Fic: Bad Medicine Is What I Need (Star Trek, McCoy/Uhura)

[amathela]

Title: Bad Medicine Is What I Need
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Pairing(s): McCoy/Uhura
Word Count: 2278
Rating: PG-13

Summary: Uhura is absolutely brilliant ... at xenolinguistics. Her mandatory medical coursework, on the other hand, could use some help. Thankfully, McCoy has gallantly volunteered to tutor her.

Notes: Written for this prompt at st_xi_kink.


Uhura looked down at her paper, flipping over until she got to the last page.

And froze mid-step.

"You've got to be kidding me," she said. A couple of people nearby glanced around, but didn't pay her much attention, and she looked back at the paper in shock.

Three weeks before finals; she could already see her post-graduation plans going down in flames. If she couldn't ace even an introductory medical course, her entire transcript was going to suffer.

She needed to do something about it, now.

-

"You did not almost fail," Gaila said, shimmying out of her dress as she rejected her latest outfit. "You got one bad grade. You can make it up."

"In three weeks?" Uhura asked. She wasn't even sure why she was complaining to Gaila about it; Gaila's solution would probably be something like -

"Do you want to have sex?"

"No," she said, but she gave Gaila a smile; her roommate meant well. "I need to study."

"But tomorrow, right?" Gaila looked in the mirror and smiled, evidently pleased with her appearance.

"I need to study now," she said. She could already sense the argument that was sure to follow.

"You don't need to study now," Gaila said, turning around. "What you need is to forget about studying for the night. Besides, you already promised you'd come out with me."

"That was before I got this," she said, waving her paper at Gaila.

Gaila looked staunchly unimpressed. "It's one night. Take a break, and you can study tomorrow."

Uhura was still preparing a counter-argument when Gaila threw a shirt at her, landing it squarely on top of the offending paper.

"Wear this. Come on, we don't want to get there too late."

-

The bar was already fairly crowded when they arrived, half-full of people Uhura only vaguely recognised from around the academy. Gaila scanned the crowd quickly before marching up to the bar, and Uhura followed her, tugging surreptitiously at the edge of her borrowed shirt. She really should have learned long ago not to take fashion advice from her roommate.

Gaila ordered a couple of drinks, and Uhura slid onto one of the empty seats at the bar. Forgetting about the paper, she discovered, was easier than she'd expected after a couple of drinks; after her third, she was actually glad she'd come.

That goodwill lasted until she excused herself, only to return a few minutes later and find her seat occupied. She couldn't see the guy's face, but from the way Gaila was leaning into him, she didn't need to. For tonight, anyway, he was spoken for.

"Dammit, Jim," someone muttered behind her, and she turned to see a man a few years older than herself. He was staring in the same direction she had been; it was no great leap to assume he knew the man in question, then.

"She yours?" he asked, and Uhura smiled grimly.

"Yep. He yours?"

The man nodded. His expression, Uhura thought, probably mirrored her own.

"Should we -"

He shook his head. "Don't bother."

As if to prove his point, Gaila came bounding up a moment later. Uhura looked around, but Gaila's companion was nowhere in sight; he was probably already waiting outside.

Uhura just hoped Gaila had the sense to go back to his room.

"I'm leaving," Gaila said cheerfully, and then frowned. "You don't mind, do you?"

"I don't mind," Uhura assured her. "I should probably be studying, anyway."

"Great," Gaila said. Then she stopped, and her gaze raked over the man standing beside them. She smiled appreciatively, and when she spoke, her voice was lowered, but not enough so that it didn't carry. "Just try to forget about that stupid med paper for a while, okay? Have some fun."

Uhura rolled her eyes, and Gaila left, a spring in her step.

"Med paper?" the man asked.

"It's no big deal," she said. "Just a course I'm behind in."

He nodded, and his line of sight dropped, briefly, to her chest. Uhura could practically feel every inch of bare skin under his gaze.

"I could help you with that," he offered.

She raised an eyebrow.

"I'm a doctor," he said.

"Well, doctor -"

"McCoy."

"Uhura," she said after a moment, her voice flat. As far as pick up lines went, his was at least appropriate, but she really wasn't in the mood. "And I think I'll be fine on my own."

Provided her room wasn't already occupied, of course.

McCoy nodded, but as she turned to leave, he called after her. "It was a genuine offer."

She turned back to face him.

"Just so you know," he said. "I really am a doctor."

Uhura considered the offer for a minute; it was tempting, especially if she wanted to get her work up to scratch in time. McCoy must have sensed her hesitation, because he almost smiled.

"Med labs," he said. "Tomorrow morning?"

She let out a breath. What did she have to lose, anyway?

"Deal," she said.

-

In retrospect, they probably should have set an actual time for the study session.

In further retrospect, Uhura probably should have declined the offer altogether.

But McCoy was there when she got to the med labs in the morning, and he looked, for his part, far more respectable in the light of day than he had in the dim shadows of the bar. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, after all.

"Cadet Uhura," he said, and she inclined her head.

"Doctor."

"Call me Leonard," he said. "Or McCoy."

McCoy suited her fine. She didn't think they were on a first name basis just yet.

"Do you want to get started?"

She had to hand it to him; there were no lingering glances this time, no hints that his offer might have been anything but sincere. She pulled her paper out of the bag she'd brought with her, and handed it over.

"I can see where you need help," he said finally, and her eyebrows shot up.

"I didn't mean it like that," he said, setting the paper aside. "Your knowledge of the subject is fine."

Fine. Not excellent. Not even good.

Well, she knew it wasn't her communication skills that were the problem.

"Should we go over the basics?" he asked.

Uhura fought to keep her expression blank as she nodded. Was she really that far behind?

"It's just a refresher course," he said; maybe she hadn't hidden her emotions as well as she would have liked. "Then we can move on to something more advanced."

"Are you going to show me what a hypospray is?" she asked.

Anyone else might have laughed; McCoy just made a face. "Not quite that basic. How about identifying known diseases first?"

Parinisti measles, Andorian shingles, and Rigelian fever later, Uhura was beginning to relax. McCoy, for all his occasionally brusque demeanour, wasn't actually a bad teacher; he didn't oversimplify things for her, as far as she could tell, but he explained things in a different way than her professor. After a while, the science even began to form its own language, previously unconnected fragments coming together to form a whole idea. She already knew the vocabulary; what she was working on now was more akin to language structure.

"You're getting the hang of this," McCoy commented, and she smiled; it wasn't difficult, once she knew how to approach it. "Why don't we try something more practical?"

"Like a simulation?" she asked.

"Patients aren't machines," he said, shaking his head. "They're human. Sometimes. They react differently."

Like they way reading a language was no substitute for speaking it aloud. Uhura had learned dead languages, loved rare dialects, but she'd yet to become completely fluent in any language she was unable to practise.

"All right," she said. "But there aren't any patients here."

McCoy picked up a hypospray, and took her hand. His skin was warm to the tough, the pads of his fingers a little rough, and his grip was firm but gentle. Then he placed her hand on the hypospray, and guided it to his neck.

She only hesitated for a moment before pressing down.

She had never administered a hypospray before; most of her classes tended to focus on theory. It felt slightly different than she'd imagined, took less pressure; it was slightly daunting to think that she could kill or save with so little effort.

"What did you do?" she asked, once she had recovered her voice. McCoy leaned against the table, looking unconcerned.

"We," he corrected her, "just gave me a disease. Now it's your job to cure me."

Of all the stupid things men had ever done in her presence, Uhura thought, this was probably somewhere near the top.

She took a breath, steadying her nerves. McCoy was still watching her, almost curiously, and if he felt anxious at all, it didn't show.

"What are your symptoms?" she asked, running through her lessons in her head. Diagnose, then treat. It couldn't be too difficult.

He shrugged. "You tell me."

She leaned forward to study him. His skin might have been flushed, and his pupil were slightly dilated. When she reached up to place two fingers slightly below his jaw, she could feel his breath coming in and out, a little shallow; his skin was hot, and his pulse a little quicker than normal.

Possibly Tanzian flu, she thought, and then discarded the notion; his respiration may have been slightly increased, but not enough to be a symptom.

Her hand was still on his neck, and she let it fall to her side, a little self-conscious. She leaned over to reach for the medical scanner, but McCoy blocked her.

"Practical," he said. "There are times when you'll have to diagnose a patient on sight. You shouldn't get used to having to rely on machines."

They all relied on machines, she wanted to remind him. Without them - without starships, without new technology - there would be no Federation.

Instead she said, "I'm not planning on becoming a doctor."

"So?"

She took a deep breath that almost sounded, in her ears, like a sigh. "This isn't going to kill you, is it?"

He wouldn't be that stupid, would he?

McCoy didn't say anything.

"Fine," she said. His expression had barely changed, but he was watching her carefully. "Elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, increased blood flow."

He didn't confirm or deny her assessment. "What does it look like?"

It looked, she thought, like the reaction of any normal heterosexual male in the proximity of a woman.

She shrugged. "It doesn't look like anything."

"Is that your final answer?"

It shouldn't have been a serious question, but there was something in the way he said it that made her pause, and she studied him for a long moment.

His symptoms, such as they were, hadn't increased. There was no obvious discolouration of his skin, no swelling, no evident discomfort, unless he was very good at hiding it. She squared her shoulders.

"Yes," she said. "That's my final answer."

He was silent for a minute, and then his face broke out in something that could almost be called a smile.

"Congratulations," he said. "You just solved your first case."

Her eyes widened, and she raised her hand to hit him. Violence wasn't usually her first reaction, but that had simply been cruel.

McCoy caught her wrist, and his grip loosened, but he didn't let go.

"Is that any way to thank me?" he asked.

"I can think of a few ways I'd like to thank you," she said.

She had intended it to be threatening, but his eyes darkened, and she flushed at his reaction, remembering his 'symptoms.'

"Is that right?" he asked. His voice was low, almost dangerous, at odds with his relaxed posture. Uhura felt a chill run through her, and she recognised it well enough to know it wasn't fear.

He pulled her forward, just a step, and she went willingly.

"What kind of things?" he asked, his voice even lower.

Uhura was well and truly screwed.

His hand was still on her wrist when he tugged her forward to kiss him, and he let go quickly. After a moment, when she didn't pull away, his hands moved to her waist, settling there with something almost like familiarity. His grip was firm but not tight, gentler than she would have expected, and a second later - after running through all the reasons why this was probably a very bad idea - Uhura kissed him back.

He was still leaning against the table, his knees bent, and he'd moved her so she was a little off balance, her legs on either side of his. It would be easy to slide forward, to lean in until she was all but straddling him, but they were still in a public space, and for all that McCoy seemed perfectly nice, Uhura had to remind herself that he was, essentially, a man she'd picked up at a bar.

So she moved back, instead, stilling her hands so they didn't worry at her skirt. McCoy's hands, she noticed, remained on her waist.

"So," she said, painfully aware that she was probably mirroring his 'symptoms.' "How did I do?"

"You're a natural," he said, and she was only partly certain he was talking about her medical training.

"So what's next?"

"Next," he said, letting his hands drop, "you agree to have dinner with me."

She was pretty sure it was an invitation, not an order, even if it didn't entirely sound like one. "And then?"

"And then," he said, "we move on to something a little more difficult."

She always did like a challenge.