"God damn corn-fed, hare-brained kid just thinks he can land on any planet in the universe by the seat of his pants. Of all the ridiculous things. . ."

McCoy was wearing his permanent scowl as he marched around the medbay, mercilessly administering hypospray after hypospray to several officers who were supposed to be planet bound three hours ago.

They were awaiting transport to Corinth IV, seconds away from being beamed down, when McCoy came barging into the transport room spewing curse words and flailing his arms. Apparently, a deadly virus had been plaguing the native population and while extremely contagious, a simple inoculation was all that was needed to prevent infection.

Captain Kirk, who had not consulted the good doctor before disembarking, was the first to receive the business end of McCoy's hypospray and was the last to stop complaining about it.

Uhura watched McCoy work his way toward her. His temper had been diffused somewhat now that several of their fellow officers had been vaccinated, but he was still visibly agitated when he approached Sulu, who was seated directly next to Uhura on a biobed.

"Ever see the Corinthian virus face to face, Sulu?"

"Can't say I have, doctor-" Sulu began bravely. Uhura kept her gaze pointed forward, but stole a glance over at the doctor and saw his eyes narrowing as he readied the hypospray. She heard the cushion scrunch as Sulu prepared for the injection.

"Once you're infected, the friendly amoebas in your body suddenly turn into your ex-wife with a grudge and an empty bank account."

"I . . . I beg your pardon?"

"Your spine's now enemy number one, and once the bacteria in your body are finished paralyzing you from the neck down by gnawing on your bones, they go for the good stuff: kidney, lungs, pancreas, and heart," McCoy administered the hypospray abruptly, but with a hand of impeccable professionalism.

"So the next time your captain wants to dump you on a planet without giving you a vaccine, it might help to remember that the cells in you body are always precariously perched between life and death."

Sulu opened his mouth to thank the doctor, but McCoy had turned to a nurse and was selecting a fresh dosage for Uhura. Sulu quickly turned to Uhura with a gulp.

"I don't think I've ever seen him so. . . pissed. Need a little support?"

Uhura chuckled quietly, shaking her head.

"Thanks, Sulu, but I'll be fine. I'll see you in the transport bay."

Sulu nodded quickly and fled the medbay, leaving Uhura and McCoy staring each other down.

"Any allergies, kid?"

"That's Lieutenant, doctor."

Uhura was expecting McCoy to bristle, but instead he blushed. His reaction caught her off guard, and she was going to tell him to relax when he corrected himself.

"Any allergies, Lieutenant?"

"No," she arched an eyebrow. "But I wonder why Lieutenant Sulu wasn't asked that question?"

The nurse assisting McCoy quickly deposited the vaccination tray on the cushion beside Uhura and retreated, sensing the escalating energy between the officers as McCoy braced his arms on the frame and leaned into Uhura. His eyes were dark and for a moment Uhura considered apologizing for her quick tongue.

"I've had the distinct honor of having Lieutenant Sulu as a patient after a multitude of away missions gone awry, so I'm fairly familiar with his medical history," his thick Mississippi drawl was slow and soft but it fell on Uhura's finely tuned ears as a sharp knife, and she relished in its depth.

"You, on the other hand, have had either the fortitude or the fortune to keep away from my med bay, and it's my job to keep it that way. Now, are there any other aspects to my position as Chief Medical Officer that you would like to critique, Lieutenant?"

Her mother raised her to be a lady, to hold her head high but stay humble. The Academy had also raised her, however, and her love of subtext in words, in vernacular, in simple transitory verbs and articles had given her a penchant for reading between the lines in conversation.

McCoy was anything but a quick study – there was an intensity to his crass and abrupt tone that others would shy away from (the exception being Kirk, but Uhura attributed that to thick-headedness rather than adept perception). Uhura, whose talent was centered on translation and meaning, suddenly found her interest piqued. Whatever lurked beneath McCoy's surface was none of her business, but Uhura couldn't ignore her desire to decode his acerbic words.

"Your bedside manner is impeccable," Uhura quipped at last, sticking her chin out defiantly. She made a quick mental apology to her mother for losing sight of her humility.

McCoy leaned back, chuckling mirthlessly as he shook in head in disbelief and armed himself with a hypospray.

"Well, aren't you a pocketful of sunshine."

Uhura could contain herself no longer and allowed her lips to curve up in a warm smile as McCoy pushed the tip of the hypospray up against the bare skin between her neck and shoulder. He peered into her eyes, and Uhura thought she saw a flicker of a smile pass over his lips before his expression tightened into gruff professionalism.

"Is there something amusing about the Corinthian virus, Lieutenant?"

"No," Uhura shook her head, the genuine smile on her lips causing the McCoy's eyebrows to furrow further. "I just like the way you speak."

He stuck her with the hypospray and Uhura closed her eyes in a wince. She opened her eyes to see McCoy retreating to the other side of the medbay, flinging the empty injection cartridge into a trash chute as he went.

"Jesus Christ," McCoy grumbled, shifting Uhura slightly in his arms so that her head wouldn't jostle so much against his shoulder. "That horse threw off every last son of a bitch in that corral but Aunt Jen."

He could see a dark, cool spot near the entrance to the cave. Outside, one of Lactra VII's infamous sandstorms was violently rolling in. Communication with the Enterprise and with the other members of his away team was down until the storm ran its course.

"You know," McCoy went on, gently positioning Uhura against the side of the cave as a heavy sense of dread filled in his stomach. "Most of those guys had been wrangling for ten, twenty years and they couldn't touch that god damn stallion, but Aunt Jen . . . damn woman was five foot tall and bat shit crazy, but the woman had a way with animals-" McCoy halted his speech immediately when he noticed Uhura's eyes were shut.

"Hey," McCoy clapped his hands loudly inches away from Uhura's face. She opened her eyes, much too slow for his liking.

"Am I boring you, sweetheart?"

She smiled softly at him, and the crease in his frown deepened.

"It's Lieutenant, doctor," she said shaking her head.

"Don't move, damn it."

"-And I was simply enjoying the story."

"I told you not to close your eyes. Jesus God damned Christ, you crashed straight into a rock, remember? Now, follow the light with your eyes," he instructed, pulling out his pen light and shining it into her eyes. He watched her carefully as her dark pupils struggled to focus on his pen light as he moved it from left to right.

In the light, he could see he had his work cut out for him: A shallow cut that ran from her temple to her scalp was leaving a trail of blood along the side of her face. They had taken a rather steep fall, and Uhura had landed at the bottom of a pit lined with a score of jagged rocks. He'd attempted to contact Jim and Chekov, but the sudden change in altitude had thrown his communicator out of sync. McCoy had seen the sandstorm looming in the distance and knew that they had to find cover. Carefully, he'd gathered Nyota in his arms and had begun walking. When his attempts to keep her talking failed, he began cursing at her to get her attention, and when that failed cursing ebbed into ranting, which seemed to have worked up until now.

He clicked off the light, his eyes boring into his patient.

"What's your name?" McCoy asked.

"Nyota," she groaned.

"Nyota what?" he pressed.

"Nyota Uhura," she replied softly, her voice tinged with a touch of irritation.

"Rank and station."

"Chief Communications Officer currently on board a . . . cave on Lactra VII."

"Now's not the time to try your luck with my sense of humor, Lieutenant," McCoy grumbled, rummaging through his pack in search of materials for a makeshift sling.

She grinned, and her eyes fluttered close. McCoy growled and once again held his hands close to her face and clapped.

"Stay awake, God damn it. We're not out of this yet."

Uhura opened her eyes.

"What happened after your Aunt saddled the horse?"

"It was about ten times less traumatizing than what Jim Kirk is going to experience once we get back on board the Enterprise," McCoy said, holding the penlight to her arm.

"You're going to hold the captain accountable for a gust of wind?"

"A gust of wind that lifted us off a sand dune several hundred feet above a chasm of rocks," McCoy corrected. "Looking for flora and fauna and ancient relics that no one gives a shit about on a planet we have no business being on."

"It's not his fault," Uhuru said wearily.

McCoy's eyebrows lifted as he drew back slightly.

"Standing up for Jim? That concussion's more severe than I thought. How's the pain?"

"My arm hurts."

"It's broken," McCoy confirmed, fixing his attention on the laceration across her forehead. "I can't give you anything that might put you to sleep until I see how badly your brains got scrambled."

She nestled back against the cave wall, the wind howling outside, as he dabbed up the rest of the blood on her forehead.

"What happened to your Aunt?" She asked again.

"Tamed the wild horse, named 'im Whisky. Only one other son of a bitch was crazy enough to try to ride him, but enough of that. The rantings of an old man aren't going to keep you awake and sure as hell aren't going to save your life so why don't you practice your Vulcan, or your Betelgues-"

"Bones?" Jim's voice came blasting out from McCoy's communicator, causing him to jump slightly. "Bones can you hear me?!"

"What the hell took so long, Jim? Get us the hell out of here, Uhura's injured."

"We're locked onto your signal. Hold tight."

After spending the last twenty four hours in the med bay and being watched like a hawk by McCoy, Uhura's patience had finally reached its limit. She needed to get out and stretch her legs, if just for a moment. Staff had not arrived for their shifts, so it was still early. She would just need to keep an eye out for the medical officer on duty, wherever they were-

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Uhura stopped in her tracks, and turned around smiling.

"Do you ever sleep?"

He was sitting in a darkened corner, and Uhura could just barely make out the scowl on his face.

"Trying to escape?" He answered her question with another.

"Trying. The CMO on this ship is a complete prison guard."

"Turn around and get back to sleep before I tranq you," McCoy said, taking a sip from his flask.

"Is this how you treat all of your patients?"

"No," McCoy pocketed his flask and stood up, slowly approaching her. "Typically, I skip the warning and go straight for the tranq hypo. What can I say, Lieutenant, your negotiation skills are rubbing off on me-" he stopped, looking suddenly flustered.

Uhura paused before she closed the space between them and craned her neck up to peer into his eyes.

"Walk with me."

McCoy looked down at her, eyes glittering with hesitation.

"You never told me how you managed to saddle that horse. You were that 'other crazy son of a bitch' weren't you?"

McCoy gaped at her, taken back, while Uhura grinned.

"And if you still want to use the tranq hypo afterward, I won't hold it against you," Uhura smirked.

"Fine, have it your way," McCoy sighed, defeated. He tucked Uhura's arm in his and led them out into the hallway.

"Why a God-damned genius xenolinguist wants to listen to some old fart talk about some pain in the ass horse is beyond me," he said.

"I told you," Uhura shook her head, laughing. "I love the way you speak."

"Make that delirious genius xenolinguist," McCoy muttered with a frown, his cheeks flushed.