"And there you were! Coming out of the Llangon Portal like an answered prayer."
Bones' voice mangled the soft name of the Vulcan mountain range, and Jim blinked. He surreptitiously glanced at the tricorder that the medical officer was waving over himself - maybe the stubborn doctor had underreported the severity of his fever in the distress call if he thought they were in Vulcan instead of this small, barely habitable moon in the middle of nowhere.
"Llangon portal, Bones?"
The doctor prodded him around and pointed up at the night sky. The thin atmosphere of the planetoid lent a natural brilliance to the distant stars. They were also reflected in the still, liquid nitrogen lake that stretched to the horizon, creating a bejeweled panorama. Now that the Jim had gotten the rescue shuttle to his stranded crew members, he could finally start to appreciate the stunning effect.
"See that reddish star up there? Follow it up, up and then across, yes? And then down."
Bones drew the constellation with his finger and, like when a optimal torpedo firing solution suddenly rises from garbled sensor data, the image suddenly sprang up in Jim's mind as if it had always been there: a somewhat lopsided great doorway in the sky, crowned by a blue super giant.
"Just how little faith did you have that we'd find you, if settled down enough to name the local constellations?" He asked with a smile.
"Oh no, I didn't name them," the doctor responded with a grin, but the starship captain could read a deflected answer in the hard grip the trembling man had on his shoulder. "Spock did."
"Spock did?" Jim asked, eyes widening. "Spock named constellations? Hey, Mr. Spock," he called, "Get over here."
The tall Vulcan had been instructing several of his rescuers in the dismantling of the temporary camp he had constructed from the downed Celsius shuttleraft. He sent the junior officers on their way with a nod before walking over to Jim and Bones. He was limping slightly, but had, unlike he doctor, sustained no major injuries when the two of them crash landed on the moon a week earlier.
"Captain," he said now with a polite nod. Jim knew that the dirty and torn uniform must be a source of irritation to the fastidious Vulcan, but for all the outward ease that the displayed they might have been meeting on a starbase promenade. He wore the silvery thermoblanket that Jim had pressed upon him a few minutes earlier around his shoulders.
"Bones tells me you have been naming constellations?" Jim asked with a grin. "I thought those were, let's see, 'illogical flights of fancy for the lazy mind'."
"For the simplistic mind, Jim, the simplistic mind." Bones corrected. "Trust me, I've heard that lecture several times the last few years."
The doctor's smile was beatific, and its smugness was only slightly marred by a sudden coughing fit. His infected wounds were even now clearing thanks to the hyposprays and sterilization fields that the Galileo had brought, but it would take awhile for the dust in his lungs to dissipate. He was still weak, and breathing was painful.
Spock gave the doctor a decidedly cold look. In the face of Jim's demanding grin the Vulcan visibly hesitated before reluctantly speaking.
"It was not by choice."
"No?" Jim cast a look around the barren landscape. Apart from the striking silver lake and stones covered in a grey moss (presumably what had engendered the oxygen in the moon's atmosphere in the first place) there was no sign of life. "Aliens made you do it?"
McCoy snorted and Spock clasped his hands behind his back.
"I... lost a bet," the Vulcan finally allowed.
Jim's eyes grew wide. "A bet? A bet, Mr. Spock? Really. What, you're out of my sight for eight days, and suddenly you turn to gambling?" He shook his head and clicked his tongue in mock consternation.
"I fear that in this case, Sir, the temptation was too great for even Vulcan moral fortitude." Spock nodded slightly at McCoy. "The doctor offered two weeks of silence."
Jim laughed. "Well now, I suspect not even Surak himself could have walked away from that."
"Your hobgoblin there didn't think I could build a bio-battery for the emergency transponder using the moss, Jim!" Bones said with a satisfied glower. "Well I showed him, didn't I!"
He coughed again but angrily waved away a well-meaning ensign who approached with a stool. With a surreptitious gesture, Spock took it instead, propping it folded under an arm. In the background the stripping of the downed shuttle proceeded, its useful parts now carefully stored in the Galileo.
Spock had drifted closer during Bones' coughing fit, eyes evaluating the other officer with concern. But when he spoke his voice was dismissive. "I will allow that you manage to construct a barely useful energy source."
"Barely useful! I saved us, you ingrate!"
"Alright, alright." Jim interjected and took charge of the field stool from Spock behind the doctor's back. "How did the constellations come into all this? Here Bones, sit down," he added with enough command in his voice to only receive an outraged scoff before the doctor grudgingly sank down on the unfolded stool.
"Well, the deal was, if I got it working, Mr. Computer would have to make up names for all the constellations and tell the tales of their names. So that up there is the Llangon Portal and that over there is Surak's Marketplace - see that jumble of stars? - and there... what was that one, Spock?"
"... The Hand, Doctor," Spock responded woodenly.
"Nono, you are so bad at this, Spock, you have no dramatic sense. That's a Vulcan hand, so that's the Neck Pinch, Jim." Bones coughed again. "You'll have to get Spock to tell you the story behind that - those pre-reformation Vulcans were vicious."
Jim blinked. It was seen as a major accomplishment to get Spock to say anything about pre-reformation Vulcan culture - the humans' intense interest in the matter was in direct proportion to the Vulcan reluctance to speak about the violent period prior to Surak.
"Doctor..." Spock said disapprovingly but Bones just waved at him.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm not telling anyone your precious stories, Spock. I swear your dad's people have got to be the most secretive..." he coughed... "and paranoid..." He coughed again.
"Alright, that's your bed time signal if I understood Tokind right before," Jim announced and waved nurse Tokind over. The Andorian stood firm in the face of his superior's complaints and soon enough the doctor was sedated and strapped into a biobed the Galileo's luggage compartment.
"He'll be fine, Captain," Tokind said. His antennae had been rigid on the trip down to the planetoid, when Jim and his people hadn't known the fate of the XO and the CMO. Now the blue stalks were waving around sending the cold air.
"Mr. Spock did a good job with the wounds under the circumstances - it could have been much worse. Dr. McCoy mainly needs rest and more liquids, the rest will sort itself out now."
Jim dismissed him with an appreciative nod and headed out of the shuttle craft to collect his First Officer. Studying the bio-geological composition of the planets and moons in this system was the reason that Spock and McCoy had been surveying in the Celsius in the first place. Now that he once again had a working tricorder, Spock was gathering as much data as he could on the nitrogen lakes.
Jim went up to his side, close enough for their overarms to press together. They stood without speaking, the starry sky and lake filling their vision. After a few minutes, Spock made a small movement, separating the them.
"Do you have all you need?" Jim asked.
"I believe so. Though further study would of course be rewarding."
"As always."
They started to walk back to the shuttle.
"So, constellations..." Jim started and Spock gave him a frosty look that made the human smile.
"Bones is one of the best doctors there are," he continued in an apparent non-sequitur. "and brave as a lion when he's facing something he can understand. But he's sure as hell no-one's first choice for an astronaut, as he'll say himself. Now... Hurt, scared, feverish, stranded on a small rock far out in the black - I can imagine that he must have been pretty frantic."
Spock said nothing.
"Being forced to be silent under those circumstances would have driven him out of his mind, I think."
"I did not anticipate that the doctor would be able to hold up his end of the bargain," Spock said.
"Yeah. I don't think you anticipated him loosing the bet at all."
Spock's tilted head admitted to nothing.
"Could you have constructed the battery on your own? Was it only a way to give Bones something to do?"
"Doctor McCoy is highly skilled in bio-laboratory enterprises," Spock said, but knew from Jim's small laugh that his chance to evade and misdirect was growing slimmer and slimmer with this human. An alarming state of affairs.
"You will not tell him," he tried, voice firm.
"Hmm? Tell him what? That you spent a week telling him Vulcan folk tales and creating constellations to keep his anxiety level down? No, I can't imagine that he'd need to know that... Well... for a price, of course."
"Jim, compared to the ethical dangers of bets and gambling, most moral authorities would recognize that blackmail..."
"As a captain, I of course worry about the ethical development of all the junior officers entrusted to my care," the 34-year-old interrupted him loftily, smile like a fallen angel. "But luckily I feel certain that I'm above such concern myself. See it as an educational experience, Commander."
He laughed out loud at whatever he saw in Spock's face, and through the human's hand in his shoulder, Spock felt the last of the week long tension and worry dissipate from his friend. He let himself enjoy the affection streaming between them for a moment before moving away and clearing his throat.
"And what is your price, then?" He said, voice appropriately severe .
Jim's smile grew even further and he snatched the tricorder from Spock's shoulder, setting it to record a panorama picture of the night sky.
"I demand to know them all, of course," he said and pointed to the stars above and below. "Starting with the Neck Pinch - why would you name it that, and what's the story behind it?"
Spock sighed. His father would not approve of any of this. Or would he? Sarek had shared all of Vulcan's bloody history with a human, after all - if anything Amanda had told him more tales from ancient Vulcan than his father had. And the bond Spock was developing with Jim was straight out of a folk tale as well.
Jim's smile had fallen and he stopped Spock right outside the shuttle.
"If you want to, that is," he said softly.
"Captain, I believe you have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of blackmail."
Starlight swept back into Jim's eyes. "Well then. My quarters, 2000 hours. Don't be late."
Spock gave this last order a raised eyebrow of disdain and together they went into the Galileo to travel home.
oooOOOooo
Author's note: I got stuck in airports all day and this piece of fluff came out as a defensive escapist mechanism. Did you like it?