ceres_libera (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ceres_libera) wrote2010-06-07 10:26 pm
ceres_libera) wrote2010-06-07 10:26 pm
Entry tags:
Unexpected 1/4
Title: "Unexpected 1/4"
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceres_libera
Rating: R mostly for language and adult concepts, I guess
Summary: Um … Bones and Jim have a baby? After a genderswap thing. You know, an average Monday on thecrackship good ship Enterprise. Seriously, I should really stay away from buckleup_meme, and finish the other stuff I'm supposed to be working on. Anyway, this is based on this prompt and, I hope the requester enjoys my interpretation of hir prompt.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI/AOS-verse, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses. Sort of.
Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Notes: It, um, didn't turn out quite as cracky as I'd intended. Also? It's decidedly not porny. I totally fail at the kink meme thing. Sorry? One-shot in four parts. ~14,000 words. Not even close to being in the same universe as Switch.
Warnings: Reader may require dental intervention after reading. You have been warned.
Disclaimers: I'm totally sure Paramount will want nothing to do with this story. Seriously. In any case, it all belongs to Paramount, JJ Abrams, and the great Roddenberry. Except for this story, which is all me. God help me.
+
"This is all your fault, Jim Kirk!!" the words lost considerable force when yelled in a voice so very altered. "You stay the hell away from me!"
And fuck him, Jim had the audacity to look hurt at that.
Like he was the one with the shrinking dick.
+
"Bones!" Jim knew that pleading wasn’t particularly Captainly, but he couldn’t help it. He felt so helpless, and he wanted to go after Bones, but he heeded the restraining arm that Uhura put in front of him, as he stood in the transporter room doorway, watching Bones disappear around the corner.
“Captain,” Uhura said, and the fact that her tone was meant to soothe him, to pacify him, really irritated the living crap out of him. Bones was … God, Bones was … “Leonard just needs some time to adjust.”
“To not having a dick anymore?” Jim snapped, turning to look at her. “Let me ask you, Lieutenant, since you’re so knowledgeable on this topic: what would your adjustment timeline be, if you woke up and found that your vagina, say, was sealing itself up?”
Uhura sucked in a breath. “Captain,” she said in a chastising tone. “That is not the point …”
“It’s exactly the point,” Jim said harshly. He tapped his wrist. “Spock, you better be keeping us in orbit, because we are not leaving until we get some answers.”
“Affirmative, Captain,” Spock answered smoothly. “I have relayed your request for an immediate ship-to-shore conference to the planet’s rulers and their medical personnel.”
He started to say something else, but Jim let go of the speaker. He really wasn’t fucking interested in anything other than Bones at the moment.
“Scotty,” he said, turning around to address the uncharacteristically quiet man behind the console. “You better tell me that you’ve got everything from the room that they had Bones sleeping in for the last three nights.”
“Captain,” Uhura interrupted firmly, undoubtedly channeling her boyfriend through their bond. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to create a diplomatic incident.”
“Noted, Lieutenant,” Jim said, equally firmly. “Scotty?”
“Aye, Captain,” he said. “Locked up in Cargo Bay 1. Although me boys are saying that there are no energy signatures that would explain what’s happened to the Doctor. But we're continuing to analyze.”
Jim nodded and stormed out of the transporter room and down toward Bones’ quarters, ignoring Uhura's plea that he should give Bones some time alone. Like he could actually do that. Because this time?
This time, maybe it really was his fault.
+
Goddamnit, what the hell was he so upset about, Leonard McCoy thought to himself, stomping down the corridor with a hand pressed to his bosom like a true Southern belle, trying to cover the gap that had suddenly appeared right between his … God, this could not be happening. He bolted for the open turbolift, catching a glimpse of his newly smooth face when he brushed too-long bangs from his eyes. "Goddamn you, Jim Kirk!" he said again in his altered voice.
Of course, there really was enough blame to go around.
He should have known something was up when the King's midwife was a male, but he'd thought that it was just one of those things, a linguistic blip the Universal Translator could only approximate due to the fact that Voe’o’ was a predominantly male society. Hell, it was a predominantly male planet, which certainly wasn’t the norm where species sexually reproduced. And sure, the King was a rather robust looking woman, but he wasn’t about the judging. After all, she was heavily pregnant, and all platitudes aside, some women did not glow with beauty when procreating. Besides, it was clear that her husband thought she was gorgeous, which, you know, more power to him and all.
So, all in all he’d taken the use of the male title as a quirk of the UT, noting that her – well not so much as it turned out - consort and co-ruler was also referred to as the King. He’d assumed that maybe there weren't female pronouns or even nouns in the high language, what with the Voe’o’ culture being so heavily patriarchal and class-based. But what he should have noted was that the few aristocratic women he did see at negotiations or on their tours were to awoman man being all in some stage of pregnancy.
Not to mention that he'd noticed that the King's labia seemed to have grown, for lack of a better description, when he was assisting in the delivery of the afterbirth, but he'd just assumed that it was a peculiarity of their physiology, or due to the vulva having been somewhat flattened by the passage of the infant. And anyway, he was a doctor, not a pervert, so he hadn't spent a lot of time contemplating the alien King's genitalia.
So. It really wasn’t Jim’s fault. He should have fucking known, seriously. The universe loved to piss on him, and it had taken pleasure in doing so long, long before Jim had ever come along. He’d just been hoping, of all things, that the cycle had been broken -- that maybe some of Jim's lucky shine had rubbed off on him. And damn him twenty times for being a fool.
He fled down the thankfully empty corridor to his quarters, setting the door on private before he walked slowly, like a man going to his execution, footsteps surely leading him to his reflection in the mirror.
He maybe would have been a mite prettier if his expression weren’t so murderous, but really, who wouldn’t be upset? If he’d ever thought about it – and he hadn’t -- he might have assumed that his resemblance to his own mother would have stood him in good stead. But no, the universe couldn’t even give him that little bit.
Because really, it was just the final insult that he was so damned ugly as a woman.
+
Jim pressed the chime on Bones’ quarters every 30 seconds. Between times, he bent his head, speaking into the infinitesimal crack where the door would slide back and into the pocket across from it. “Bones, please,” he said in a low voice, trying not to plead. “Please don’t make me use my override. We need to talk.”
Pressing his ear to the door, he could just hear muffled movement from inside.
“Please, Bones,” he said, after pushing the chime again. “Please let me in.”
He was startled by the unusual sound of Bones’ voice at a higher pitch, so close to the door. He hadn’t heard him move. “I need some time, Jim.”
“No, Bones,” Jim said, in the same, calm determined voice. “We need to figure out how we fix this, and I need you to be with me when we talk to the Voe'o' delegation.”
Bones was silent on his side of the door.
“Bones, I need you to understand the science of this so that we can fix it.”
“What if we can’t fix it?” Bones’ voice was so low and heartbroken sounding that Jim felt tears well up in his own eyes. He dropped his head against the door.
“I promise you, Bones,” he said in a harsh voice. “I promise you, it’ll be all right. Please let me in.”
There was a long silence from the other side of the door, and Jim clenched his fists, resisting the urge to press the chime again. Finally, his stretched-thin patience was rewarded as Bones’ door slid open. He caught himself from falling into Bones' quarters by grasping the door frame at the last minute, stumbling into the room and blinking in the low light. “Bones?”
He was standing in a shadowed corner, and as Jim’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that he had changed from his more form-defining dress uniform into the roomier ship-duty science blue tunic, and what looked like away mission cargo pants.
“Stop staring,” Bones said, in a low voice full of hurt.
“I can’t even see you, Bones,” Jim whispered. He took a step forward, but Bones held up a hand and he stopped, just as his comm whistled. “Kirk here,” he said into his wrist.
“Captain,” Spock said calmly. “We have the requested members of the party waiting for you and Dr. McCoy here on the bridge.”
“I don’t want to be seen!” Bones hissed, sounding very agitated.
Jim blinked at how very freaked out Bones was, but raised a placating hand. “Dr. McCoy and I will be in my ready room shortly,” he said. “Transfer the call there. You and Lieutenant Uhura will join us. Kirk out.”
“No, Jim,” Bones said again. “I don’t want to--”
“I know,” he said soothingly. He tapped his comm again. “Kirk to Engineering.”
“Aye, Captain,” Scotty said.
“Please transport Dr. McCoy and myself to my Ready Room. And Scotty?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I trust that you’re keeping Dr. McCoy’s new imprint in a separate file in the pattern buffers?”
“Yes, sir,” Scotty said. “I had the same thought meself, and am investigating how to overwrite what’s happened, but I will need to know what’s been done to the doctor to alter him before I’d be willing to attempt that. My crew is having no luck with the items in the Cargo Bay, sir.”
“Keep me informed, Scotty,” Jim said, sighing. “Kirk out.”
Bones was already talking when they reformed in his ready room, barking out an order to turn down the lights before excitedly saying, “Maybe that would work, Jim. Boy, I never thought I’d see the day that I’d willfully submit myself to the mercies of that infernal contraption, but this might be …” He stopped talking and flushed red, turning his back on Jim. “Stop staring.”
“Bones,” Jim said, licking his lips. He knew he had to tread lightly here, but this whole situation was just so weird. “I’m not staring, Bones.” He was totally lying. The process of Bones changing into a woman wasn’t as instantaneous as it would be, say, if there had been a chromosomal insertion or deletion from a transporter incident. Instead, it had come on gradually over the last three days, since they’d gone to the Lifewater, and it had all gone to hell.
“You are too staring,” Bones said agitatedly. “And I don’t need any more reminders of how hideous I am.”
“Bones!” This time, Jim didn’t have to feign anything at Bones’ outrageous statement, which Bones, forgetting himself, definitely saw when he whipped around to challenge him. So, OK, maybe he’d been lying before, but he sure as shit wasn’t now. Bones was an incredibly good-looking guy, and yeah maybe Jim thought he was more beautiful as a guy, but he was still beautiful. He was Bones. He reached out to his friend. “That is totally not true!”
Bones disbelief at Jim’s statement was clear, but he looked more confused than upset now, which Jim guessed was an improvement. Whatever he might have said was lost when the ready room door whisked open to reveal Spock and Uhura, and Bones, Bones pushed Jim in front of him and crouched down a little, hiding behind him.
Spock’s eyebrow soared skyward, and for the first time in a really long time, Jim wanted to slap him for being insensitive. “Captain, Doctor,” he said placidly.
“Leonard,” Uhura said with sympathy, crossing the room to reach out for him, but Bones shifted Jim in her way, and Jim, much to his own surprise, found himself wrapping an arm behind himself to hold onto Bones, feeling the curl of Bones' long fingers in the small of his back where he was gripping his shirt.
“I don’t …” Bones said softly, from where he’d hidden behind Jim, his breath soft on Jim’s neck.
“I know, Bones,” Jim said softly, turning his head so that Bones’ forehead brushed against his cheek. He felt incredibly protective of his best friend. “Lieutenant,” Jim said, turning his head back and shifting with Bones as he moved. “I think we all need to respect the CMO's wishes and just get this over with, if you please.”
Uhura's eyes were switching back and forth between Jim and Bones and she looked hurt. It wasn't like she and Bones weren't friends themselves, after all. "Leonard," she said again quietly.
Jim felt the fingers on his shirt tighten. "He just needs us to fix this, Nyota," he said quietly.
Her level gaze rested on him, then she took in a breath and instructed the computer to patch the communication through.
The Voe'o’ onscreen seemed obscenely cheerful to Jim. He could only imagine how they appeared to Bones, still hiding behind him.
"Captain!" King Oo'Eara'i exclaimed. "Doctor! We see that the blessings are indeed come down upon you both."
"Blessings?!" Bones sputtered from behind him.
"Indeed," King Oo'Veaira said serenely, adjusting the sling that lay across his re-masculinizing form. "It could only be a blessing for you and your partner to be so chosen."
Jim was thunderstruck at their audacity, and opened and closed his mouth as he tried to gather his thoughts. Behind him, he could feel that Bones had stood up to his original height, enough that he could see over Jim's shoulder, his uncoiling fury practically visible in the air around them.
"Partner?" Bones asked.
The Kings looked at each other and back at them, and the midwife Vaa'lash appeared to be studying them.
"I'm afraid that there has been a misunderstanding," Spock said smoothly. "Dr. McCoy did not consent to have his sex changed."
The Kings looked from each other in seeming confusion and back again to the midwife, who spoke for the first time. "It is not a matter of choice," he said smoothly, something oily and pompous in his tone, "but for the gods to decide."
"That does not seem likely," Spock said, cutting off Bones' forming protest. "Since the species from which the Doctor hails could not be so altered without considerable genetic intervention."
There was a conference on the other side of the screen between the three, so hurried and whispered that Uhura visibly leaned in, trying to understand.
"It was not that considerable," the midwife answered in a begrudging tone that still held that pompous note, "and would not have happened if it was not meant to."
"Now, listen here," Bones began, stepping out from behind Jim, who caught his breath at the sight of him.
"I assure you," Spock said in his level fashion, "that Dr. McCoy's current feminine appearance would not have been possible without some intervention, perhaps the use of some device –"
"There was no device," Vaa'lash said, then added, "not as you mean. When the Doctor assisted King Oo'Veaira in our most sacred place as he brought forth life, the Lifewater claimed him as its own."
Jim had a flashing memory of the water in the pool, eerily iridescent, rippling as Bones leaned against the pool's edge after the King had given birth. "What's in the water?" he asked quietly, keeping his anger contained.
"Life," Vaa'lash said dismissively. "You scanned it, Captain, as did you, Doctor."
"Doctor?" Spock asked.
"There was a high concentration of estrogen precursors, DHEAS and the like," Bones said, "but certainly nothing on the order of anything that would cause such a mutation."
"Indeed," Spock said. "If that analysis of the water readings is correct, then I would also conclude that it could not have had an impact on the Doctor's physiology in the way it so obviously has."
"The water is alive," the midwife insisted. "And where it chooses, it can transmit the power to house life, a temporary transition for just that purpose."
Jim's eyes narrowed. "You're lying," he said with utter surety.
Bones' head whipped around to stare at Jim.
"An omission of the truth is as good as a lie in these circumstances," Jim continued. "There's something that you are not telling us."
The two Kings looked bewildered by Jim's statement, but he was sure that he was right.
"We do not have to reveal all of the mysteries of our beliefs, Captain," the midwife said, and his voice was icy as his eyes cut over to Uhura. "Especially when one of the Unworthy is present. The Lifewater has made its choice."
Now it was Uhura's eyes that narrowed, and Jim could feel the anger radiating from her.
"It does not choose untruly," Vaa'lash said. "Although it has not chosen an Otherworlder before. We would have thought," the midwife said, addressing Spock, "that you, as a true Prince of your people, would have been chosen, but the Lifewater saw the truth, and saw what would be."
"The prophecy …" King Oo'Veaira breathed out reverently, looking down at the babe asleep in the sling. "A true princess of kingly breeding."
"I'm not having a baby," Bones said determinedly.
"Then you will remain in your current form," the midwife said sharply. "Until you and your partner," he nodded at Kirk, "do what is right. Only then will you return to your exalted form. It was, after all," he said imperiously, still looking at Jim, "your own wish that made this possible." The transmission ended suddenly.
Jim didn't even react to Uhura's giving voice to her frustration with the rampant sexism espoused by the Voe'o’. "Fuck," Jim breathed out softly. He could feel Bones' eyes on him as Uhura raged.
Goddamnit, maybe this really was his fault, after all.
+
Unexpected 2
Author:
ceres_liberaRating: R mostly for language and adult concepts, I guess
Summary: Um … Bones and Jim have a baby? After a genderswap thing. You know, an average Monday on the
buckleup_meme, and finish the other stuff I'm supposed to be working on. Anyway, this is based on this prompt and, I hope the requester enjoys my interpretation of hir prompt. Canon: Based in the ST:XI/AOS-verse, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses. Sort of.
Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Notes: It, um, didn't turn out quite as cracky as I'd intended. Also? It's decidedly not porny. I totally fail at the kink meme thing. Sorry? One-shot in four parts. ~14,000 words. Not even close to being in the same universe as Switch.
Warnings: Reader may require dental intervention after reading. You have been warned.
Disclaimers: I'm totally sure Paramount will want nothing to do with this story. Seriously. In any case, it all belongs to Paramount, JJ Abrams, and the great Roddenberry. Except for this story, which is all me. God help me.
+
"This is all your fault, Jim Kirk!!" the words lost considerable force when yelled in a voice so very altered. "You stay the hell away from me!"
And fuck him, Jim had the audacity to look hurt at that.
Like he was the one with the shrinking dick.
+
"Bones!" Jim knew that pleading wasn’t particularly Captainly, but he couldn’t help it. He felt so helpless, and he wanted to go after Bones, but he heeded the restraining arm that Uhura put in front of him, as he stood in the transporter room doorway, watching Bones disappear around the corner.
“Captain,” Uhura said, and the fact that her tone was meant to soothe him, to pacify him, really irritated the living crap out of him. Bones was … God, Bones was … “Leonard just needs some time to adjust.”
“To not having a dick anymore?” Jim snapped, turning to look at her. “Let me ask you, Lieutenant, since you’re so knowledgeable on this topic: what would your adjustment timeline be, if you woke up and found that your vagina, say, was sealing itself up?”
Uhura sucked in a breath. “Captain,” she said in a chastising tone. “That is not the point …”
“It’s exactly the point,” Jim said harshly. He tapped his wrist. “Spock, you better be keeping us in orbit, because we are not leaving until we get some answers.”
“Affirmative, Captain,” Spock answered smoothly. “I have relayed your request for an immediate ship-to-shore conference to the planet’s rulers and their medical personnel.”
He started to say something else, but Jim let go of the speaker. He really wasn’t fucking interested in anything other than Bones at the moment.
“Scotty,” he said, turning around to address the uncharacteristically quiet man behind the console. “You better tell me that you’ve got everything from the room that they had Bones sleeping in for the last three nights.”
“Captain,” Uhura interrupted firmly, undoubtedly channeling her boyfriend through their bond. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to create a diplomatic incident.”
“Noted, Lieutenant,” Jim said, equally firmly. “Scotty?”
“Aye, Captain,” he said. “Locked up in Cargo Bay 1. Although me boys are saying that there are no energy signatures that would explain what’s happened to the Doctor. But we're continuing to analyze.”
Jim nodded and stormed out of the transporter room and down toward Bones’ quarters, ignoring Uhura's plea that he should give Bones some time alone. Like he could actually do that. Because this time?
This time, maybe it really was his fault.
+
Goddamnit, what the hell was he so upset about, Leonard McCoy thought to himself, stomping down the corridor with a hand pressed to his bosom like a true Southern belle, trying to cover the gap that had suddenly appeared right between his … God, this could not be happening. He bolted for the open turbolift, catching a glimpse of his newly smooth face when he brushed too-long bangs from his eyes. "Goddamn you, Jim Kirk!" he said again in his altered voice.
Of course, there really was enough blame to go around.
He should have known something was up when the King's midwife was a male, but he'd thought that it was just one of those things, a linguistic blip the Universal Translator could only approximate due to the fact that Voe’o’ was a predominantly male society. Hell, it was a predominantly male planet, which certainly wasn’t the norm where species sexually reproduced. And sure, the King was a rather robust looking woman, but he wasn’t about the judging. After all, she was heavily pregnant, and all platitudes aside, some women did not glow with beauty when procreating. Besides, it was clear that her husband thought she was gorgeous, which, you know, more power to him and all.
So, all in all he’d taken the use of the male title as a quirk of the UT, noting that her – well not so much as it turned out - consort and co-ruler was also referred to as the King. He’d assumed that maybe there weren't female pronouns or even nouns in the high language, what with the Voe’o’ culture being so heavily patriarchal and class-based. But what he should have noted was that the few aristocratic women he did see at negotiations or on their tours were to a
Not to mention that he'd noticed that the King's labia seemed to have grown, for lack of a better description, when he was assisting in the delivery of the afterbirth, but he'd just assumed that it was a peculiarity of their physiology, or due to the vulva having been somewhat flattened by the passage of the infant. And anyway, he was a doctor, not a pervert, so he hadn't spent a lot of time contemplating the alien King's genitalia.
So. It really wasn’t Jim’s fault. He should have fucking known, seriously. The universe loved to piss on him, and it had taken pleasure in doing so long, long before Jim had ever come along. He’d just been hoping, of all things, that the cycle had been broken -- that maybe some of Jim's lucky shine had rubbed off on him. And damn him twenty times for being a fool.
He fled down the thankfully empty corridor to his quarters, setting the door on private before he walked slowly, like a man going to his execution, footsteps surely leading him to his reflection in the mirror.
He maybe would have been a mite prettier if his expression weren’t so murderous, but really, who wouldn’t be upset? If he’d ever thought about it – and he hadn’t -- he might have assumed that his resemblance to his own mother would have stood him in good stead. But no, the universe couldn’t even give him that little bit.
Because really, it was just the final insult that he was so damned ugly as a woman.
+
Jim pressed the chime on Bones’ quarters every 30 seconds. Between times, he bent his head, speaking into the infinitesimal crack where the door would slide back and into the pocket across from it. “Bones, please,” he said in a low voice, trying not to plead. “Please don’t make me use my override. We need to talk.”
Pressing his ear to the door, he could just hear muffled movement from inside.
“Please, Bones,” he said, after pushing the chime again. “Please let me in.”
He was startled by the unusual sound of Bones’ voice at a higher pitch, so close to the door. He hadn’t heard him move. “I need some time, Jim.”
“No, Bones,” Jim said, in the same, calm determined voice. “We need to figure out how we fix this, and I need you to be with me when we talk to the Voe'o' delegation.”
Bones was silent on his side of the door.
“Bones, I need you to understand the science of this so that we can fix it.”
“What if we can’t fix it?” Bones’ voice was so low and heartbroken sounding that Jim felt tears well up in his own eyes. He dropped his head against the door.
“I promise you, Bones,” he said in a harsh voice. “I promise you, it’ll be all right. Please let me in.”
There was a long silence from the other side of the door, and Jim clenched his fists, resisting the urge to press the chime again. Finally, his stretched-thin patience was rewarded as Bones’ door slid open. He caught himself from falling into Bones' quarters by grasping the door frame at the last minute, stumbling into the room and blinking in the low light. “Bones?”
He was standing in a shadowed corner, and as Jim’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that he had changed from his more form-defining dress uniform into the roomier ship-duty science blue tunic, and what looked like away mission cargo pants.
“Stop staring,” Bones said, in a low voice full of hurt.
“I can’t even see you, Bones,” Jim whispered. He took a step forward, but Bones held up a hand and he stopped, just as his comm whistled. “Kirk here,” he said into his wrist.
“Captain,” Spock said calmly. “We have the requested members of the party waiting for you and Dr. McCoy here on the bridge.”
“I don’t want to be seen!” Bones hissed, sounding very agitated.
Jim blinked at how very freaked out Bones was, but raised a placating hand. “Dr. McCoy and I will be in my ready room shortly,” he said. “Transfer the call there. You and Lieutenant Uhura will join us. Kirk out.”
“No, Jim,” Bones said again. “I don’t want to--”
“I know,” he said soothingly. He tapped his comm again. “Kirk to Engineering.”
“Aye, Captain,” Scotty said.
“Please transport Dr. McCoy and myself to my Ready Room. And Scotty?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I trust that you’re keeping Dr. McCoy’s new imprint in a separate file in the pattern buffers?”
“Yes, sir,” Scotty said. “I had the same thought meself, and am investigating how to overwrite what’s happened, but I will need to know what’s been done to the doctor to alter him before I’d be willing to attempt that. My crew is having no luck with the items in the Cargo Bay, sir.”
“Keep me informed, Scotty,” Jim said, sighing. “Kirk out.”
Bones was already talking when they reformed in his ready room, barking out an order to turn down the lights before excitedly saying, “Maybe that would work, Jim. Boy, I never thought I’d see the day that I’d willfully submit myself to the mercies of that infernal contraption, but this might be …” He stopped talking and flushed red, turning his back on Jim. “Stop staring.”
“Bones,” Jim said, licking his lips. He knew he had to tread lightly here, but this whole situation was just so weird. “I’m not staring, Bones.” He was totally lying. The process of Bones changing into a woman wasn’t as instantaneous as it would be, say, if there had been a chromosomal insertion or deletion from a transporter incident. Instead, it had come on gradually over the last three days, since they’d gone to the Lifewater, and it had all gone to hell.
“You are too staring,” Bones said agitatedly. “And I don’t need any more reminders of how hideous I am.”
“Bones!” This time, Jim didn’t have to feign anything at Bones’ outrageous statement, which Bones, forgetting himself, definitely saw when he whipped around to challenge him. So, OK, maybe he’d been lying before, but he sure as shit wasn’t now. Bones was an incredibly good-looking guy, and yeah maybe Jim thought he was more beautiful as a guy, but he was still beautiful. He was Bones. He reached out to his friend. “That is totally not true!”
Bones disbelief at Jim’s statement was clear, but he looked more confused than upset now, which Jim guessed was an improvement. Whatever he might have said was lost when the ready room door whisked open to reveal Spock and Uhura, and Bones, Bones pushed Jim in front of him and crouched down a little, hiding behind him.
Spock’s eyebrow soared skyward, and for the first time in a really long time, Jim wanted to slap him for being insensitive. “Captain, Doctor,” he said placidly.
“Leonard,” Uhura said with sympathy, crossing the room to reach out for him, but Bones shifted Jim in her way, and Jim, much to his own surprise, found himself wrapping an arm behind himself to hold onto Bones, feeling the curl of Bones' long fingers in the small of his back where he was gripping his shirt.
“I don’t …” Bones said softly, from where he’d hidden behind Jim, his breath soft on Jim’s neck.
“I know, Bones,” Jim said softly, turning his head so that Bones’ forehead brushed against his cheek. He felt incredibly protective of his best friend. “Lieutenant,” Jim said, turning his head back and shifting with Bones as he moved. “I think we all need to respect the CMO's wishes and just get this over with, if you please.”
Uhura's eyes were switching back and forth between Jim and Bones and she looked hurt. It wasn't like she and Bones weren't friends themselves, after all. "Leonard," she said again quietly.
Jim felt the fingers on his shirt tighten. "He just needs us to fix this, Nyota," he said quietly.
Her level gaze rested on him, then she took in a breath and instructed the computer to patch the communication through.
The Voe'o’ onscreen seemed obscenely cheerful to Jim. He could only imagine how they appeared to Bones, still hiding behind him.
"Captain!" King Oo'Eara'i exclaimed. "Doctor! We see that the blessings are indeed come down upon you both."
"Blessings?!" Bones sputtered from behind him.
"Indeed," King Oo'Veaira said serenely, adjusting the sling that lay across his re-masculinizing form. "It could only be a blessing for you and your partner to be so chosen."
Jim was thunderstruck at their audacity, and opened and closed his mouth as he tried to gather his thoughts. Behind him, he could feel that Bones had stood up to his original height, enough that he could see over Jim's shoulder, his uncoiling fury practically visible in the air around them.
"Partner?" Bones asked.
The Kings looked at each other and back at them, and the midwife Vaa'lash appeared to be studying them.
"I'm afraid that there has been a misunderstanding," Spock said smoothly. "Dr. McCoy did not consent to have his sex changed."
The Kings looked from each other in seeming confusion and back again to the midwife, who spoke for the first time. "It is not a matter of choice," he said smoothly, something oily and pompous in his tone, "but for the gods to decide."
"That does not seem likely," Spock said, cutting off Bones' forming protest. "Since the species from which the Doctor hails could not be so altered without considerable genetic intervention."
There was a conference on the other side of the screen between the three, so hurried and whispered that Uhura visibly leaned in, trying to understand.
"It was not that considerable," the midwife answered in a begrudging tone that still held that pompous note, "and would not have happened if it was not meant to."
"Now, listen here," Bones began, stepping out from behind Jim, who caught his breath at the sight of him.
"I assure you," Spock said in his level fashion, "that Dr. McCoy's current feminine appearance would not have been possible without some intervention, perhaps the use of some device –"
"There was no device," Vaa'lash said, then added, "not as you mean. When the Doctor assisted King Oo'Veaira in our most sacred place as he brought forth life, the Lifewater claimed him as its own."
Jim had a flashing memory of the water in the pool, eerily iridescent, rippling as Bones leaned against the pool's edge after the King had given birth. "What's in the water?" he asked quietly, keeping his anger contained.
"Life," Vaa'lash said dismissively. "You scanned it, Captain, as did you, Doctor."
"Doctor?" Spock asked.
"There was a high concentration of estrogen precursors, DHEAS and the like," Bones said, "but certainly nothing on the order of anything that would cause such a mutation."
"Indeed," Spock said. "If that analysis of the water readings is correct, then I would also conclude that it could not have had an impact on the Doctor's physiology in the way it so obviously has."
"The water is alive," the midwife insisted. "And where it chooses, it can transmit the power to house life, a temporary transition for just that purpose."
Jim's eyes narrowed. "You're lying," he said with utter surety.
Bones' head whipped around to stare at Jim.
"An omission of the truth is as good as a lie in these circumstances," Jim continued. "There's something that you are not telling us."
The two Kings looked bewildered by Jim's statement, but he was sure that he was right.
"We do not have to reveal all of the mysteries of our beliefs, Captain," the midwife said, and his voice was icy as his eyes cut over to Uhura. "Especially when one of the Unworthy is present. The Lifewater has made its choice."
Now it was Uhura's eyes that narrowed, and Jim could feel the anger radiating from her.
"It does not choose untruly," Vaa'lash said. "Although it has not chosen an Otherworlder before. We would have thought," the midwife said, addressing Spock, "that you, as a true Prince of your people, would have been chosen, but the Lifewater saw the truth, and saw what would be."
"The prophecy …" King Oo'Veaira breathed out reverently, looking down at the babe asleep in the sling. "A true princess of kingly breeding."
"I'm not having a baby," Bones said determinedly.
"Then you will remain in your current form," the midwife said sharply. "Until you and your partner," he nodded at Kirk, "do what is right. Only then will you return to your exalted form. It was, after all," he said imperiously, still looking at Jim, "your own wish that made this possible." The transmission ended suddenly.
Jim didn't even react to Uhura's giving voice to her frustration with the rampant sexism espoused by the Voe'o’. "Fuck," Jim breathed out softly. He could feel Bones' eyes on him as Uhura raged.
Goddamnit, maybe this really was his fault, after all.
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