Title: Hearts Three and None to Spare
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Disclaimer: Entertainment purposes only… and angst and OT3 but let’s ignore those, shall we?
Summary: Only once is necessary to remind a man what he has to lose.

I dreamt this two nights ago and knew it had to be written. :)

Jim is silent when he is angriest simply because his rage burns the words away. Spock is silent too; except the Vulcan burns cold like ice instead of hot like fire.

And he certainly doesn’t plan to apologize. Not in the slightest.

The ending has a beginning set in the middle of a civil war. The Federation takes one side, the side of sparsely populated race with a big ego on a dually inhabited planet, and consigns the flagship of Starfleet to negotiate a cease-fire since neither warring party will stop until the other is eradicated. Leonard does his job—taking care of the wounded. He beams down with a triage team. They set up camp and spend a lengthy number of days journeying from the battlefield to surgery and back.

He exhausts himself but stays in the middle of the fray, patching, repairing, and grimly making the call when a patient is beyond help. The number of deaths, thankfully, is not as high as the number of survivors but each one nicks at his walls of professionalism until Leonard is fiercely determined that no more people are going to die.

He is only half-aware of what is taking place on the front lines where Captain Kirk, with Mr. Spock alongside, are trying to bring about a peace treaty or, at the very least, an agreement to stop the mutual killing. Occasionally someone mentions that one party is too tired to keep fighting but the other is belligerently opposed to ending the war. He only nods in those moments, more concerned with the report on the health of Jim and Spock; so long as he is assured that both are still standing and whole, he knows what is most important to him. Therefore, it is a shock when a group of men march into the medical camp, all of them natives and armed to the teeth.

The leader, tall and fierce-looking even under a tattooed face, steps forward and announces something loudly in his native language. The gesture of his weapon and the immediate, hostile stances of the rest of the warriors are unmistakable. They, patients and staff alike, are now hostages of war.

McCoy comes out of a touch-and-go surgery, hands bloody up to the wrists, only to be shoved into a group of his nurses. He doesn’t bother with niceties. “What the Hell is going on here?” He knocks a weapon out of his face. “Are you fools Goddamn insane?”

When Leonard tries to reach the next pale-faced native supporting a soiled bandage, he is unceremoniously knocked to his knees. A nurse crouches next to him with a concerned “Are you alright, Doctor?” He ignores her and climbs back to his feet. Leonard shakes with a fury that surprises none of those people present who work with him.

“I don’t know what you think you have the right to do here, and I don’t care. I am a doctor and I will see these people treated. Now step aside.”

He pushes past a hard-faced man blocking his way and is roughly spun around. Struggling is instinctive. One of Leonard’s arms is pulled behind his back at a painful angle.

The leader tells him, “Healer, I understand your words. Now heed mine: enemies of the H’lsta must die.” With a sharp nod to someone behind McCoy, a scream—too abruptly ended—echoes inside the pitched tent. Leonard is released. One quick check of the intended patient confirms that the man is dead.

Before he can voice his shock and rage, he is warned.

“You will heal only our men. We will kill any who disobey or seek escape.”

Leonard and two of his colleagues are escorted back into the sectioned-off area for surgery and guards are placed at the entrance. At one point, when the sound of fighting and shouts break out (the sound of slaughter), Leonard cries “Don’t!” and almost has his nose broken in his attempt to overtake the guards.

He is helpless in the face of brutes. When the first, selected patient is brought in, Leonard catches a glimpse of bodies piled haphazardly in a corner. The remainder of McCoy’s medical staff are silently caring for those left alive under watchful, suspicious eyes.

“Save this one” he is bluntly told.

Leonard thinks I would have saved everyone but has no more time for regret because there is a dying man on his table and work to be done.

Tension rides high through a few hours of injured upon injured, from the most serious of surgeries to the more mundane dermal regeneration of surface wounds. At the point where sweat is beaded on his forehead and his vision wavers, a nurse leans in and tells him that their supplies are running low.

He steps back and allows another person to close up the belly of a recently fixed abdominal bleeder and tosses his scalpel to the side.

Leonard tells the stoic-faced guards, “We need more supplies.”

The three of them engage in a brief stare-down until one guard says something to his companion, takes Leonard’s arm and hauls him into the main area. There is a makeshift table at which the leader sits while he idly cleans one of his nailbeds with the sharp point of knife. McCoy is given a quick assessment and leave to speak.

He swallows down his disgust. “We need more supplies—fresh supplies,” he reiterates. “Without ’em, I can’t keep opening and sewing up your men without risking severe infection.”

“No.”

That’s about all Leonard can take. He slams a fist down on the table. “Damn you, these are your people!” He manages to bite back the remark about the murdered, though their cries of terror still rattle in his head. “I thought you wanted them to live!”

“There are enough fit for fighting now.”

He reels. “They can’t go back out there. I may have kept them from dying but they still need time to heal.”

The leader doesn’t seem to care. “Your supplies are on your starship?”

“Of course.”

“And if I release one of yours, am I to expect no betrayal?”

Leonard knows the answer to that. He’d send as many people to the ship as possible and tell them not to come back. Beam down what is needed, yes, but not to come back and to alert Jim immediately. As it is, he is already wondering why they haven’t received a status check from the Enterprise or a ground team; he thinks the medical camp is two hours past due.

“Look,” McCoy says, “I don’t care why you want to war against your neighbors. I’m here to do a job and all I know is that I can’t do it without the proper equipment. Now either you are going to need us to heal your wounded or you’re not. And if you don’t, then you might as well kill me where I stand because I won’t be some fucking pawn for your idiotic game!”

The other simply looks at him for a moment. “You have spoken your mind. I have listened. You may go.”

“You can’t just ignore us!” Leonard shouts as he is dragged away.

But the man already is, has turned away to say something to another of his band and share a laugh. (At McCoy’s expense, suspects the doctor.)

Rather than being put back to work, as Leonard had expected, the rest of his staff is herded into the tight space of the surgery. They stand there, imprisoned amidst the litter of soaked gauze and dark-stained surfaces. He breathes deeply. The stench of death and blood has grown immeasurably since the camp began to fill with people in need of medical assistance. There is little doubt in McCoy’s mind that it will only get worse.

Someone plants a hand in the middle of his back when his sight goes momentarily gray and asks if he needs to sit down. The doctor, their leader, their protector, declines.

“What I need,” he says in a quiet voice, “is for someone to reach the Captain. If he doesn’t already know something is up, then chances are he’ll find out too late to help.”

A man on his right, a good man named Harrison and soon-to-be a great Doctor Harrison mentoring under McCoy’s supervision for the past six months, volunteers to go. Leonard’s brain sluggishly comes up with the facts, thinks he’ll probably die in the attempt and yet if they don’t try, they are at the mercy of butchers.

He says instead of no, “Okay.”

A plan is set into motion, then, and when it comes time to execute it, Harrison—rather than McCoy—squeezes the doctor’s arm and says, “It’ll be alright.”

Leonard replies, “Good luck.”

McCoy steps up to the front again and draws the attention of those on guard. He says, with a venom he didn’t realize he possessed, “Get outta my Sickbay” and slams his fist into the nearest blinking face.

In the resulting melee of swinging limbs and determined Enterprise medical crew with loaded hypos of sedative, Harrison slips out the back of the tent with ease. Later, as Leonard cradles his swollen face and watches a pissed hulk of a native brandish a blade before trying to plunge it into McCoy’s chest, he prays that their plan comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Leonard is tugged out of the path of imminent goring by a grim-faced woman with a bleeding lip. He doesn’t have time to thank her.

In the end, however, the seven of them are beaten down and tied up. The leader pushes Leonard into the dirt with a boot in his back, saying, “The price for your foolishness is your pathetic life.”

“Go on, then,” spits McCoy.

But the reply is cut short in surprise when blinding light strikes them all as the tent vaporizes. Within a circle of phaser-armed men, everyone stands frozen.

McCoy drops his head to the ground at the sound of a familiar voice. “Lay down your weapons,” Kirk calls.

He doesn’t bother to look around, listening to objects hitting the ground in a chorus of dull thuds. When Kirk’s men move in to separate out the enemy from the hostages, McCoy is lifted to his feet like a lightweight toy. It is shocking to find that he is not in the hands of Jim or Spock or even a friendly face.

It is, instead, the cold-hearted bastard who doesn’t want to give up his killing spree. He drags back Leonard’s head, the press of cool steel the only warning that Leonard’s throat is about to be split open. McCoy doesn’t make much of a sound, a small grunt of so this is it that never forms into real words. There is nothing but the sweet edge of pain, the smell of blood, and a jerk/crack of the body warming his back.

Leonard opens his eyes (when did they close?) to find himself leaning against a chest, nose pressed into the fabric of a rumpled uniform.

Spock.

Leonard lifts his head just enough to remark, “It’s about time you showed up.” Spock walks him away from the other men being rounded up by red-shirted officers. He thinks tiredly that if he looks back, he will see—and know—the last expression of the man who terrorized them all.

So Leonard McCoy simply does not look back.

It comes down to a problem of Leonard screwing up somewhere along the line that upsets both his lovers. Only, after a nice nap in Sickbay and then a longer nap in his quarters, he is still no closer to figuring out why they are pissed.

The situation on the planet is “being handled” according to the Captain and Leonard doesn’t want to know the details. But when he asks the white-lipped Jim what is bothering him (because obviously Jim is unhappy; Leonard can always tell these things and usually tries to head potential drama off at the pass), Kirk walks away without answering.

McCoy is confused.

Then Spock implements a Vulcan’s version of the age-old silent treatment and Leonard finally comprehends that whatever this something is, it isn’t a simple issue to be swept under the rug or ignored altogether.

Attempts to poke at the problem, even once the Enterprise is cleared to leave orbit, results only in exacerbating it. He doesn’t dare consider himself welcome in the Captain’s quarters and takes to sleeping in his own bed like days long past. Just when Leonard thinks he is going to either explode from the alienation or throw in the towel on their relationship, he, Jim and Spock are rounded up by a sneaky nurse named Christine Chapel and her cohort Nyota Uhura who lures them into the same room for “an urgent matter.”

Suffice to say, Leonard endures a lecture along the lines of How Not to Ruin a Good Thing and Males are Idiots and Should Express Their Feelings (apparently even the unpleasant ones). He is simply thankful to survive it without detriment to his character, such as crying like a baby just to make the lecture stop. Jim and Spock are quick to exit as well, practically on Leonard’s heels. In the corridor they assess one another, decide not to incite the wrath of irritable female crewmembers, and adjourn to Jim’s room to sit, drink, and otherwise pretend that nothing is wrong.

That is, until McCoy bursts out with “What have I missed here?” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Help me understand, because if you don’t… then I’ll have to assume this is something we can’t get past.” He adds more quietly, “Please.”

Jim looks at him, then, and Leonard can see the anger flare anew in those blue eyes. He waits, willing to be patient for Jim to work around the emotion to the words. Finally, the man tells him, “You did a stupid, dangerous thing down there, Bones.”

He doesn’t stop to consider how relieved he is to hear that name again. Leonard is caught up in the accusation—and the injustice of it.

“Excuse me?” he says incredulously. “Dangerous I won’t deny, Jim, but stupid? Which part? The trying to cope with being prisoner to a bunch of killers or the trying to get help part?” He sits back with a short laugh. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you!“

“It was stupid to provoke the enemy when you were clearly outnumbered!” Jim replies hotly.

Now McCoy is mad as fire. He stands up. Jim does the same. “How is what I did any different than the numerous—and let me tell you, Jim-boy there have been many—times you’ve done the SAME THING? How many times have I had to watch you get in arm’s reach of some lunatic and fucking challenge him to rip you to pieces?” McCoy turns his attention to Spock. “I guess you’re in the boat with your captain,” he comments snidely.

Spock does not respond as emotionally as Jim but his answer is intense nevertheless. “I agree with Jim on this matter—” McCoy does note the difference of reference, just as Spock wants him to. “—because he is right. Had we not been within range or encountered Lieutenant Harrison, I am certain that the H’lsta would have terminated your life. They show no mercy for those which oppose them.”

“You—” He points first to Jim. “—and you—” Then Spock. “—had better get your heads out of your asses. There isn’t a man or woman on this entire ship that doesn’t believe you two wouldn’t have acted the same in that situation. I’ll be damned if I stand here and take this kind of bullshit. I know I made the right choice and you know what? I’d do it again if it meant we had more chance of surviving than a bunch of lambs led to slaughter.”

He turns his back on them, fully immersed in his disbelief and his hurt feelings. But he can’t help adding, “If you don’t think I deserve the kind of respect you would give an officer who isn’t your lover, then I think we are done here.”

It is no more comforting to be alone in his quarters than it was to stay in that room with two people he loved and trusted not to break his heart. Leonard finds sleep elusive, and the next morning most people take one look at his face and leave him alone.

Neither Jim nor Spock attempt to find him at all.

Leonard is miserable and trying not to show it during a solitary lunch (he turned down M’Benga’s offer to join, didn’t feel like company) when Sulu and Chekov sit across from him in the mess hall without asking. He gives them both a grumpy expression which they immediately ignore.

Chekov’s face is earnest when he leaps straight into the fire. “Doctor, you do not visit the Bridge anymore.”

“I’m busy,” he mumbles around a mouthful of pie. Comfort food, though McCoy would never admit it to himself.

Pavel frowns and glances at Sulu. Far be it from Sulu to not leap in after Pavel. Only he’s a little more direct. “This fighting with the Captain and Mr. Spock is stupid.”

Leonard drops his fork with a resounding clang. If he has to hear that word stupid one more time… “It’s not any of your business, Mr. Sulu,” he says pointedly, coldly.

“It is,” insists the pilot of the Enterprise, “when it affects us all.”

McCoy frowns, mirroring Pavel’s look without meaning to. “Look, I’m sorry if Jim is not being Mr. Nice Guy, but that’s hardly my fault. He’s the idiot and I won’t say another word on the subject.”

“It’s Mr. Spock too,” inputs Chekov. “It’s terrible, Doctor McCoy. He is not happy. Anyone can see this!”

He makes a sound of frustration and scrubs his hands against his scalp. “I don’t care!” he not-quite bellows, even so turning a few heads.

Chekov tells him sadly, “Love—it is not something that can go away… poof so easily. It is hard to build, yes? And so it is hard to undo.”

Ah shit. He can’t ignore Pavel’s puppy-dog eyes. They are on par with Jim’s.

“Okay, okay. I didn’t mean that. I do care, you’re right. But they’re angry for no good reason! I-I can’t—” He breaks off, unable to voice how deeply this “fight” pains him.

Sulu reaches out, surprising McCoy, and lays his hand over the doctor’s. “Think about what prompted the anger.”

He scowls. “I did what I had to!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sulu corrects. “C’mon, you’re always the one asking us to question our motivations when we’re upset.”

He stops, considers that earlier conversation with new eyes. It is easy to be side-tracked by personal attachment, blinded by personal pain. Then he sighs and slumps over his tray. “Fear drives anger,” he says softly.

Sulu pulls back with “Exactly. Let’s go, Pavel.”

They don’t even ask for thanks.

And Leonard thought punching an armed warrior was crazy; now he thinks that lying in wait for Jim, Spock, or both in the Captain’s quarters is crazier.

He is almost relieved that Spock is the first to show up, alone. So long as he can smooth things over with the Vulcan, perhaps use a little logical persuasion, then the easier it will be to talk to Jim with Spock backing him.

The Vulcan enters, stops, and blinks at Leonard who is perched sideways in a chair.

Leonard clears his throat. “Hi.”

“Doctor,” Spock returns the greeting.

Silence ensues and McCoy decides to hell with silence. He has had his fill of it in the last few weeks. “I’m sorry,” he starts out.

Spock, that hobgoblin of give nothing away, tilts his head as though McCoy is commenting on the weather. “Why?” he inquiries.

“Because I am stupid,” Leonard admits. He is uncertain what it is flashing through Spock’s eyes but continues anyway. “I got caught up in your words and so I didn’t pay attention to what you weren’t saying. If I had, the last time we talked might not have ended so…” He can’t say the word.

Spock approaches him and asks, “What did we not say, Leonard?”

“That I scared you. That I could have died and that scared you.” He grips an armrest with more force than necessary, as if he has to ground himself or otherwise might try to simply close the distance between them.

Spock, however, shows no intention of restraint. He holds out his hand to McCoy, who lets himself be pulled into standing. “Yes,” he says simply. “I did fear that possibility.”

Leonard searches his face. “Do you also understand that I can’t apologize for fightin’?” His accent is thick.

The Vulcan runs a hand along the side of Leonard’s face, and McCoy closes his eyes in response. “Yes.”

“Thank you.” He leans in, then, and drops his forehead to Spock’s shoulder. There is the weight of long fingers resting against the back of his neck. After a moment, once Leonard finishes savoring this small peace, feels warm again after what seems to be a long winter, he asks rather plaintively, “How can I get through to Jim?”

“You won’t have to try, Bones.”

Leonard raises his head and looks over Spock’s shoulder. “Where in the world did you come from?”

“The bathroom.” The man’s smile is blindingly impish before it disappears altogether.

Leonard straightens, pulling out of Spock’s embrace. “You’ve been in the bathroom… how long?”

Jim winces. “Since you showed up.”

He crosses his arms. “So you hid from me in the bathroom. Jesus, Jim! I don’t bite.”

“I wasn’t hiding!” the Captain bluffs.

The CMO calls him on it. “Oh yes you were.”

“I was taking a shower.”

“Your hair isn’t even wet.”

“Damn it, Bones, maybe I dried it—”

Spock must have decided that he doesn’t want to be in the middle of their childish argument. The Vulcan walks away, sits down and begins to methodically remove his clothing. Leonard only watches him for a minute before turning back to Jim.

“I guess you’ve been eavesdropping as well.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “Captain’s quarters. I believe I’m entitled to any and all action that happens in this room.”

For some reason, those words amuse Leonard. His mouth betrays him by turning up at the corners. Jim stares at Leonard for too long, so long, that McCoy remembers what amounts to the white elephant in the room.

He opens his mouth to say “I’m sorry” at the same time that Jim echoes the words.

They go back to staring at each other. Finally, Leonard mutters, “Okay. Awkward.” That seems to spark life back into Kirk.

Jim never does anything by half. He reels McCoy in and kisses him.

Leonard pulls back, stunned. “It’s not supposed to be that easy,” he says to his lover.

“Since when do we live by normal standards?” asks Jim. “I was an idiot, you were an idiot—”

“Wait, what?”

“—Spock was an idiot—”

A voice rings clear. “I must disagree—”

“—so why not let it go at that?” He adds more quietly, “What we have is too precious, Bones. I don’t want to lose it.”

“Nor do I,” Leonard agrees. “We’re gonna fight, though.”

“And I’m going to hate it when you risk your life.”

Leonard lets out a huff of a laugh. “Trust me, I know how you feel.”

They come to an agreement to forgive and, while not to forget, to learn. There will be some issues that they face time and again; there will be worries that they conquer. When it is a matter of the heart, one cannot deny the vulnerability that lies therein. However, where one is vulnerable, one can be equally strong.

Spock, down to his regulation underwear, informs his other two companions that the time is nigh for rest.

Jim asks his Bones, “Will you stay?”

Leonard replies simply, “Always.”

-Fini

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