” His fingers walked toward the cornbread.

“Not yet,” she said in a tone that warned him not to do whatever it was his little boy brain was planning. “Go on and get your daddy. It’s time to set the table.”

That was concession enough to tell Leonard “not yet” still meant “possibly sooner than you think.” He jumped out of his chair and went running from the kitchen, yelling for his father. His grandmother smiled to herself and paused to wipe her hands on a dishtowel. Beyond the bellowing of her grandchild she could hear her youngest daughter’s giggles.

There’d come a day when Leonard would be doing much the same; not giggling, per se, but grinning like a fool or tripping over his tongue, gloriously happy to be in-love with somebody. She wanted that for him as she had wanted that for her children. And, when it happened, she hoped to be around to see it.

~~~

Leonard McCoy grew up into a fine man, with a hot temper but a caring that encompassed the world—and beyond the world, it seemed. He joined Starfleet, the first of the McCoy family to do so, and though they all were proud of him, his grandmother couldn’t help her reservations. Space was dangerous, even for brilliant young men like her grandson. Those reservations dimmed somewhat when Leonard met a girl, started a family, and settled in the San Francisco area.

But on the day, years later, when Leonard told her that he and his wife were divorcing, the reservations came roaring back. She knew what the news meant without him saying it, and she wanted to cry though she did not. Instead his grandmother made a haggard, pale Leonard sit down at the kitchen table and fed him, surreptitiously wiping at the corners of her eyes when he wasn’t looking.

“This isn’t it for you,” she told him when he said, quite bitterly, “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

Leonard dug a fork into the soft food on his plate but didn’t eat it. He bent his head so she wouldn’t see the heartbreak on his face; but she knew it was there. “I got nothing left to give.”

She eased into a chair and ignored how her rheumatism made her joints ache. “That’s not true. You’re a McCoy—you got more love in your heart than you know what to do with.”

He said nothing.

She persisted, reaching across to the table to take his unoccupied hand. “Leonard, I don’t want you to give up.”

His shoulders shook, just once. “It won’t always hurt this bad, Gran?”

“No, darlin’,” she assured him, her own heart hurting to hear him sound so miserable.

To God, she said silently, You’d better have a good reason for this—or else, you’d better make it right.

~~~

Leonard McCoy did well in Starfleet. His research was renowned, and she heard a lot of people in the medical communities mention his name with deep respect. He eventually accepted a posting as CMO of Starfleet’s flagship Enterprise, and there was talk that some day he might make a fine Surgeon General.

Still, her worries stayed with her.

The only time Leonard had love in his voice was when he spoke of his daughter; at other times there was affection for some of the people he worked with, joined with a healthy dose of the sarcasm that had become Leonard’s trademark in the family. Despite her prying, though, Leonard never said a name the way he had once spoken of his ex-wife’s, so very long ago.

She thought, with the man roaming from one end of the galaxy to the other, surely there had to be someone out there he could love, and who would love him back just the way he deserved.

~~~

In Grandmother McCoy’s ninetieth year, she had a visit from her oldest grandchild, whom she hadn’t seen in several years. In truth, she wasn’t expecting him to come home to Georgia—as he did so very rarely since his career took to the stars. She was re-playing the message from Leonard’s only child, Joanna, and admiring the new addition to the family that Joanna cradled in her arms.

I’m a great-great-grandmother, she thought with ample satisfaction, and then, after pressing a button, cursed the contraption that played her vid messages. Somehow, it had put Joanna’s message into the recycle bin which is the one place she didn’t want it to be. Whoever said more technology is better? What a fool thing!

Muttering, the woman returned to the ball of yarn in her lap. Her fingers weren’t as supple as they had been in her youth, but they held steady enough for her to knit a small cap for Joanna’s baby. She’d just begun the cap’s crown when her doorbell rang.

“Who is it?” she snapped into the speaker beside her chair, irritated at the interruption.

In the background, someone mumbled something in trepidation. A familiar voice drawled loudly over the mumble, “Ma’am, got a delivery for a Mrs. Ida McCoy.”

Surprised and pleased and instantly recognizing the voice, she said, “Why come on in then!”

The man who came through her kitchen and into her living room had a grin to match his tone. “Gran,” Leonard said, and walked over to her chair to give her a kiss on the cheek.

She wasn’t going to cry. “Darlin’,” she said huskily. “Well, if this ain’t the best surprise for an old lady.” Then she noticed the shadows loitering in the archway of her living room. She tugged on Leonard’s sleeve and asked, “Now who’d you let into my house, boy?” But with one of her bony hands, she beckoned the guests closer. “I can’t see you from over there.”

The first man she thought she knew, and her heart fluttered excitedly. The boy had brought his Captain into her house? Sweet Lord, but he was a handsome fellow.

When Leonard introduced James T. Kirk, she forewent a polite “how do you do?” and told him exactly what she was thinking: “You’re as good-looking as the prize thoroughbred at a county fair.”

Leonard put a hand over his eyes and muttered to himself, which wasn’t odd at all. He’d always been a dramatic child.

Captain Kirk, red as a beet, replied, “…Thank you, Mrs. McCoy.”

Bless her poor husband’s soul, who had been laid to rest some decades ago: he wouldn’t mind the flirting. “You can call me Miss Ida, young man.” Then Ida threw in for good measure, “I’m a widow.”

“Gran,” Leonard said, appalled.

Kirk said graciously (and with a twinkle in his eye that she approved of), “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Ida. Please, call me Jim.”

She rearranged the hand-crafted throw over her legs and smiled to herself, pretending not to notice the flush to her grandson’s face. Then her attention moved on to the strange, dark-haired man standing slightly behind Captain Kirk. “Leonard,” she said, “you didn’t introduce your other friend.”

“I was gettin’ to it,” Leonard said, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Gran, this is Commander Spock, First Officer and Science Officer of the Enterprise. Spock, my grandmother.” He finished with a half-hearted wave of his hand but Ida could tell, by the way he rocked back on his heels, he was anticipating something from her.

Spock’s greeting was unusual but polite. She eyed the tall man from head to toe, concluding, “He’s a Vulcan!”

“Yessss,” drawled her grandson, who was still waiting on that something. Ida knew she would figure it out eventually.

“Well, I’ll be—a Vulcan in my home! The bridge club is going to turn on its head!” she clucked, pleased. “Judy’s always crowing on about that time she played hostess to an Andorian diplomat when her husband was some kind of councilman or other in Atlanta. That was over thirty years ago! Come over here,” she ordered the Vulcan. “I want a good look at you. Those old biddies’ll be asking me a round of twenty questions.”

Even though Spock seemed to have no problem with a command from her, Leonard tried to intervene. “Why don’t I show Spock and Jim around?”

“What’d they need a tour for?” his grandmother asked, already reaching up to tweak one of the Vulcan’s pointed ears. “It’s just a house.”

Leonard shifted purposely between her and the Vulcan. Disappointed, she poked a finger into her grandson’s chest. “Don’t you dare spoil my fun, Leonard Horatio McCoy! This’ll likely be the only time I see a Vulcan before I’m in the ground! Shame on you.”

The Captain seemed to find their staring contest funny. He said something to the Vulcan which, to Ida’s ears even with the advanced hearing aid, was only unintelligible words. Spock had lifted his eyebrow in response, saying, “I concur.”

Leonard grimaced and found a chair to sit in. For some reason, he felt he had to drag it over to her chair; maybe he thought if he was close enough, he could prevent her from embarrassing him again. Ida waited until Jim had also taken a seat and the Vulcan, who seemed content to remain on his feet, was done visually cataloguing all of the knick-knacks on the mantel above her fireplace. “Well,” she said, “if Leonard’s dragged you outta space and to my doorstep, I suppose he really likes you.”

“Oh my god,” the man at her elbow muttered.

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Ida countered serenely.

He glared at her with his blue McCoy eyes before accepting another lost battle. He explained, “We’re on leave for a month.”

“And you’re here to visit the baby,” she finished knowingly.

Leonard’s face lit up at the mention of his grandson.

“Bones is very proud,” Jim said dryly.

“Indeed,” the Vulcan echoed.

“Spock refused to hold ‘im,” Leonard tattled, partly amused and partly offended as any new grandfather would be.

“The child’s emotional state is… rampant. Without a doubt, he is the grandson of Doctor McCoy,” Spock concluded.

Leonard scowled and made a smart reply. Spock, apparently, had a smart reply of his own.

Jim smiled at Ida, his eyes saying See what I put up with?

“Jim!” McCoy cried, because the Captain hadn’t come to his rescue, “did you hear what that infernal computer just said about the human race?”

Kirk almost visibly winced. “I kind of agree with Spock, Bones.”

Leonard pursed his mouth in displeasure and leaned forward in his chair, letting loose his sharp tongue (which many of the family agreed he had inherited from her). For the moment, the three men seemed to have forgotten Ida was present. Their bickering was casual, as if they were long-used to each other’s quirks.

Ida picked up her knitting again and worked silently. She thought she understood now: he had been waiting for her response to Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock—because they were important to him. Now that was out of the ordinary. Leonard had always made his visits to her house alone in the past, and he had a tendency to be mule-headed and not care what others thought of who he did—and did not—know. The visits had been lovely, of course, but at the end of each one, she had always said goodbye to him with a slight heaviness to her heart and worried at the way loneliness kept his shoulders pressed down and cut grim lines at the corners of his mouth.

How interesting, she thought, that he brought Kirk and Spock along this time, to meet her before she was, in truth, interred in the family plot. She listened to the quality of Leonard’s voice for a few seconds longer, confirmed something for herself, then said abruptly, “You sound happy.”

That jarred the conversation. Whatever Leonard had meant to say remained unspoken as he turned to look at her, eyebrows lifted in question.

“I’m glad, is all,” she clarified before adding sweetly, “Thank you for coming to see me, Leonard.” Thank you for showing me this.

His expression softened.

The Captain, after studying the sheen to McCoy’s eyes for a brief second, smoothly shifted the conversation. “Bones told us we haven’t been properly Southern-ized until we spend a day at the Peach Festival. You should come with us, Miss Ida.”

It wasn’t Jim Kirk’s charm which prompted her delight over the invitation (though that was a bonus of sorts) but the way Leonard looked surprised, his whole face looking like a boy’s again as he said, “That’s a grand idea, Jim!”

“Fine, fine,” Ida agreed as if they had been hounding her for days. “I suppose you’ll need someone to tell you which peach preserves are worth trying and which aren’t fit for a slop.”

“Exactly,” Kirk said, grinning. They laughed.

“Wait until Spock watches his Captain chasing a hog around in the mud,” Leonard stage-whispered to his grandmother, his eyes twinkling merrily.

Ida liked this visit more and more. She handed her grandson the yarn in her lap. He dutifully began to wind it around his hands so she could continue knitting. “What a nice surprise you’ve planned for me, Leonard,” she said to the room at large. “And it goes without sayin’, darlin’, I grant you my blessing,” she concluded with a sly grin.

Spock’s face gave nothing away, Jim’s face said everything Spock wasn’t, and Leonard sputtered until the moment his grandmother poked him with her knitting needle.

“Don’t let it droop, boy,” she said smartly, indicating the yarn hanging lax between his hands.

Leonard, looking everywhere except at her, raised his hands again and saying not a word.

His grandmother chuckled and plucked up the conversation with ease. “Did Leonard ever tell you about the time he got his head stuck between the railings in the barn? He was the biggest-headed baby this side of the Mississippi…”

“He did not,” Spock responded gravely, belying the brightness in his eyes, which meant (in Vulcan-speak, she imagined) therefore you must share every embarrassing detail.

Leonard’s grandmother was only too happy to oblige.

-Fini

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