0Title: Holding Fast (3/5)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: A diplomatic mission goes wrong. With Kirk’s life hanging in the balance, McCoy and Spock are forced to hold the Enterprise—and each other—together long enough to save him.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2
The hearing was frustrating and unsatisfying. When he and Spock had arrived at the designated auditorium on the starbase—barely larger than a standard-sized classroom at Starfleet Academy—Leonard had felt a dread coil in his stomach. A handful of admirals and Federation Council members were gathered together, their holograms forming a semi-circle on one end of the room. Admiral Paris was conspicuously absent. The closed door was closely guarded by two security officers in black, badge-less uniforms. It felt like they had walked into a trap.
The Enterprise’s two senior officers were given leave to speak in turns, with the arrangement of impassive faces meeting them stare for stare. Leonard sensed their audience was either dispassionate or feigning polite curiosity to mask their irritation. The thought turned the dread into knots.
Leonard tried his best. He returned the scant questioning with respect, offering only facts and recommendations based on his field of expertise. Yet every minute that passed deepened his certainty that he and Spock had been cast into a losing battle. The preparation since invoking the tribunal—practicing their delivery, refining the main points—all of it now rendered inert before the judgment of their superiors.
There was no point in mentioning this to Spock once the pair was finally dismissed, the outcome of their efforts still pending. But McCoy wondered if his companion felt as he did, less confident than before having entered that room.
Now the officers of the Enterprise gather together with the brittle, sleepless focus of people who have wagered everything on reason prevailing. Logically, they have endured worse than the current circumstances and in far rougher conditions. But when the life of one of their own hangs in the balance, it makes waiting nearly intolerable.
Leonard already knows what kind of expression he expects to see on Nyota’s face when the ruling comes through—not relief, exactly, but that sharp, satisfied look she gets when a difficult system finally behaves. Next to McCoy, Scotty reaches for his chair, fingers drumming restlessly there, and then seems to think better of sitting at all. Sulu stands with one hand braced on the back of his seat, posture disciplined, watchful, while Chekov is trying very hard not to look as anxious as he is. At the head of the table, Spock waits in a stillness so complete it makes the room feel organized around him.
They have asked for little enough, Leonard thinks bitterly. Medical extraction. Protective screening. A chance to bring their people home alive.
The chime from the communications console cuts through the quiet. Every head turns. Uhura glances at Spock, receives from him the slightest incline of his head, and opens the message.
Leonard watches her eyes move over the lines. The change in her expression is small but devastating; whatever she had hoped to find there disappears so quickly it is like watching a door seal shut. The air in the room suddenly feels suffocating.
“The petition for immediate humanitarian intervention is denied,” she reads, voice level only by force. Then, after the briefest pause, she adds the line that matters most. “Enterprise is ordered to remain in dock and stand down from all further operational involvement in the Sular Incident.”
For one impossible beat, no one speaks. McCoy hears only the ship around them—the low hum of the engines, the faint whisper of recycled air—and hates the normalcy of it. Somewhere out there, Jim is in chains, and Starfleet has found a way to make inaction sound procedural.
“Denied?” he demands, shoving back from the table so fast his chair scrapes hard against the deck. “They denied a medical extraction? Have those uniformed idiots finally lost what little sense God gave them?” His gaze jumps from Uhura to Spock as if one of them might produce a hidden second message with the sane version. “We handed them restraint gift-wrapped in regulations, and they still chose to leave our people down there to bleed!”
Spock, having relocated to read the computer screen from over Uhura’s shoulder, does not appear to have heard a word McCoy said.
“It’s an insult, is what it is!” Scotty bursts out. Color has risen high in the man’s face. “They look at the Enterprise and see a risk instead of the only ship in this blasted sector with the crew to do the job right. If they think that means our hands are tied, they’re welcome to come down here and tell me why we shouldn’t keep preparing anyway. We’ve still got engines to finish, shields to tune, transporter tolerances to tighten—”
“Scotty,” Sulu says quietly, not rebuking so much as redirecting. He looks to Spock. “What are our orders now, sir?”
It takes a moment, but Spock folds his hands behind his back. He does not raise his voice. “Our orders are to stand down,” he says, the words precise, unadorned. “All preparations for independent deployment are to cease immediately. Current departmental work is to be limited to standard repair, medical readiness, and internal security only.”
No one moves. Uhura is still staring at the message. She says, “There’s more.” Her jaw visibly tightens. “Command notes that any unauthorized interference by Enterprise personnel will be treated as grounds for charges including mutiny, treaty violation, and conduct unbecoming an officer.”
That lands harder than the denial itself. Leonard sees it strike the room in different ways: Chekov goes pale; Scotty’s mouth drops open in raw disbelief; Sulu’s expression shutters into something grimmer than anger.
A rescue is one thing. Mutiny is another. Starfleet is no longer merely asking them to leave Jim to his fate—it is demanding they measure his life against their commissions, their records, their futures, and choose accordingly.
Leonard turns on Spock fully then, fury stripping away the last of his restraint. “Well?” he bites out. “Is that enough official language to satisfy everybody’s conscience? Because out where Jim is, none of those charges mean a damn thing. He does not get to survive on principle. If we stand here obeying orders while the Kairon torture him to death, then let’s stop dressing it up as discipline and call it what it is.”
Spock’s gaze settles on him, dark and unreadable. When he answers, his calm is more terrible than shouting could have been. “Do not mistake my compliance with the present order for indifference, Doctor. I am fully aware that inaction may result in Captain Kirk’s death.” The room seems to contract around his voice. “I am also aware that if I move against Command prematurely, I may destroy this crew’s ability to reach him at all. Therefore, until a superior opportunity presents itself, we will stand down.” He pauses, something almost lethal in that thin, perfectly controlled stillness. “But be assured of this: I have not confused patience with surrender.”
All Leonard hears is an elegantly worded retreat from a man still sitting on his thumbs. That can’t be all! Oh, how Leonard wants desperately to crack Spock open to see if there’s a writhing mess inside Spock to match his own fury.
But throwing a punch wouldn’t do much good. The bastard would just take it without flinching and then lock McCoy up in the brig for assaulting an officer. So instead Leonard chooses what will cut deepest, turning away in silence and walking out of the room.
No one dares to call after him.
~~~
It’s becoming almost comical to become immersed in work within a mostly empty Sickbay. Leonard ignores the slight trembling of his hands as he busies himself inventorying supplies with more attention than any supply cabinet has ever deserved. He can no longer parse how he feels. The continual bursts of anger, fear, and disappointment have given him whiplash.
When he first detects a presence enter the bay, the doctor half-expects it’s Spock come to try another round of dancing on his last nerve. Then he spies Chekov hovering just inside the doorway with hands clasped behind his back in a posture that tries for composure and lands somewhere closer to determination.
Leonard readies some complaint about everyone in this ship suddenly deciding Sickbay is a public thoroughfare. The words stall when Chekov does not look remotely apologetic.
“Doctor McCoy,” the junior lieutenant starts with a bluntness no officer in their right mind would attempt, “forgive me, but this is becoming a problem.”
Leonard straightens slowly, tightening his grasp on his data padd. “That so?” he drawls. “And here I was thinkin’ shipwide morale hinged entirely on whether I alphabetized my surgical clamps.”
To his credit or maybe possible lack of self-preservation, Chekov does not retreat. “No, sir. I mean you and Mr. Spock.” He shifts his weight once, gaze flicking away and back again. “Everyone can tell. The bridge feels it. The ship feels it. Even Mr. Scott has stopped making jokes, which is very alarming.”
“That’s a melodramatic assessment,” Leonard mutters, though the words do not land with much force even to his own ears. He turns back to the tray in front of him, sets aside his padd and needlessly adjusts an instrument he has already checked twice. “Mr. Spock and I disagree all the time. This ship has survived the experience before.”
“Usually, yes,” Chekov says.
McCoy glances up during the pause, seeing a small crease has formed between the lieutenant’s brows. Chekov seems to be feeling his way forward through unfamiliar terrain.
“But usually Keptin Kirk is there, and somehow it becomes… normal. Not pleasant, exactly, but familiar. He smooths it over, or translates, or annoys both of you until you forget what you were arguing about. This time the Keptin is gone, and we are told to stand down, and when you and Mr. Spock pull apart now, it does not feel normal. It feels wrong.”
He hesitates only long enough for Leonard to become suspicious. “It feels like…” Chekov winces then as though already regretting his own courage. “Like when parents are fighting in the next room and pretending the children cannot hear them.”
Leonard stares at him. “Parents?” he repeats. “Lord help me, Chekov, that is a terrible analogy.”
Chekov flushes but soldiers on. “I do not mean literally, sir. I mean… you and Mr. Spock are the people everyone looks to. The Keptin too, of course, but he is not here. So now when the two of you stop trusting each other, everyone feels it. No one says anything because this is not our place, but we all hear it anyway.”
The rebuke is so earnest that it takes the wind out of McCoy’s irritation at once. He opens his mouth with every intention of objecting, of pointing out that he and Spock are not responsible for the emotional stability of a ship full of trained officers, but no suitable argument arrives.
Because Chekov is right, damn him. Their conflict has ceased to be private—if it ever really was. Jim always stood between them in exactly the right way, turning friction into motion, heat into something survivable. Without him, the sharp edges show. Everyone—Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and now Chekov—has noticed the discord and tried offering advice in their own way. Red alerts from every quarter.
And it finally takes this young man to make McCoy see the extent of the problem.
Chekov seems to realize all at once what he has said and to whom. “I apologize,” he blurts, uncertainty creeping into his voice. “This was probably insubordinate. Or culturally inappropriate. Possibly both.” The junior officer takes a cautious step backward toward the door. “You do not have to respond. In fact, perhaps it would be better if you did not.”
Before Leonard can decide whether to laugh, protest, or order the young man to sit down and explain when exactly Pavel Chekov became wise, the lieutenant slips out of Sickbay with the speed of a man escaping a blast radius of his own making. The hatch slides shut behind him. Leonard is left staring at it, bemused and faintly scandalized.
He mutters to the empty room, “For God’s sake, parents?” After snatching up a scanner, Leonard realizes he is holding it upside down, and scowls harder. “That kid needs better metaphors.”
~~~
Leonard makes it exactly three minutes into his work before Chekov’s words catch up with him. He stops dead in the middle of Sickbay, one hand braced on the nearest biobed, and closes his eyes in annoyance.
Parents.
Under any other circumstances, he would be fully prepared to dismiss the comparison on principle. Claim it’s insulting and silly, and move on. Unfortunately, the rest of Chekov’s point keeps echoing louder than the metaphor itself: when you and Mr. Spock stop trusting each other, everyone feels it.
That, Leonard thinks sourly, is the real humiliation of it. Beneath all the irritation and defensive bluster lies something much simpler: regret. Jim is gone, Spock is carrying more than anyone should, and Leonard—in his own hurt, his own panic—made it worse. Whatever else is true, Spock should not be alone with this. Neither of them should.
Why does he keep losing sight of that?
Spock and Leonard are each struggling alone as Jim’s absence hangs over them. The way one feels right now is exactly how the other must feel.
He sets down the scanner with exaggerated care, as if gentleness toward medical equipment might somehow make the epiphany feel less shattering. Now it’s not a matter of permission to do something about his mistake but about courage. And so, before he can talk himself out of it, McCoy heads for the turbolift.
No one is around to judge the ship’s Chief Medical Officer for his walk of shame, but it makes no difference. By the time McCoy reaches Spock’s quarters, his pulse has taken on the uneven tempo of a man about to do something both necessary and deeply unsettling. He stands before the closed door longer than he ought to. The hesitation says enough all by itself.
Finally, he allows the chime to announce him. When the door slides back, Spock is as composed as ever, which only makes Leonard feel more disorderly by comparison. He doesn’t dare step forward into Spock’s space, having lost that privilege by his earlier behavior.
Spock’s expression gives nothing away. “Doctor.”
“I’m not here to argue,” Leonard explains all at once, because it’s better to get the words out quickly before they refuse to emerge.
The words make no dent in the Vulcan’s stone-like countenance. Spock merely says, “That is not reassuring. To what do I owe the visit?”
Leonard exhales through his nose. “Congratulations,” he tries for levity. When the effort seems to fall flat, he gives up and says brusquely, “You were right, and I was impossible.”
One of Spock’s eyebrows inches toward his hairline.
Embarrassment has Leonard responding some bite, “Try not to look too pleased with yourself.” The doctor’s hands twitch at his sides, and he wishes he had something to hold to keep them steady. Damn it, he shouldn’t have left that scanner behind.
“Doctor McCoy, an apology is not necessary.”
“Yes, it is!” Leonard snaps, then reins himself in with visible effort. “Because I accused you of shutting me out when you were trying to help. I said you didn’t trust me. I acted like your way of carrying this was some personal insult instead of what it was—pressure. Command breathing down your neck, Jim in danger, the whole ship looking to you, and me standing there making it harder.” He swallows. “That wasn’t fair to you.”
The silence that follows is not hostile, which somehow makes it worse.
Leonard presses on before his nerve fails him. “I’m scared for Jim,” he says roughly. “You already know that. What I haven’t said is that I am scared for you too. When you pull away—” He breaks off, jaw tightening. Honesty has never felt like an impossible hurdle until this moment, beneath Spock’s stare. “It feels unbearable.”
Although Spock’s face remains controlled, something in his bearing softens so subtly McCoy might have missed it on another day.
Encouraged despite himself, he adds, quieter now, “We cannot do this divided. If anything happens to Jim while we’re standing here at odds, I will never forgive myself.” He has to stop his hand from reaching out for Spock’s arm, certain that the gesture is an intimate one and uncertain if it would be accepted. “So if you can stand the thought of it, I would like to stop making your life more difficult and start being useful again.”
For a moment, Spock says nothing at all. Then, “Your assistance has never been unwelcome.” The Vulcan steps back from the doorway, the motion an invitation enough. “Please come in.”
Leonard enters before what remains of his courage fully evaporates. He’s no stranger to Spock’s quarters but there is a distinct feeling about the cabin he hasn’t previously encountered. The living area is always well-organized; now it’s neat in the aggressively impersonal way of someone too preoccupied to notice comfort.
On the small table near Spock’s desk sits a carafe. Spock follows Leonard’s glance and says, with all the gravity of a diplomatic concession, “There is coffee.”
Leonard lets out a breath that is almost a laugh. “That’s the closest thing to an apology I’ve ever had out of you.”
“Then you interpret it correctly,” Spock says. It is not quite warmth, not quite humor, but it is enough.
Leonard pours them both a cup, pulls out the nearest chair without being asked twice, and braces himself as Spock brings up the latest tactical projections. Whatever comes next, they will face it together.
Related Posts:
- Holding Fast (5/5) – from June 18, 2026
- Holding Fast (4/5) – from June 18, 2026
- Holding Fast (2/5) – from June 18, 2026
- Holding Fast (1/5) – from June 18, 2026
