Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: 

Friday, November 25th, 2242
139 West Side Road
South Bristol, Maine, North America, Earth

Corry was right, it was colder in Maine. A lot colder. The wind was biting sharp, and whipped along the coastal road as the cab deposited the two cadets in front of the house. The sky seemed to be clearing, though, the slivered moon catching a few glances down between cloud banks; sunlight was forecasted for the next day.

Scotty pulled the edges of his coat a little tighter, teeth chattering despite his best efforts not to let them. The cabbie who'd driven them there seemed to like having a window cracked, and the ride from Augusta had been long, cold and silent for his part, mostly spent tuning Corry's aimless chatter out, something he had become an expert at.

Now he was standing outside facing four days with no books, nothing to fiddle with, just a head full of idle thoughts and no where to really put them. He was already beginning to regret this.

"Wow. Man, it's a great night!" Corry grinned, setting his bag down and turning to the small inlet across the road where the tide was coming in. "Wouldja look at that."

"I'm lookin' at that," Scotty answered, thinking that his nose was going to freeze off while Cor communed with nature or whatever he was doing. Still, he wasn't about to interrupt; he'd heard more than enough about how much Corry loved Maine to understand how the other cadet felt, even without any frame of reference of his own.

Then again, South Bristol was on an island, and he was going to be a popsicle if he stood there much longer. "Corry--"

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Corry turned back away from the ocean and to the house, grabbing his bag. "Time is it?"

"Just shy 0100. And not gettin' any earlier."

Corry smiled and bounded up the porch steps of the two-story colonial, taking his keys from his pocket and unlocking the front door, revealing a warmly lit interior.  He stepped in, then tossed a glance back over his shoulder.

Which-- was right about the same time that Scotty decided that maybe it wasn't so cold, not really. Realizing just how utterly out of place he actually was, he wished he could transport back to the dorms, all the while wondering why he let himself get talked into this. He'd only met Corry's parents once, when they visited after the three-week summer break between one academic year and the next, and he sure as hell didn't know them well enough to want to invade their house. He gestured over his shoulder awkwardly. "Maybe I'll just go and--"

Cor sighed, walking back down and dragging Scotty up the steps by an arm, though not particularly roughly. "No time for chickening out now, Scotty."

Remains to be seen, Scotty thought, even as he protested, "I'm not a chicken!"

"Then stop acting like one!"

Scotty might have found a retort to that somewhere, but then Corry's mother stepped out. "Shhh, boys."

"Sorry Mom," Corry said, dropping his voice and letting go of his bag and his roommate to hug his mother. "Is Dad in bed?"

"He just turned in about an hour ago." She stepped back after returning the hug, smiling a warm, patient-looking smile in Scotty’s direction. "Are you two going to come in before we let all of the heat out?"

Corry grinned, stepping past his mother and immediately heading for the kitchen door, off to the right. Scotty fought down a wince -- oh, god, he felt like some kind of invader or some sort of bloody leech, or something other than a Starfleet cadet -- and eventually gave into the idea of warmth and followed. The door clicking shut behind him didn't do much for his nerves, though. 

It wasn’t that he hadn't liked Corry's parents when he'd first met them, because they seemed like such nice, genuine types -- and clearly loved their son deeply -- but he sure felt like he was abusing their hospitality now.

Corry's mother Melinda was giving him a look, and he got the impression from that alone that he wasn't the first unwitting victim dragged to this house. Shaking her head, she only chuckled, "Standing there isn't any less dangerous than sitting in the kitchen. We only bite when provoked."

Scotty blinked once or twice before he figured out it was a joke; nodding, he found his voice somewhere, "Aye, sorry, ma'am. Just--"

"He's a chicken, Mom," Cor said from the kitchen doorway, already holding a cup of tea and a warm turnover.

Scotty rolled his eyes with as much force as he could. "I'm not a chicken."

Melinda tilted her head, clearly suppressing a smile. "I don't know, Andy, I don't see any feathers."

"Plucked chicken?" Corry asked, shrugging.

"Not poultry at all," Scotty said, shooting the other cadet a slightly mocking smirk, "Andy."

Corry returned the smirk without skipping a beat, obviously going for the primitive nuclear warhead option to return fire with: "Then stop acting like it, Monty."

Melinda watched the short battle, amused, then pushed past her son to step into the kitchen while Scotty cringed over the invocation of that particular nickname. "Andy, why don't you come over here and put that engineering education of yours to work? This thing won't heat up."

"But Mom." Corry looked down at his turnover, then his tea.  Since it was clear he was about to start whining, Scotty just pushed past him, though not without a little shoulder-check in retaliation.

"What sort o' power source?" Scotty eyed the oven, kneeling in front of it. If Corry wouldn't let him have his books, maybe he could at least do something useful to repay his hosts.

Melinda turned on the overhead light. "Just electricity. I've been thinking of getting one of those new independent fusion ovens, but I haven't had the time to really weigh any pros and cons, with Rachel wanting to visit all of these different colleges." She sat down at the kitchen table, watching.

"Ye'd only need one o' those if ye were plannin' on cookin' a whole ox.  It’d be overkill outside of a large-scale production facility." Unless one wanted to do some half-baked home-based testing of impulse engine design theories, anyway, provided you didn’t mind possibly blowing yourself and half a klick of your neighbors up in the process.  But he still grinned briefly at the mental image of Mrs. Corrigan trying to shove a whole ox into the oven.

Pulling his penlight out of his pocket, he turned it on and halfway crawled into the small space, looking at the connections between the heating coils and where they drew their current. That was probably the problem there, since the rest of the stove worked; the metal wasn't conducting the current right. Primitive; he was used to working with matter and antimatter, with plasma-based impulse engines.

It had been awhile since he tackled a kitchen appliance.  Years even, he didn’t know how many.

But then, everyone started somewhere. He'd torn down a bad intercom box for his first real attempt at repair, somewhere about when he was five? Maybe four. But it had just fascinated him, the way a person could push a button and talk to someone across the house or across the country, or across an ocean, or all the way up in space. Just by pushing a button. So when he'd come across that old piece of machinery down in the basement, he'd sat there with his father's tools and tried to learn how it did what it did and why, and every little thing.

Of course, it hadn't worked like he might have wanted it to and he’d ended up breaking it worse, having no idea how to take that thing apart right back then, but it was a start and made him all but itch to start pulling other things apart.  It had almost been worth the trouble he got into over it, too. 

They tried to keep him away from the technology after that; sometimes they succeeded, but it never lasted forever because he only just kept getting better at fixing things.

The things that he could fix, anyway.

He backed out of the oven long enough to pull the safety breaker, then went back into it.  Balancing himself on the side wall, he stuck the penlight in his teeth and pulled his multitool out of his coat pocket. 

He could faintly hear Corry and his mother talking, but didn't pay it much mind. After all, it was more important to fix this than try to converse, and he would be the first to admit that talking was not his strong point.

He scraped at the end of the heating coil, shaking his head slightly at the carbon buildup on it. It was old; probably older than he was, come to think of it. But a bit more, should have it done. The oven was stuffy and not entirely comfortable, what with the way he was balancing, but tight spaces were never a problem for him. Engineers had to be able to work in tight spaces; access crawlways, underneath equipment, and-- that should do it! Grinning again around the light in his teeth, he carefully pushed the coil back into the back panel, listening for the telltale click of connection before getting back out of the dark space.

He flipped the breaker back, then crouched in front of the open door; before ten seconds had passed, his face was being baked and he backed off, closing the door so it could preheat. "Got it."

Corry mimed looking at a watch. "Wow, a full five minutes. I think you're slowing down in your old age, Scotty."

It wasn’t five minutes, but there were better battles to fight.  "Didn't see you jumpin' to the rescue, Corry," Scotty said, standing and brushing his hands off on his trousers absently, once his light and multitool were back in their appropriate pockets.

"You're an angel," Melinda said, offering a mug of tea and giving her son a brief, pointed look.

Scotty took the mug, wiping the dust from his not-often-used charm with a winning smile, more to needle Cor than for any better reason. "Not in the least, ma'am."

"Kiss ass," Corry snipped, and was rewarded with a light whap in the arm from his mother.

"Honestly, Andrew Jacob, you would think that after all of that Starfleet education, you would be willing to fix the oven yourself and not leave it to your guest." Melinda didn't have much of an edge on her voice, but that could have been because she had turned to setting the temperature.

Scotty held the mug two-handed and mouthed, oooh, Andrew Jacob, behind her back, then had to gnaw down a snicker at the glower he got back for it.

Cor rolled his eyes at least twice as hard as Scotty had earlier, sipping at his tea before answering, "Mom, he's my roommate, not a guest. He's the guy who leaves his boots where I'll trip over 'em every other damn day, and insists on staying up all hours of the night talking to himself--"

"--while ye sit over there and chatter about Maggie,” Scotty interrupted, “and leave yer half o' the room in complete shambles, then have the nerve to borrow my tools when yers get lost in that maw--"

"--after I get done trying to talk you into going to bed at a reasonable hour so the workbench light's not keeping me up, and after I get done throwing your boots in the closet where they belong--"

"--even though my boots're the only things that I don't bother to put away--"

"--instead leaving them in the middle of the floor--"

"All right, gentlemen," Melinda finally broke in, closing the oven door on the turkey and turning to give them both a look. "If you're going to argue all night, you can sleep outside."

"Sorry, Mom," Corry answered, practically in unison with Scotty's, "Sorry, ma'am."

"Drink your tea, then go to bed."

They didn't even make it to the living room before they were taking potshots at each other again.

The ray of sunlight crept from the window's edge across the wooden floor of the living room, over the couch, settled across one corner of the room, went up over the end table with the half-full cup of cold tea on it, and finally, over the sleeping cadet in the recliner. He didn't move, didn't so much as twitch, knowing somewhere in his subconscious that there wouldn't be a class to get to, that he was warm and comfortable, and that he could take his time coming back to the world of the living.

Needless to say, Scotty still didn't spend much time sleeping, though mostly these days because he was rocketing towards a career he couldn’t have even dreamed of when he was still in Aberdeen. He could go a few days on high-wired concentration, so wrapped up in a project or a theory that sleep never crossed his mind. It wasn't that he didn't get tired, he just never noticed. And when he finally did crash, he slept like the dead until he had to be awake for his first class of the day at 0630, and was up again without much effort.

But for the moment, there wasn't anywhere to be and there wasn't a thing to do, so there likewise wasn't much point in waking up.

It was finally the sounds of ceramic or china or something otherwise plate-like that pulled him from the black, heavy, dreamless sleep he'd fallen into. Blinking a few times into the bright light flooding through the window, he frowned slightly to himself and was looking around for a clock when he sighted one of the prettiest girls he'd seen in a long time; or, at least, since he'd been in Historical Engineering with Maggie yesterday.

Deductive reasoning might have told him that this was Rachel, Corry's younger sister, but just waking up all he knew was that she had long legs, blonde hair, and looked really damn good.

"Don't even think about it."

And speaking of Corry. "Think about what?"

"She's way too young for you."

Scotty managed to turn his head enough to see Cor, who was kicked back on the other chair in the shadows. "Too young...? I'm twenty!” he protested, incredulous.  “Ye'd think I was a bloody geezer, the way ye're talkin'."

"She's sixteen!" Corry waved a hand, as if he could throw the entire notion right out the window. "Besides, she has a new amour every week. You'd be number thirty-six, or something."

Scotty didn't see anything wrong with that, but by the time he looked back, the lovely Rachel was gone, and he was pretty sure that any attempts to flirt would be headed off at the pass by her older brother. Not that he was a very good flirt, mind; every time a girl showed more than a passing interest, his brain and mouth parted ways and one or the other stopped working entirely. "Lookin's not a crime."

"Do yourself a favor, and don't. She'll just break your heart, and then you'll blame me."

"Nu uh."

Cor sighed, then made an almost unforgivably blatant attempt to change the subject.  "Dinner's almost ready."

"Really?" Scotty was quite proud of himself for not asking if Rachel would be on the menu. He knew that would earn him a swat quicker than he could get the question out; much as he had found a great hobby in needling Corry over the past year, it wasn't worth being smacked.

Corry had gotten pretty good at reading his expressions, though, and narrowed his eyes at that not-quite-concealed smirk. "Ohhh, just go and get washed up, and if I catch you eying her up again, I'm gonna put you headfirst through the incinerator."

"Yes, mother," Scotty answered, sing-song, and in a good imitation of Corry's voice. He crawled out of the massive chair, stretching out and trying to remember how he'd fallen asleep downstairs instead of up in the guestroom. The last thing he could remember was Corry talking to his mother and that was it.

Rubbing at his eyes one-handed, he grabbed his boots and carryon with the other and headed upstairs.

"He's kinda cute. A little shorter than I like 'em, but cute," Rachel said, stepping into the living room after Scotty was up the steps and out of earshot.

Corry shot her an irritated glance. "Whatever happened to Bill?"

"Last month." She plopped down in the recently vacated chair, smiling over at her brother with a distinctly wicked look. "Smells good too. Girlfriend?  Boyfriend?  Romance in general?"

"Not that I know of," Corry sighed. He never knew when she was serious or joking, but this little ribbing could be either. Whatever happened to the sweet little girl that used to play with dolls and dress the cats up? He wasn't sure who he was feeling more protective of right now, his sister or his roommate. Talk about a tough spot to be in.

“You don’t have dibs, right?” Rach asked, smirking broadly at him.

Corry closed his eyes, long-suffering, and then remembered something and eyed his sister anew. "What about Rodney?" he asked, drawing the name out with all of the torment he could wring out of the two syllables. “Wasn’t he number thirty-five?”

Rachel made a face, shaking her head. "He was too handsy. Practically pawed me every time we went out no matter how many times I said no."

"Did he?" Corry's eyebrows jumped to the top of his forehead. "Maybe he needs a lesson in how to act on dates."

"No, I got him good. Dumped him in front of the whole school during lunch one day." She smirked again, obviously enjoying the memory. "He's an ass."

"He was the perfect man, last time you wrote me. 'Oh, Andy, he's just so nice and sweet, and he even brought me flowers!'" Now it was Corry's turn to smirk. The idea of some cretin trying to make out with his little sister without her explicit consent pissed him off, but the chance to get under her skin was just too good to pass up.  And hell, as a bonus, maybe if she was annoyed enough she wouldn’t string Scotty along like she no doubt was considering doing.

"Ohhh!" Rachel stood and pointed an accusing finger at him, though it was more time-honored sibling banter than anything serious. "Andy, you're just as mean as you were when you moved out. Do us all a favor and don't move back anytime soon!"  Then she stomped out, muttering a few obscenities intentionally loud enough for him to hear.

"Home sweet home," Corry whispered to himself, grinning and kicking back to finish reading the local forecast on the news screen. Seemed like they were in a stretch of clear skies, and in the back of his mind he wondered if he could get away with taking the boat out. True, November on the North Atlantic wasn't exactly prime sailing weather, but by the time good weather came around, he'd probably be starting his internship on some freighter or something.

And that was--

He dreaded it, no matter how much he told himself he didn’t and shouldn’t.  And the thing was, he really did like being an engineer, and it was a job he could live with, but he couldn't imagine spending a great deal of time in space.

But-- planetside assignments were coveted enough by the higher ranks that he stood almost no-chance of getting one.  Just like most other cadets on the same track as him, he’d have to do his time in space before getting a chance to come home.

And the idea of years out there, away from family and the ocean and all that he grounded himself on, felt bleak.

"What's the forecast like?"

"Four more days of sunny skies, Dad," Corry answered, dragging himself back to the moment and happier thoughts, looking up at the figure in the doorway. People always told him that he looked like his father -- the same blond hair and blue eyes, the same tall, wiry build, even the same smile. When he was a teenager, he hated the comparison. Now, he was beginning to appreciate it; there were far worse people to be like than Aaron Corrigan. "How long're you home for?"

His Dad leaned on the door frame, crossing his arms. "I have to head back out tomorrow, but only for a week. I was thinking of stopping by the campus and visiting."

"I'd like that," Corry chuckled, thumbing the power button for the reader off. "We don't have another simulation scheduled as far as I know, so any time you wanna drop by's okay by me."

"Hear you've made it into the top thirty of your class."

"Twenty-seventh!"

"Better than last year," Aaron said, smiling his approval and somehow making it seem less like a sappy-parent thing and more like a respectful-colleague thing. He was in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, and mostly concentrated on planetary architecture. Last month it had been building a life-support station on Amara VI, this month it had been hollowing out mining tunnels on a stationary asteroid, and next it could be anything. "Plan on keeping it up?"

"Long as Scotty keeps letting me copy his notes," Corry replied, grinning. He was only half-joking, but he wasn't about to tell his Dad that.

Aaron shook his head with a low laugh, turning back to the kitchen, and Corry leaned back in the chair and watched the sunlight creeping across the floor. Thanksgiving was never hectic in this household, and he appreciated that. Last Thanksgiving had found him trampling around an abandoned space station with the rest of the cadets, working under a time limit and trying to restore more than emergency life-support. This was preferable.

He wasn't really sure how long he was lost in his own thoughts -- about his career, about his family, about Maggie and where she was spending Thanksgiving or even if her family celebrated it -- but the call for dinner pulled him away from it. Standing, he slipped into the kitchen and sat down; Scotty was about three paces behind, looking like some kind of animal about to be sent to the chopping block, a kind of quiet dread on his face.

It didn’t seem to actually be any worse than the usual social awkwardness Cor’s roommate tended to drown in on the regular, though, so Corry debated on sympathy and decided to stick to amusement. He leaned over and murmured, "See chair. Sit in chair. Scoot chair to table.”

"See Corry. See Corry get beaten. See table go flyin'," was the aside-whispered reply.

Corry beamed a smile at his mother, his father, his sister, mostly trying to cover up the fact that he stood up, reached over, viced down on the back of the Scotty's neck and forced him down into a chair. "Turkey smells terrific, Mom," he said over Scotty's low grumble.

"Why thank you, Andy, and when you finish mistreating our guest, please get out the carving utensils," Melinda answered, not even looking up as she finished setting the different dishes on the table.

"She couldn't have seen that. How'd she see that?" Corry asked quietly, not sure if he was impressed or irritated by the fact that she had, settling back in his own seat.

"Dunno," Scotty replied in a sullen whisper as he rubbed at the back of his neck. He still looked like he was waiting for someone to stick a noose over his head.  Well, until Rachel gave him a smile, the exact kind of smile her brother knew was aimed to rope in the unsuspecting and dopey. And Scotty must have forgotten about the noose he had been waiting on, because he went from zero to smitten in under two seconds.

Cor just sighed and shook his head at the inevitable heart-bruising that was going to take place before going to get the carving knife out.

Regardless of the little tiffs, though, it was a certain kind of wonderful to sit down to a home-cooked meal, surrounded by the people he loved and the safe familiarity of the house he was raised in.

Looking on as his mother took her place, and as his father finished adjusting his silverware, and as his sister made lovey-eyes at his now stupidly grinning roommate, he thought maybe that it really didn't get much better in life than this.

"I just don't get it. Not one damn bit."

Corry raised an eyebrow, glancing over at Scotty, who was strung out on Dad’s recliner and staring forlornly at the ceiling.

It wasn't like Cor hadn't tried to warn Scotty that Rachel would just lead him on, but then, his advice was never heeded. "I told you so."

"Ye're just so sympathetic, I don't even know what to do," Scotty shot back, sarcastically, then went back to looking heartbroken. Apparently, spending two whole days following Rachel around like a lovesick puppy only to get the inevitable brush-off had devastated him for life.

At least to look at him, one would think that.

Corry rubbed over his face like he could scrub his vague annoyance off with the palm of his hand. He'd tolerated the whole charade, knowing exactly what the outcome would be, and now he was expected to console someone who had just been asking to get burned.

"Look,” he said, bluntly, “she's a maneater and you're being silly. What were you expecting, everlasting love? Roses and white dresses and a big ole wedding? Cripes, Scotty, get over it."  

He wasn't surprised when he didn't get more than a 'hrrmph!' in answer and a crude bit of sign-language that was easily interpreted. It wasn't hard to offend Scotty; at least he usually got over it fairly fast.

This time the silence lasted a full three minutes before Cor heard the muttered, "Bastard." Which was another way of saying that Scotty couldn't stand being left to his own devices for more time and needed something to keep his interest; if he didn't have a machine to bury himself in, Corry was apparently the second best distraction. There were more than a few times in the past several months where Corry wondered if maybe the other cadet should have been put on medication for hyperactivity.

Or, barring that, somehow hooked up to the power grid; he could likely run half the eastern seaboard all on his own.

"Yes, but where would you be without me?" Cor asked, looking over again.

Scotty waved a hand in the air in a dismissive gesture. "Back at the Academy?  Doing somethin’ involvin’ my future career?"

"No.  You’d still be a third-year trying to pass Basic Language, shunned and miserable, and tripping over your own boots every five minutes," Corry laid out, matter-of-factly. "And I'd still be a third-year, trying to pass Year Three SS&D, loved and adored, and not tripping over your boots every five minutes."

"Ye're right, it's all yer bloody fault," Scotty chuckled, tipping his head back far enough over the armrest to peer at Corry upside-down. Putting on an almost desperate voice, he continued, "I shoulda known gettin' mixed up with the likes o' you woulda been trouble. Now here I am, just completely devastated and contemplatin' jumpin’ from a cliff, all because--"

Corry barely managed to chew a smile down. Barely. "You have melodrama down to a fine science."

"I'm insulted. This is genuine, pure, complete heartache!” Scotty pressed a hand to his chest, over his ostensibly broken heart, still looking at Corry with an absurd amount of fake woe.  “I'm dyin' here, Corry, and ye just have to go and twist the knife."

Cor raised an eyebrow, holding onto his composure by some miracle. "If you're heartbroken, pal, I'm Surak of Vulcan."

Apparently, though, Scotty was well over his lovesickness, and grinned quick and bright. "Nice to meet ye. Did ye know that I happen to be Bonnie Prince Charlie?"

"And here I thought you were Johnny Walker."

"Just happens to be a barely tolerable whisky, if one has to make do with blended. I suppose that'd work too."

"Spoken like a lush. Or a snob. Or a snobby lush."

Scotty snorted back at him. “Tasteless hack.”

"But at least I’m not a chicken."

"No, but ye may be a turkey."

"Rich, coming from the goose."

"Uhm-- would that make ye a, uh-- penguin?"

Corry rolled his eyes, but finally gave into the laugh he’d been holding back. "Ye're pathetic."

"Yes, mother."