Bourbon, Chapter Six
Mar. 4th, 2011 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teaoliChapter Six: Smoke and Molasses
A follow-up to The Comes Spock, the Don't Lose Your Compass sequel.
By![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teaoli
Summary:They had a thing going on. Until they didn't. Forced to work together in order to unravel the mystery of twins they both wish to protect, they must accept there's still something between them, in spite of all their past hurts.
( Bourbon & Amaretto )
( Dark Amber Burn )
( Fiery Flush )
( Sweet Escape, Bitter Almond )
( Hazy Hopes )
( Whiskey Lies )
Upenda shook with a rage so strong it frightened her, and it only got worse as seconds passed, Len stared back at her, looking for all the universe like he thought she was the one who’d done something reprehensible. The sense of betrayal was beyond her experience. Her reaction to it was out of proportion with anything she’d ever expected.
“I wanted,” she said again after taking a deep, steadying breath, “to make sure you knew what was going on and find out you felt about it.” She took another breath, unclenched her fisted hands. “I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted… I wanted to talk to you because you have a right to know. I wanted to spend time with you because I—”
Abruptly breaking off, she spun away from him and stalked towards the main lab exit.
“Pen!” he called after her. “Upenda, wait!”
She didn’t stop until she was through the door and down the hall, waiting agitatedly for the lift.
Upenda had always been the most easygoing of the three Uhura siblings. Everyone said so. While Muta and Ennie were busy taking life so seriously, Pen always taken pains to remind herself — and them — humans needed to balance the important pursuits with fun. She was the last to anger and the first to forgive. This level of fury was completely foreign to her.
“Pen, I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t even heard him come after her. When she looked over her shoulder, eyes still blazing, words full of accusation and pain died on her tongue. There was enough pain on his face for both of them.
“Give me a chance to explain,” he said, pleaded.
Another breath and she was almost there. Almost ready to listen.
“Please.”
Careful to skirt around him, she led the way back to the lab.
_____
He’d known better than to suspect her. She wouldn’t ever do anything that endangered the people she loved. Yes, sometimes she did shit she couldn’t possibly really want to do — and with a smile on her face, too — but only if it helped.
She’d braved Atlanta and a ballroom full of McCoys celebrating his mother’s birthday just so his little girl could show off her new friend and new clothes. He knew she’d do anything for her sisters little girls. Because family was everything to Upenda Uhura.
__________
“I cannot believe tonight! First, your daughter abandons me, and now this?” She turned her face up and laughed into the rain.
“And it’s only gonna get worse,” he predicted. “Why don’t you let me make it up to you. Stay. Flight’ll be canceled, anyway.”
“I didn’t bring any bags,” she protested. “I wasn’t planning on staying the night!”
“I’m sure I got something you can squeeze into.” His teasing drawl sent her into a fit of giggles. Cold and wet as the both were, he liked feeling that came with her shaking like that against him. “C’mon, darlin’, there won’t be any flights tonight, and a GP doesn’t usually qualify for emergency transport credits — even ones whose last name is Uhura.”
She swatted him and danced out of his hold, giggling again. Just as the storm got worse.
“Fine!” she called over the sound of rain sheeting down all around them. “But I’m still not convinced you didn’t have something to do with all this. Leonard Horatio McCoy!”
She waved a hand towards the sky. He looked up automatically, and got a face full of wet for his trouble. Snarling, he reached for her.
High heels and all, she dashed towards his hover vehicle. Almost made it, too.
“Woman!” he said, lifting her off her feet and holding her against his chest. “You did that on purpose.”
“How was I supposed to know you were as well-trained as Pavlov’s dog?” She tried for an innocent grin.
He didn’t buy it.
“You’re gonna pay for that one, sug.”
“Promise?”
_____
He was supposed to make a real, honest to goodness fire while she got out of her wet things.
“I love the smell of woodsmoke,” she claimed as she stepped into his bedroom and shut the door. “It’s romantic, don’t you think?”
Len didn’t have an opinion about it one way or the other, but he was more than willing to please her just about any way he could.
The little house he got to call home the few times he was dirtside and not stuck at Starfleet wasn’t big enough to swing a cat, but tonight that just meant it wouldn’t take long to warm it up. And the sooner it warmed up, well…
The sound of an old-fashioned door swinging open distracted him from stacking logs. He glanced over just in time to see her emerge.
Pen managed to transform rags into temptations. Leonard’s breath caught when she came out of his bedroom in nothing but his saggy pajama bottoms and the one piece of Ole Miss memorabilia that went everywhere he went. The ratty old sweatshirt was more fray than fabric. He couldn’t say which excited him more: the though of taking it off her, or seeing her wear it in the first place.
Standing, he crossed the to where she leaned against the doorjamb.
“My momma woulda told me to throw that thing away a hundred years ago if she knew I still had it.” He ran a finger over the cracked lettering dipping and rising across her chest. “I’m glad she didn’t know.”
Her laughter warmed him up in more ways than one. All thoughts of building up a fire against the storm raging outside his tiny cottage fled. They’d make their own heat.
_____
“I wish Joanna was here.”
He rolled onto his side and stared at her. Then he reached over and gently knocked his fist against her forehead, pretending to listen intently.
“I meant I wish she was home, you idiot!” She shoved his hand away; grinning like the idiot she’d accused him of being, he snaked it around her waist to pull her close.
“Chances are, if she was home, she’d want to keep you all to herself. Probably make you stay up all night talking girly stuff.”
“Maybe,” she said, noncommittally. Pen’s smile was a little more enigmatic than he wanted know about. “She might have decided she ‘just too tired’ to keep me company.”
“I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Probably not just yet. Maybe when you’re older.”
He shifted himself and settled her more comfortably in his arms.
“Think she had something to do with the storm?”
Her answering laugh started him warming up all over again.
_____
“What time will she be home?” It was late and the answer was “too soon.” He pulled her close again.
“Why? You plan on still being here when she gets in?”
She burrowed her face into his chest. Her nose was cold. He never did make that fire.
“She’ll never let me forget it if I’m not.”
“Good. ‘Cause if you left, I’d get it from her way before you did.”
She laughed, the soft sound wrapping around him like a blanket. When she looked up, her molasses eyes were serious.
“We’re alike that way, you and me.” She smiled at him again, tracing a slender finger along his cheek. “Family is everything. Maybe they make us crazy, but we’d still do almost anything for them.”
.
.
He knew better, but he’d done it anyway. And there was no guarantee she would forgive him this time.
_____
Upenda sat behind her desk, watching her hands twisting in her lap. It was easier than looking at him. She made herself do it anyway
“How long, Len?” she asked, her voice more controlled than she was feeling. “How many times.”
She waited for him to answer. She waited for him to explain how he could do something that changed everything she thought she knew about whatever it was between them. And as she waited, she prepared herself to do something she never thought she’d need to do with Leonard McCoy. Shaking fingers gripped the desktop.
He opened his mouth a few times before anything came out, and when he finally spoke, Upenda Listened.
“Only a little while, Pen. Just a few moments. And only this once. Only today.”
She Heard his anguish. She Heard his regret. She heard his honestly.
“I see.”
_____
Leonard waited for her to say something more. Anything. Braced himself to hear her holler about how he was fucked up and needed to stay the hell away from her. What got was a whole lot of silent nothing, instead. It crossed his mind that she’d been spending too much time with Vulcans because, looking at her, he didn’t have a clue what she was conjuring up behind her maple syrup-colored eyes. They looked more sad than angry now, and knowing that was his fault didn’t make staring into them any easier.
“I know it was wrong,” he admitted, shifting in the chair facing her desk. “Knew when I doing it. Knew when I was thinking about doing it.”
Her silence was an accusation in and of itself, but at least she wasn’t giving him the death glare anymore. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was more than he deserved.
“I’m lost, Pen. I don’t know what’s going on, can’t figure it out for the life of me, and that’s not something I’m used to.” He raked a hand through his hair, used it as an excuse to get away from the eyes. “Damn it, I’m trying to help your family and I—”
“And you thought that maybe they needed protecting from me?” Her words were, but the tone was absent.
“No!” He shot up out of his seat, met her gaze again and had to look away. “No. I know you’d never do anything to hurt them, sug. I know that. But I’m at the end of my wits here and… and you’ve got something going on that you’re not telling me—”
“Can’t,” she cut it. And even without inflection, her voice cut like a razor.
He risked another look. Disappointment, grief even, lined her face. Instead of detracting from her attractiveness it made him feel like a bigger shit than ever. She’d had a lot of reactions to him in the past, but this one was completely new. He let himself get lost in memories of better times. Moments they weren’t likely to repeat if he didn’t do something to fix this mess he’d created.
“We’re alike that way, you and me.” What he saw in her smile, her hand on his face made him flush and his heart race. “Family is everything. Maybe they make us crazy, but we’d still do almost anything for them.”
Shaking his head, he snapped back to the present. “Huh?”
Pen sighed, sounding almost exasperated. He’d take the vexation over her sorrow any day.
“I can’t tell you.” She didn’t sound like a robot anymore, either. “I want to. And one day — hopefully soon — I will. But I can’t right now.”
“If what you’re not telling me can help your sister and the twins and Spock…” He trailed off, knowing it was useless. She’d never do anything to her family. Not even inadvertently. Pen was too smart for that.
“It can’t, Len.” The softer tone, the kinder eyes, gave him a little taste of hope. “But if it works out, I think I might be able to give them some insurance, and buy you some time.”
At that, his jawed dropped. “Buy me some…” he managed to get out of his mouth before he looked like an idiot with it hanging open. But then he shook his head again, smiling a little this time around. He was starting to sound like a damned parrot. And think about a well as one, too not to see that part of the puzzle. “Astra and the ambassador…?”
“They’re willing. We don’t know if it will work.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
She smiled at him then. The real deal, full of warmth and affection.
“I’ll let you know.”
He could live with that, he decided. For now, anyway. Even if she hadn’t exactly said he was forgiven, she wasn’t looking like he’d killed her puppy. More could wait.
“How about that dinner you promised me?” He was going for light and teasing, and failing miserably.
Her smile disappeared.
“Maybe another time.” He stared at her desk, at the fingers twisting around each other on its shiny surface. “Maybe lunch tomorrow? We still need to talk about Joanna.”
“Maybe,” he echoed.
A follow-up to The Comes Spock, the Don't Lose Your Compass sequel.
By
teaoliSummary:They had a thing going on. Until they didn't. Forced to work together in order to unravel the mystery of twins they both wish to protect, they must accept there's still something between them, in spite of all their past hurts.
( Bourbon & Amaretto )
( Dark Amber Burn )
( Fiery Flush )
( Sweet Escape, Bitter Almond )
( Hazy Hopes )
( Whiskey Lies )
Upenda shook with a rage so strong it frightened her, and it only got worse as seconds passed, Len stared back at her, looking for all the universe like he thought she was the one who’d done something reprehensible. The sense of betrayal was beyond her experience. Her reaction to it was out of proportion with anything she’d ever expected.
“I wanted,” she said again after taking a deep, steadying breath, “to make sure you knew what was going on and find out you felt about it.” She took another breath, unclenched her fisted hands. “I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted… I wanted to talk to you because you have a right to know. I wanted to spend time with you because I—”
Abruptly breaking off, she spun away from him and stalked towards the main lab exit.
“Pen!” he called after her. “Upenda, wait!”
She didn’t stop until she was through the door and down the hall, waiting agitatedly for the lift.
Upenda had always been the most easygoing of the three Uhura siblings. Everyone said so. While Muta and Ennie were busy taking life so seriously, Pen always taken pains to remind herself — and them — humans needed to balance the important pursuits with fun. She was the last to anger and the first to forgive. This level of fury was completely foreign to her.
“Pen, I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t even heard him come after her. When she looked over her shoulder, eyes still blazing, words full of accusation and pain died on her tongue. There was enough pain on his face for both of them.
“Give me a chance to explain,” he said, pleaded.
Another breath and she was almost there. Almost ready to listen.
“Please.”
Careful to skirt around him, she led the way back to the lab.
He’d known better than to suspect her. She wouldn’t ever do anything that endangered the people she loved. Yes, sometimes she did shit she couldn’t possibly really want to do — and with a smile on her face, too — but only if it helped.
She’d braved Atlanta and a ballroom full of McCoys celebrating his mother’s birthday just so his little girl could show off her new friend and new clothes. He knew she’d do anything for her sisters little girls. Because family was everything to Upenda Uhura.
“I cannot believe tonight! First, your daughter abandons me, and now this?” She turned her face up and laughed into the rain.
“And it’s only gonna get worse,” he predicted. “Why don’t you let me make it up to you. Stay. Flight’ll be canceled, anyway.”
“I didn’t bring any bags,” she protested. “I wasn’t planning on staying the night!”
“I’m sure I got something you can squeeze into.” His teasing drawl sent her into a fit of giggles. Cold and wet as the both were, he liked feeling that came with her shaking like that against him. “C’mon, darlin’, there won’t be any flights tonight, and a GP doesn’t usually qualify for emergency transport credits — even ones whose last name is Uhura.”
She swatted him and danced out of his hold, giggling again. Just as the storm got worse.
“Fine!” she called over the sound of rain sheeting down all around them. “But I’m still not convinced you didn’t have something to do with all this. Leonard Horatio McCoy!”
She waved a hand towards the sky. He looked up automatically, and got a face full of wet for his trouble. Snarling, he reached for her.
High heels and all, she dashed towards his hover vehicle. Almost made it, too.
“Woman!” he said, lifting her off her feet and holding her against his chest. “You did that on purpose.”
“How was I supposed to know you were as well-trained as Pavlov’s dog?” She tried for an innocent grin.
He didn’t buy it.
“You’re gonna pay for that one, sug.”
“Promise?”
He was supposed to make a real, honest to goodness fire while she got out of her wet things.
“I love the smell of woodsmoke,” she claimed as she stepped into his bedroom and shut the door. “It’s romantic, don’t you think?”
Len didn’t have an opinion about it one way or the other, but he was more than willing to please her just about any way he could.
The little house he got to call home the few times he was dirtside and not stuck at Starfleet wasn’t big enough to swing a cat, but tonight that just meant it wouldn’t take long to warm it up. And the sooner it warmed up, well…
The sound of an old-fashioned door swinging open distracted him from stacking logs. He glanced over just in time to see her emerge.
Pen managed to transform rags into temptations. Leonard’s breath caught when she came out of his bedroom in nothing but his saggy pajama bottoms and the one piece of Ole Miss memorabilia that went everywhere he went. The ratty old sweatshirt was more fray than fabric. He couldn’t say which excited him more: the though of taking it off her, or seeing her wear it in the first place.
Standing, he crossed the to where she leaned against the doorjamb.
“My momma woulda told me to throw that thing away a hundred years ago if she knew I still had it.” He ran a finger over the cracked lettering dipping and rising across her chest. “I’m glad she didn’t know.”
Her laughter warmed him up in more ways than one. All thoughts of building up a fire against the storm raging outside his tiny cottage fled. They’d make their own heat.
“I wish Joanna was here.”
He rolled onto his side and stared at her. Then he reached over and gently knocked his fist against her forehead, pretending to listen intently.
“I meant I wish she was home, you idiot!” She shoved his hand away; grinning like the idiot she’d accused him of being, he snaked it around her waist to pull her close.
“Chances are, if she was home, she’d want to keep you all to herself. Probably make you stay up all night talking girly stuff.”
“Maybe,” she said, noncommittally. Pen’s smile was a little more enigmatic than he wanted know about. “She might have decided she ‘just too tired’ to keep me company.”
“I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Probably not just yet. Maybe when you’re older.”
He shifted himself and settled her more comfortably in his arms.
“Think she had something to do with the storm?”
Her answering laugh started him warming up all over again.
“What time will she be home?” It was late and the answer was “too soon.” He pulled her close again.
“Why? You plan on still being here when she gets in?”
She burrowed her face into his chest. Her nose was cold. He never did make that fire.
“She’ll never let me forget it if I’m not.”
“Good. ‘Cause if you left, I’d get it from her way before you did.”
She laughed, the soft sound wrapping around him like a blanket. When she looked up, her molasses eyes were serious.
“We’re alike that way, you and me.” She smiled at him again, tracing a slender finger along his cheek. “Family is everything. Maybe they make us crazy, but we’d still do almost anything for them.”
.
.
He knew better, but he’d done it anyway. And there was no guarantee she would forgive him this time.
Upenda sat behind her desk, watching her hands twisting in her lap. It was easier than looking at him. She made herself do it anyway
“How long, Len?” she asked, her voice more controlled than she was feeling. “How many times.”
She waited for him to answer. She waited for him to explain how he could do something that changed everything she thought she knew about whatever it was between them. And as she waited, she prepared herself to do something she never thought she’d need to do with Leonard McCoy. Shaking fingers gripped the desktop.
He opened his mouth a few times before anything came out, and when he finally spoke, Upenda Listened.
“Only a little while, Pen. Just a few moments. And only this once. Only today.”
She Heard his anguish. She Heard his regret. She heard his honestly.
“I see.”
Leonard waited for her to say something more. Anything. Braced himself to hear her holler about how he was fucked up and needed to stay the hell away from her. What got was a whole lot of silent nothing, instead. It crossed his mind that she’d been spending too much time with Vulcans because, looking at her, he didn’t have a clue what she was conjuring up behind her maple syrup-colored eyes. They looked more sad than angry now, and knowing that was his fault didn’t make staring into them any easier.
“I know it was wrong,” he admitted, shifting in the chair facing her desk. “Knew when I doing it. Knew when I was thinking about doing it.”
Her silence was an accusation in and of itself, but at least she wasn’t giving him the death glare anymore. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was more than he deserved.
“I’m lost, Pen. I don’t know what’s going on, can’t figure it out for the life of me, and that’s not something I’m used to.” He raked a hand through his hair, used it as an excuse to get away from the eyes. “Damn it, I’m trying to help your family and I—”
“And you thought that maybe they needed protecting from me?” Her words were, but the tone was absent.
“No!” He shot up out of his seat, met her gaze again and had to look away. “No. I know you’d never do anything to hurt them, sug. I know that. But I’m at the end of my wits here and… and you’ve got something going on that you’re not telling me—”
“Can’t,” she cut it. And even without inflection, her voice cut like a razor.
He risked another look. Disappointment, grief even, lined her face. Instead of detracting from her attractiveness it made him feel like a bigger shit than ever. She’d had a lot of reactions to him in the past, but this one was completely new. He let himself get lost in memories of better times. Moments they weren’t likely to repeat if he didn’t do something to fix this mess he’d created.
“We’re alike that way, you and me.” What he saw in her smile, her hand on his face made him flush and his heart race. “Family is everything. Maybe they make us crazy, but we’d still do almost anything for them.”
Shaking his head, he snapped back to the present. “Huh?”
Pen sighed, sounding almost exasperated. He’d take the vexation over her sorrow any day.
“I can’t tell you.” She didn’t sound like a robot anymore, either. “I want to. And one day — hopefully soon — I will. But I can’t right now.”
“If what you’re not telling me can help your sister and the twins and Spock…” He trailed off, knowing it was useless. She’d never do anything to her family. Not even inadvertently. Pen was too smart for that.
“It can’t, Len.” The softer tone, the kinder eyes, gave him a little taste of hope. “But if it works out, I think I might be able to give them some insurance, and buy you some time.”
At that, his jawed dropped. “Buy me some…” he managed to get out of his mouth before he looked like an idiot with it hanging open. But then he shook his head again, smiling a little this time around. He was starting to sound like a damned parrot. And think about a well as one, too not to see that part of the puzzle. “Astra and the ambassador…?”
“They’re willing. We don’t know if it will work.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
She smiled at him then. The real deal, full of warmth and affection.
“I’ll let you know.”
He could live with that, he decided. For now, anyway. Even if she hadn’t exactly said he was forgiven, she wasn’t looking like he’d killed her puppy. More could wait.
“How about that dinner you promised me?” He was going for light and teasing, and failing miserably.
Her smile disappeared.
“Maybe another time.” He stared at her desk, at the fingers twisting around each other on its shiny surface. “Maybe lunch tomorrow? We still need to talk about Joanna.”
“Maybe,” he echoed.
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Date: 2011-03-08 07:48 pm (UTC)