Title: A Series of Laughs – 8
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Characters: Spock, Kirk, McCoy
Summary: Drabble fill for trek_crackbingo prompt: off with the fairies.
Previous Fills: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Leonard has had just about enough of this nonsense. With his trusty stick, he bats at the next fairy light that giggles and tries to attack his leg. Unfortunately, the doctor’s aim has never been wonderfully accurate and his knee takes the blow instead.

The light hovers with an almost inaudible sigh of disappointment as McCoy curses, clutching his leg, and rolls around in a patch of purple moss.

It dances and titters and generally calls up an army of its friends. Leonard stops his profanity streak in lieu of staring at the multitude of hovering rainbow-colored lights that sing above his head. He prays that maybe they’ll go away.

They don’t.

Leonard goes for the abandoned stick as they swarm him. He thinks he actually knocks aside a few of them, considering the way the majority go from joyful bobbing to angry dives like bees from a disturbed hive.

“You won’t take me!” he cries as he first crawls, then stumbles to his feet and runs.

Leonard is halted in his mad dash by a large tree because he is too busy looking over his shoulder. Only, it can’t be a tree, he muses through sharp pain, cradling his head, because trees don’t wear boots.

Boots that look like his.

The tree is actually a Vulcan who greets him, eyebrow up, “Good afternoon, Doctor McCoy.”

“Spock!” Leonard latches onto the Vulcan in a way that will make him squirm with embarrassment later. “They’re after me!”

Spock blinks in the direction from which Leonard came. That’s when McCoy realizes everything has gone eerily silent, save his own harsh breathing. Slowly, Leonard detaches himself from his would-be savior and looks around.

Nothing but funny-shaped trees and more purple moss.

“But… but they were just here,” he says weakly.

“Doctor, it is imperative that you return to the camp. The Captain was most displeased to discover your absence.”

“I—heard someone calling me,” he tries to explain to Spock’s back as they trudge through bracken and brush.

“This planet shows no significant life other than vegetation.” The Vulcan is saying that he thinks Leonard is crazy.

McCoy wastes no time in correcting his companion. He tugs at Spock’s uniform and waits until the Vulcan faces him. “Now look here, Mr. Spock, I know I’m not goin’ round the bend.”

When Spock opens his mouth, Leonard warns, “And don’t you dare tell me I must have been dreaming!”

Spock says, “Very well,” and without a further word resumes his determined marching back to camp. Leonard has little to do other than follow.

It’s pretty obvious that Leonard isn’t crazy when they enter the clearing of their camp and are ambushed by small, squat men with long noses and sharp teeth. McCoy howls as he shakes one off of his arm. Spock, that blasted Vulcan, has already disappeared into the melee of dirty fightin’ red-shirted officers and man-sized creatures with leaves in their hair and vines to snag their prey.

McCoy calls “Spock!” then “Jim!” and has to leap out of the way of a thrown projectile that turns out to be an acorn the size of baseball. Unfortunately, he backs into a tree. Said tree grunts un-appreciatively, pulls up its roots and walks away to replant itself elsewhere, leaving a stunned doctor on the ground.

Things don’t get any better because that’s when Leonard looks up from his sprawl to see a roiling mass of fairy lights making off with the Captain of the Enterprise. Jim is flailing and kicking his legs, but it is rather hard to find purchase on a cloud of miniature people with butterfly wings.

He hears Kirk yelling, “Put me down! I am Captain Kirk and I come in peace! PUT ME DOWN!”

Leonard scrambles upright and does what any good officer would: He calls out, “Don’t worry, Jim! We’ll save you!” and decides that he can’t do that without backup.

Spock is found in the middle of a circle of enemies, sitting on a throne made of alien oak and wearing a crown of alien hawthorn. Leonard gapes. “What in tarnation are you doin’?”

Several things hiss at McCoy and just as Leonard supposes that the naked lady with talons rather than fingers is going to rip him in places he won’t like, a voice rings out, “He is not to be harmed.”

Shadows fall away from the doctor as Spock gracefully glides through the throng and it parts for him in reverence. Leonard can’t understand why some of them are bowing.

“Spock?” Is that his choked voice? “Spock, they’ve taken Jim!”

“Indeed,” answers the Vulcan with a strange look in his eyes.

Leonard tries to grasp the situation. “Aren’t we going to save him?”

The First Officer raises an eyebrow. “Jim is safe also, Doctor McCoy.”

It clicks. He gasps, “You! Y-You’re ON THEIR SIDE!”

“For once, you make a logical assumption.”

What he does make is the sound of an enraged tea-kettle. “Why, you green-blooded hobgoblin!”

Spock gestures to the evil-looking mushroom men on Leonard’s right. “Those are goblins.” Then he introduces a humanoid with unnerving silver eyes. “This is an ‘overgrown elf.’ Perhaps you might rephrase your insults, Doctor.”

Leonard looks a bit wildly at Spock’s court. They grin in return, some displaying nice long fangs. He backs up. Spock follows.

“I don’t know what they’ve done to you, Spock, but you have to—to know you aren’t one of these—”

“People,” emphasizes the Vulcan with menace.

Suddenly the Vulcan is too tall, looms like a wrathful god; the subjects around him make a collective dreadful sound, like hunger. Spock is still talking, saying, “Be careful of your words, Leonard McCoy…” A fairy light flies in, blocks his view, and all he can see is the glowing red with a background of muted, dark figures ominously reaching for him and he cries out…

“Spock!“

Leonard McCoy wakes up, a painful denial on his lips and a mouth dry with terror. On his left, something—someone—stirs and asks sleepily, “Sir? Are you alright?”

He places a hand against his heart, as if that will slow its wild beating. He remembers where he is, drops back down to his sleeping bag, an arm flung over his eyes, and replies, “Fine, son. Go on back to sleep now.”

There are the sounds of the young man, a security officer newly appointed to the Enterprise, rolling over and falling back into sleep. Leonard listens to that snoring and past it, the lull of the night. Something cracks, like the snap of a twig, in the forest beyond their camp and Leonard finds himself holding his breath.

When nothing else disturbs the peace, he tries tiredly to fall asleep. Still, it does not surprise him when some time later, as he twitches in his bed roll, a voice whispers close to his ear, “Leonard… Leonard…”

He resolutely places his flat pillow over his ears. Don’t listen, he tells himself. Don’t listen.

And tomorrow, as they pack up to beam back to the ship after an uneventful exploration of this planet, apologize to Mr. Spock, you damn fool.

9

Related Posts:

• A Series of Laughs – 9 – from February 9, 2011
• A Series of Laughs – 7 – from December 11, 2010
• A Series of Laughs – 6 – from December 10, 2010
• A Series of Laughs – 5 – from December 8, 2010
• A Series of Laughs – 4 – from December 3, 2010