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

Chapter Text

Everything was gray.  The air.  The sea.  The roads, the slush.

It was his second winter on Earth of the past; New Bedford, though, was no more colorful than New York had been.  Under normal circumstances, Spock would have kept his outings to a well-bundled walk through Fort Phoenix or along the shoreline, the cold and salty air stinging his exposed skin as the wind whipped off the bay, and then retreated back to the house to put a kettle on for tea and perhaps start cooking dinner.

These were not normal circumstances.

Nyota's sedan was cramped and its heater was only barely strong enough to keep up with the New England winter, but Spock was grateful for her company.  While he could have figured out how to drive the pickup in an emergency, the only person who could have taught him with any expediency was curled into the corner of the couch shivering and laboring for every breath.

"Don't tell Scotty," Nyota had said, once they were in the car and headed for New Bedford for food and medicine, "but I asked Leonard for some advice before driving up."

Spock had agreed immediately, if only because it was certain that if Leonard McCoy was involved, Montgomery Scott would resist purely on principle.  While Spock knew his bondmate didn't hate McCoy, there remained a real and hot-edged resentment there.  McCoy, despite his guilt slowly eating him, was never going to swallow his own pride enough to apologize; Scotty, no matter how much time passed, would never be able to view the man as anything but a moral coward.

(It didn't matter that Scotty hadn't been able to end Edith's life himself; by what measure of courage the man held himself and everyone else to, McCoy had failed bitterly.  Spock suspected that it wasn't about Edith at all, but that McCoy had so easily and blithely cast aside his own daughter's existence.)

Still, Spock didn't have it in him to turn away the advice of a doctor right now.  He hadn't given Scotty any choice about going to the clinic, and accepted the anger and anxiety he got back at the insistence, but after they were sent away with a ditto sheet about pneumonia and a bottle of antibiotics, he knew there was nothing to gain from trying again.  McCoy's advice was limited by the era they were trapped in, but it was still more than they'd gotten from the clinic, so there were groceries and medicine and a humidifier in the trunk now, hopefully enough to tip the balance.

"He'll be all right," Nyota said, breaking into Spock's troubled thoughts. "Scotty's one of the toughest people I've ever met."

She was an exceptionally perceptive woman; Spock knew his worry about his bondmate was well-controlled, but Nyota had long since proven able to see through it.  He didn't know if she was aware of their status to one another, but if she was, she would not be the first to say it, so he did.

"He is my bondmate," Spock admitted, in his own Vulcan dialect, because it seemed the most appropriate way to convey such an important piece of information.

"I thought as much," she answered in the same, quiet pleasure resonating in her tone. "It brings me contentment, knowing that."

Outside, flurries started swirling down; even behind glass and steel, Spock's skin prickled with the known cold of it.  The day rushed towards an early night, gray darkening; even for that, Spock could find peace in the company of his friend.  A distraction from his worries, and his limited ability to do anything to alleviate them.

Still, when the sign on the side of the old department store came into view, advertising a sale, he had a moment's inspiration. "Pull over?" he requested, and then headed inside after she parked, hunched against the cold.

Later, with his bondmate wrapped in the new blue and pink electric blanket, dozing a little more easily with a humidifier nearby, and with Nyota sitting with Spock in the kitchen speaking softly in his native tongue, tea cradled in her hands, he was finally able to leave both the gray and the cold outside.