Name Calling by Ster Julie

Here's our first response to the Nimoy-Urban Challenge. Thanks Ster Julie!

Title: Name-calling
Author: Ster Julie
Codes: AOS; S, Sp, Mc
Rating: PG
Part 1 of 1

-ooOoo--

Spock made a detour after speaking to his older self. He sought out Doctor McCoy, finding him about to enter Starfleet Academy’s Great Hall.

“Doctor, come with me,” he ordered.

“Spock,” McCoy complained as he rushed to catch up to the long-legged Vulcan’s stride, “we’re going to be late for the assembly. I can’t afford another demerit.”

“Scan this Vulcan elder,” Spock continued.

McCoy pulled a small scanner from his pocket, the one he called his “salt shaker.”

“Who is he?” McCoy asked.

“You tell me, Doctor.”

McCoy peered at the readout and frowned. He scanned the younger Vulcan at his side and frowned again. “It’s you!” McCoy exclaimed. “I mean, it’s an older version, but it’s you. How can that be?”

“He claims to have traveled back in time,” Spock stated.

McCoy shook his head. “With all this time leaping, I’m going to need a scorecard.”

“I thought I told you to have faith,” the elder Vulcan addressed Spock.

Younger Spock raised his brows sheepishly.

“Go to the assembly, Spock,” the elder chided. “It is important that you be there. I will send McCoy in shortly.”

Spock Prime watched as his younger self scurried away while McCoy eyed the older Spock curiously. He observed the silent young doctor and concluded, “You can not be the real Leonard McCoy.”

McCoy balked at that. “I am the real Leonard McCoy,” he retorted. “Why would you say that?”

“Because the Leonard McCoy I knew was never at a loss for words,” Spock responded.

“Jim told me that you two were friends in your timeline,” McCoy declared. “Were we?”

“You and Jim?” Spock feigned confusion.

“No, you and me, you pointy-eared hobgoblin!”

McCoy saw the Vulcan’s ancient eyes mist over sadly. “I’m sorry!” he apologized. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Spock sighed. “It has been a long time since I heard you call me that,” he whispered.

“So you and I were friends?” McCoy concluded.

Spock shook his head in reply. “No,” he began slowly. “Jim and I were friends.
You and I were t’hy’la.”

“What does that mean?” McCoy wondered.

Spock drew nearer. “It has many meanings,” he explained as he took the doctor’s hand and maneuvered his first two fingers forward. “The one that was special to us was ‘lover.’”

McCoy felt a spark of electricity shoot up from his fingers when Spock touched him. He got a brief glance into the long and abiding relationship this Spock had experienced with his own McCoy.

“But I thought you and Uhura …” he stammered when he could once again find his voice.

Spock smiled gently. “Uhura and I shared a brief dalliance in my time,” he explained. “But our relationship lasted more than a century.”

McCoy accessed the memories he had shared with Spock. “We were married?” he exclaimed.

Spock simply nodded.

McCoy had never ever considered a relationship with any kind of male. He fancied himself a ladies’ man. But somebody put that twinkle in Spock’s gentle eyes. He just couldn’t imagine himself and that younger version of Spock ...

“How did all this begin?” McCoy asked.

“It began with all the name-calling,” Spock said as he stepped even closer. “Like, ‘pointy-eared hob-goblin,’ ‘green-blooded Vulcan,’ ‘walking computer.’ Then there was all the bickering, when you would asked me, ‘Are you out of your Vulcan mind?’ Jim once observed that we argued like a couple of ‘old, married folk.’ At that moment our eyes met and we knew how right Jim was. We were married soon after.”

McCoy swallowed audibly and closed his eyes a moment. He just couldn’t imagine swinging that way with any male, let alone Spock. “I’m a ladies’ man, I’m a ladies’ man,” he chanted to himself. He wondered how bickering with Spock could ever lead to a romance, let alone a marriage. He promised to stop calling Spock names. Well, at least he promised to try.

Suddenly, McCoy felt a light touch on his head, his cheek, as gentle as a benediction. Opening his eyes, he saw Spock Prime standing before him, his hands firmly clasped behind his back.

“Go now,” Spock dismissed. “You’ll be marked tardy, and you can’t afford another demerit.”

“It was … nice meeting you, sir,” McCoy said as he turned and hurried to his seat, wondering how Spock knew that.

Spock watched as McCoy slipped into his place a mere second before the Commandant took the stage.

“Goodbye, my heart,” he whispered.

END