~happysquid08
Title: Technical Difficulties
Fandom: Star Trek: 2009
Pairing: Scones-centric
Synopsis: The Enterprise is in a state of turmoil. Can Scotty fix the engines? Can Bones fix the crewmen? Can the two fix each other? Scones.
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek… And if you're reading this and don't know that already, I am surprised and actually kind of angry at you. How many of these fics have you read that actually belonged to the copyright owner? For shame.
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Technical Difficulties
Chapter 1: Of Happiness, Hypos, and Hell
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"There y' are, Doctor. Cannae do much more n' tha." Scotty handed the hypospray back to Bones. "If they malfunction agin, jus' run 'em by Engineering an' Ah'll tayke uh look."
Reloading the cartridge, Bones experimentally stabbed the hypo into his own shoulder without flinching and injected the test serum.
"Works perfectly. Thanks, Scotty. I owe you a drink."
"Any tahyme, any tahyme." Scotty winked out of Med Bay in a flash. Bones snorted as he saw the door slide shut.
"Probably can't wait to get his hands on that Lieutenant Romaine again down in Engineering." He walked back to his desk and sat down, turning the hypospray Scotty had just fixed in his hands restlessly.
Bones was much too interested in the sex lives of the Bridge crew on the Enterprise. Chief Medical Officers on starships usually had to be invested in the well-being of their senior staff, especially the wild ones like Jim and Scotty. But Bones was different. All members of the senior medical staff were not only his respected colleagues, but also his best friends, and so he was especially careful for their safety. Therefore, he was constantly in the rumor mill researching relationships. The problem was, this caused him pain.
Bones held a special animosity for romantic relationships, because of his past with a crazy ex-wife named Nancy who took his planet and daughter, so even as he celebrated the happiness of his friends, he always felt a stab of insurmountable agony when he found new rumors here and relationships there. Especially when he had to take part. If it was up to him, Bones would cast off all relationships save for his closest friends and seclude all of them together in a closed, safe environment where they could all just exist. But it wasn't up to him, and now that he thought about it, he didn't think he would enjoy that life very much. What's the point of a life with no purpose?
He flipped the hypo into the air and expertly caught it.
"Time for some paperwork."
Just as he bent over his desk with a stylo in hand and a PADD before him, the door to Sickbay swished open.
"Can't a man get any work done around here?" McCoy groaned, exasperated. He looked up, and sure enough, Jim Kirk was hanging in the doorway.
"…Get out, I'm busy."
"Bones, how nice to see you. Glad you've missed me. You'd think you haven't seen me in months."
Bones tapped his chin with his stylo. "Now that you mention it, you haven't had a check-up in quite a while… Just let me refill my hypo."
Jim left hurriedly with a wave and an excuse. Bones grinned and bent down over his desk once more. This time the buzzer went off from one of the lower decks.
"Doctor McCoy, Nurse Chapel here."
"This is McCoy. What seems to be the problem?"
"A crewmember has collapsed in one of the lower Engineering decks, sir. It looks like a severe burn from an open circuit."
Bones sighed, and told her to bring the crewman immediately to Sickbay. He glanced once more at his paperwork, and then decided not to risk it. There were too many ways things could go wrong today to interrupt him, and Bones wasn't one to jeopardize his chances. It was the anniversary of his divorce, and everything horrible that had ever happened to him had occurred on this day; he was surprised the transporter hadn't malfunctioned and killed him today when he beamed back onto the ship from Earth's surface, it was amazing that no incidents on the planet they were currently orbiting had turned dangerous and life-threatening, and he was betting the inertial dampeners were going to stall as soon as they went to warp.
None of these anniversaries had started out so well, though. The hyposprays hadn't been working, sure, but Scotty had easily gotten them running again. His paperwork was beginning to resemble Mount Fuji, but it was all regulation work that he could do in his sleep; he was betting that his Yeoman, who was inept at anything medical, would be up to the task. His breakfast had been damnably soggy, but that was hardly unusual.
Bones wondered if he was just happy, and that when he saw the world differently bad things weren't so bad. The Enterprise seemed like a place he belonged, a place where he could always be connected to his friends. The staff was made up of reasonable people and people like Jim and even Spock he now considered family. Of course he was happy here; why wouldn't he be?
Then Bones thought about what had happened in years previous this same day, and realized that the happenings would have driven any sane man to the brink of madness, considering Bones' particular fears. Hell, they might have caused him to become a severe case of a collection of phobias. He shuddered and stood, waiting for the patient to arrive.
Running his hands together nervously, Bones compiled the correct set of medications a burn patient usually required. An open circuit didn't sound so bad; usually a dermal regenerator treatment or two and the wound was superficial. There were some quick passive anti-bodies for any unlucky but common infections picked up while the burn was open, and some anti-coagulants for after the dermal regenerator finished its work. Bones filled three hypos and plugged in a dermal regenerator to its charger. They took a lot of energy to work, but it was always worth it to see a wounded man patch up perfectly in so little time. It refreshed Bones to literally see the wounds heal on the table.
Bones had been waiting ten minutes when he became suspicious. Even if the patient was on the lower Engineering decks, it only takes one ride on that damnable high tech elevator and then it's over. Five minutes, maybe. Ten, there's trouble. Why hadn't anyone updated him, or called him to the source?
Groaning angrily, Bones strapped on his hypos to his belt and holstered his dermal regenerator and tricorder like a Western cowboy would with his double pistols, spinning them into his pockets. There was work to be done.
He stepped out the door and rushed down the hall. He saw no one. When the doors to the turbolift Bones didn't trust a bit in the first place didn't open, he rushed to the Jefferies tubes used in emergencies. It took forever to climb down all of the ladders to the lower decks, but it had to be done.
When the doors opened to Engineering, all he could think of was the works of Dante, with fire and brimstone cascading down in Hell with writhing sinners crying out in pain. Apparently Nurse Chapel hadn't had the chance to communicate to him before she was caught in the onslaught of a total outbreak of Engineering Hell. Communications were probably out anyway. Bones was grateful life support was still online.
He was in complete and total shock. He froze, watching the flames and sparks and hearing the screams and moans and smelling the burnt flesh and dried blood.
This is my fault, he thought. This is the curse of today. This is because today is October 23rd, the day of my divorce.
"Bones! Over here! I was actually about to go get you." It was Jim, sporting a few cuts and burns. He looked calm and controlled, a complete contrast to the surrounding chaos. Seeing Jim so calm helped Bones take a deep breath and pull out his tricorder.
"Jim, what can I do? What's the situation?"
"The entire Engineering deck is malfunctioning. Three sections have already been lost. I have no idea how many crewman are in there. I have everyone available that's not working on mechanical repair working on evacuation of the injured and the search for survivors in the recovered areas. Fires are rampant, but they aren't spreading far, based on the updated fireproof material Scotty put in during the last Engineering upgrade, so he deserves a little bonus. A few explosions, but not many, and only in the most concentrated stations that were lost. Communications are down, as are most other functions, like engines, steering control, and even computer banks are impossible to get online. Life support almost went, but that was our first priority to get fixed, so that's been successfully brought back online. If we don't get engines working within the hour, our orbit over this planet will decay and we'll die a painful, fiery death. I suggest that you find Nurse Chapel, who's running the evacuation procedures currently, and take over. Do quick medical procedures on those who need it, but especially focus on the engineers who can help fix the ship before she explodes in flame. Run up to Sickbay if you have to for more supplies, but remember that every second is vital. We have a considerable challenge and only so much time to fix it." Captain Kirk paused. "Get going, Doctor McCoy. We have a job to do." And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked back into the hellish pit.
And so Bones sprinted off to Sickbay. He was so grateful that Jim was his Captain. He was sure that anyone else wouldn't have been so calm, so soothing, in such a complete state of crisis. He just knew it; he had seen Head Medical Officers at work years before, and in generally chaotic (though not nearly as disastrous or stressful) circumstances, they were at best on edge and anally picky, exacerbating the entire situation. Jim was put together, accepting, and organized in this utterly insane situation, and Bones was suddenly stuck by how mature and adept he was at his job. Not that he hadn't known it before, but all of a sudden Bones just knew that Jim had always been a Captain, that he was supposed to be one, that he had to be one.
Thinking about Jim's captaincy gave Bones a healthy distraction, and his body automatically went to work. He stuffed as much as he could into duffel bags and shot himself with a bit of a stimulant before running off again. Somehow they had to get the turbolifts working again so they wouldn't need to use Jefferies tubes. Then patients would be able to get directly to Sickbay. Bones resolved to get a capable engineer on the job as soon as the engines were fixed.
If they were fixed. Bones shuddered and paused as he went down another flight of Jefferies tubes. This was all his fault somehow; it was his bad luck at work. It was his damn divorce.
Then Bones remembered that people were dying because of his laziness and got moving. He was astonished at his slow pace; usually, in an emergency, Bones moved like lightning even on autopilot. He cursed his bad luck again.
As he hurried down the tubes, Bones missed a rung on the ladder and fell, smashing his head against the tube and twisting his ankle in the rungs. Groaning and then praying that he wouldn't fall again to his death, Bones gripped the edges of the ladder again, this time just sliding down the sides like someone would do in a movie. It hurt like hell, with the metal burning against his gripping palms as he slid down entire levels of Jefferies tubes at a dangerously fast rate. Usually Bones would object outright to such self-inflicted injuries, but a life-threatening disaster warranted them necessary.
He hit the bottom of the levels, at Engineering's main deck, and limped out into Hell Incarnate. He raised his arm in response to the onslaught of carnage, and heard the cry of a wounded man. Pulling out a pair of plastic gloves, Bones stretched the plastic onto his hands one at a time, bit the edges and tugged them on, and flexed his fingers experimentally.
He had a job to do.
Storming through the smoke and flame, McCoy whipped out his tricorder and slung his duffel bag of supplies next to the first body he found. He couldn't quite recognize the face in the chaos, but he could easily identify the problem. This patient had severe burns and a dislocated shoulder. There was the possibility of a concussion as well, according to tricorder readings. He took out a passive anti-body hypo and shot it into the patient first, to temporarily stop any possible infections, and then got to work with his dermal regenerator. After the burns were thinly covered, Bones shot him with a round of anti-coagulants, popped his shoulder back in place, and moved on.
There was a definite line of patients leading to the most dangerous spots of the deck; the amount together spiked as he got closer and closer to where the nacelles were located. He guessed that the center of the deck was the convening point, where the engineers would be working, the injured would be brought, and the settings would be the safest. So he headed that way.
Bones knew that his ankle was getting worse and worse as he limped on, but he continued to move. He knew that if he paused for himself, he was wasting time; he had to take care of the crewmembers he passed, and that took up all the extra time Bones could afford to spend treating non-lethal wounds. So he gritted his teeth and barreled onward.
He stumbled just as he arrived, falling harshly onto his elbow. The senior staff were for the most part assembled; Scotty, Spock, Jim, and Chekov were deep in discussion in the center of all things, looking as if they were in just another meetings, perfectly calm and rational about their situation. They sat in a semi-circle, outlining plans between them. Nurse Chapel was heading the evacuation and rescue effort, calmly ordering the placement of patients and the like. There was a group of patients waiting for treatment, some awake, some not. Without waiting for anyone to acknowledge his presence, Bones crawled over to the most wounded, and pulled out his tricorder. These symptoms were no secret, and many patients had the same symptoms, but it was always better safe than sorry. Bones was not going to mistreat a patient, no matter how chaotic the situation.
Chapel noticed him after he had moved up the back of the line, treating patient after patient thoroughly yet efficiently.
"Doctor!" She yelled out. "Doctor McCoy! You're here! What's wrong?" She got the attention of the senior staff with the note of worry in her voice.
Quietly doing a self-assessment, Bones noted that, along with a possible concussion and a twisted ankle, he had also gotten several burns, a puncture wound, a laceration on his leg, and possibly a broken rib. Blood was dripping from his head wound, but he gave no heed to any of it. He had patients to worry about, and a ship to save.
"Nurse Chapel, brief me on status."
She looked scandalized, or traumatized, or something equally confused and worried. But she went on to report after seeing the look in his eye.
"The engineers that need to be healed and are our priority are here in this group, Doctor. The fatally injured are at the front, while the less injured are further on back. I organized the sections by section. This is Engineering, this Command, and this Science. Just to have some clarity and organization, the Captain suggested it."
"Thank you, Nurse Chapel. Let's get to work." Bones was surprised how clam and steady his voice sounded when it felt like his world was spinning from the sudden pain. But he bore through it and started working.
Forty-odd patients later, Bones was tired. So tired… He injected himself with another stimulant he'd been keeping especially for that purpose. He had no excuse for laziness, not when work had to be done. Chapel kept her mouth shut on the subject for once, the intensity and necessity of the situation keeping her nagging at bay.
It was basically the same procedure over and over again, with some faces he recognized and others he didn't. Sometimes the procedure had the occasional bone-setting, or there were bits of metal burned into the skin that he had to surgically remove, but he got all operations done in less than five minutes for each person. He considered it a personal record, to go through procedures like this so quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly at all once. But he couldn't think about that right now. He had to focus on the task at hand: a young engineering lieutenant, with sever lacerations to torso and neck, severe burns to the face, a rib puncturing her lung, and a dangerously twisted spinal cord. He scanned her with the tricorder and made the decision he never liked to make: "I can't save her, not with the time I've got. Chapel, move her into the other group."
As her body was being dragged into the group that Bones didn't think would make it, he recognized her. She was the lass Scotty had recently been taken to. A twinge of guilt, shame, and self-hatred shot through the wall of apathy Bones had been trying to build in this medical nightmare of a situation. He turned to the next patient with his face a mask of indifference.
Bones didn't know much about engineering as a science, but he knew when the engines were fixed. He could hear them begin to rumble as he looked over the next patient. Slowly, the floor shook beneath them as the ship stuttered to life. More and patients were coming from the nacelle areas, walking by themselves and fully alert. It looked as if the life-threatening part of the situation was over. Now all that remained was the patch-up job that McCoy had to do. He reminded himself that, though the ship was no longer rushing headlong into oblivion, the situations of his patients were still potentially life-threatening.
With a sigh, Bones looked at the forever-increasing line of patients. Even when all other stations were done with saving the universe, a medic's job was never finished. He called out to Chapel.
"Nurse, I need you to round up all capable medical personnel. Take half of them to Sickbay to get double the supplies they need. The other half will stay with me and take care of what they can. This needs to happen now."
He had to hand it to her, Chapel was efficient and supportive in awful situations like this. She snapped to action immediately after his order and got things moving. Bones had half a mind to give her a promotion or medal on the spot, but he really couldn't stop to think right now or he'd topple over. He settled for a tired smile, another stimulant, and another round of patients.
The next half an hour was like a blur to Bones; he knew every patient's problems and treated them correctly, but he was in a haze, and time seemed to fly by before him. The medic team Chapel took, the reinforcements, arrived in what seemed like no time at all as Bones treated patient after patient. After they arrived, he took one more shot of a stimulant, walked up to Chapel, handed her his hypospray, his tricorder, and his dermal regenerator, said, "Nurse Chapel, please take over for me here," and promptly limped over to the Engineering group.
"I need the most skilled engineer to fix the turbolift to Sickbay immediately." The engineers all tittered, unsure of the best among their ranks. Bones was frank and looking for truth. He didn't care who it was, he just needed an engineer, dammit.
"Aye aye, Doctor. Ah'm yer man." Scotty appeared to his left with burns, cuts, bloodstains, and a smile. Bones sighed in relief.
"Come on, we gotta get these people to Sickbay. Turbolift A needs to be repaired immediately."
"Gotcha." Scotty slung his arm around him, and McCoy grasped at him for support as they stumbled through the burning, acidic smoke out of Engineering and into the hallway.
There was a pack of people in the hall now, all struggling to get into the Jefferies tubes. Bones and Scotty had to push past, shouting out their ranks and their need to get by. The seas parted little by little, and finally they reached the turbolift.
Scotty pulled out his tools in much the same way as Bones: like a cowboy. Spinning his metal tools on his index fingers expertly, they shined and sparkled even in the dim and smoky hallway. He sawed away a part of the wall to connect directly to the turbolift system for manual control and then twisted and pulled at the circuits so artistically that Bones was completely enthralled. A few seconds later, Scotty welded the wall back in place and slapped the door fondly.
"'S as good as new, Doctor." Scotty grinned. "Gotta love workin' on a starship, hm, Doctor? Isn't it exciting?"
Bones almost laughed, but didn't want to exacerbate his condition, so he just painfully smirked and said, "That ain't how I would've put it; more like ridiculously dangerous, but yep, I guess I do."
Bones limped into the turbolift, and pressed the stop button. "Scotty."
"Aye, sir?"
"Alert the medical teams in Engineering about this turbolift. If you go by any more, fix those too. We really need transport for the injured."
"Aye sir, goin' back there anyhow." Scotty beamed.
Bones deflated suddenly. Seeing Scotty so dapper was affecting his apathetic front he always put on as a doctor to separate himself from the situation; Scotty's sincere demeanor was breaking through it in a way Bones thought impossible. All of a sudden he was incredibly tired.
Slowly, Bones closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped, and his head hung. He sighed deeply and leaned against the wall of the turbolift.
Looking up at Scotty once more, floundering in his giddy state, Bones said, "And… make sure… tell them, the medical teams…all the hypos gotta have… equal levels of…" He slid down the wall. "Concentration…" His eyes fluttered shut. "For the passive anti-body shots…" His voice weakened as he spoke. His head slumped onto his shoulder. His eyes opened again, this time with a startling, lucid intensity that were infinitely morose.
"Scotty."
"Aye sir!"
"Lieutenant Mira Romaine… I couldn't save her…" Scotty's smile disappeared; Bones reached out towards him. "I couldn't save her… She… She was too badly injured… I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry… I couldn't save… Mira… " Scotty knelt down by Bones and grabbed his hand. His eyes filled with tears.
"Doctor, Ah'm… Ah'm shure ya did yer very best, now. Jes… Jest git t' Sickbay and ev'rythin' will jest fall inta place. We needta work our hardes' righ' now, dunnae worry about anythin' cept fer yer job." It looked like Scotty's heart was broken, and it did nothing to replace the façade of apathy for Bones. In fact, it made it worse; Bones was starting to cry, too.
"Scotty… I still owe you that drink…" Bones muttered with an attempt at a smile. "If we both get out of this alive and well, I'll buy you an entire night's worth of Scottish whiskey."
Scotty laughed softly, tears still coming down his face. "Ah'll keep ya to that, Doctor."
And then he left, to go back into Engineering. And Bones was suddenly traveling up and up and up – back to Sickbay. He crawled out of the turbolift and through the hall to his office, and with his PADD, activated the entire ward for emergency conditions. Every system was turned on to maximum efficiency, ready to receive a multitude of patients. He readied hundreds of hypos, one after the next, in quick succession, until the patients began to arrive in groups just large enough for a turbolift. As the groups began to double and finally triple, he guessed that Scotty had fixed another two turbolifts in the span of a half-an-hour. Not bad, with all the other work he had to do on the systems.
Bones had just finished sticking a hypo into his last patient when the Red Alert turned on again. It had been on throughout the decaying orbit, only to cease when the engines had successfully started up. Now it was on again? McCoy could only wonder why. Were they under attack? Maybe the ship had caught some sort of plague. Anything could happen on a day as unlucky as this one.
When the entire Sickbay rumbled and shook like an earthquake, Bones knew it was bad.
An orbit decay was just about the worst Engineering dilemma to get out of when the engines had been turned off, and that hadn't had much impact on the ship's inner conditions because of the inertial dampeners. Now that the inertial dampeners had apparently been messed up, Bones guessed from that shockwave that if they went into decay again, they would die ten times as fast with half the effort.
He had hit his head again, after tumbling to the floor. After a moment of recognition, Bones struggled onto his feet again, grabbing his seat to stay straight. More blood was flowing down his face. He suddenly recalled some elementary facts about red blood cells.
The erythrocytes of the blood contain no nucleus, and so are not cells at all, but simply bags of hemoglobin.
Bones was suddenly fascinated with the streams of red and black running down his arms.
Hemoglobin causes the red hue of blood, and contains the highest percentage of iron in the human body.
He slid his fingers over the streaks, and stared at the bloodied fingertips.
The erythrocyte distributes oxygen to the body because of the affinity hemoglobin holds for oxygen.
Bones noticed that he was gasping for air.
The Bohr Effect is the apparent selectivity of the hemoglobin to release oxygen in deficient areas.
Stumbling over to the medical beds, Bones grabbed a hypo and shot himself in the right arm so it would go straight to his heart and then into his lungs.
The blood contains numerous antibodies, lymphocytes, and white blood cells in addition to erythrocytes that combat disease. They attack all foreign substances introduced to the bloodstream.
He picked up one of the passive anti-body hypos he had loaded earlier and shot that one into his neck.
When an injury forms an opening into the skin, clotting takes place to halt the loss of blood and to cover the opening.
Bones sat down on the medical surgical table and pulled out his dermal regenerator.
Clotting is caused by threads of fibrin, which take three separate stages to be formed. Fibrin is purposefully difficult to produce to limit the amount of clotting produced in a healthy state.
With a steady, bloody hand, Bones carefully drew the regenerator across his open wounds.
In the event of the over-production of fibrin, severe clotting in the blood vessels can result in their clogging, and extensions of the body are cut off from oxygen supply.
When he had finished covering his burn wounds, Bones shot himself with a hypo of anti-coagulants. He checked for a broken rib with a tricorder, but it was only bruised. He fixed it up with his regenerator.
He sighed in relief; his wounds were now under control, and so were his emotions for the most part. Bones hated to admit it, and would never admit it to Spock, but in crisis situations, sometimes emotions had to be suppressed or nothing got done.
So Bones walked over to the sink, washed his face, arms, and hands of all the blood, and then shot himself with another stimulant. This was the fourth, maybe the fifth one, and also the last. He could only force his body to move for so long before it gave out.
The medical teams from Engineering were still there, and had all been working diligently before the pseudo-earthquake. When he had been tending to his wounds, he vaguely noticed them as he wove through the crowd.
As soon as he could, Bones worked his way back through the crowd of medical teams and wounded crewmen back to his desk. He grabbed his emergency communicator and flipped it open.
Bee-bee-beep.
"Doctor McCoy to Engineering." Let's hope Communications are up again, thought Bones grimly.
The response was almost immediate, but the two-second delay seemed to stretch on for forever in Bones' opinion.
"Kirk here. Doctor, report."
Bones sighed in thankfulness. "Jim, three turbolifts are working to bring up patients, and the medical teams are all up here working their hardest. Every so often, rescue teams bring in more patients. We're covered in Sickbay. We just need time to recuperate." Bones paused. "You okay down there?"
"I'm fine, Bones. It's Engineering that isn't fine."
"Yeah, we can tell from up in Sickbay that nothing's fine right now, Jim. What's going on?"
There was a pause on the other end.
"Jim?"
"We're not sure what's wrong, Bones. We fixed the first problem with a highly dangerous full-power start-up that's never been done before, but now there's a completely different problem that we can't pin down. We're still working on it. If we get more information, I'll inform you. For now, just keep on fixing people."
"Affirmative."
"Kirk out."
Bones flipped his communicator shut with a resounding snap. He turned back to his desk, and saw something wrong.
He wasn't sure what it was, at first. He knew that something was wrong, he just couldn't pin it down. He had his database PADD, his stylo, his digital clock, his hypos…
Then it clicked. His clock was going backwards.
Bones flipped his communicator open again.
"McCoy to Kirk. Jim, pick up. I know what's wrong."
"Bones? What's going on?"
"I told you. I know what's wrong with the ship." Bones' lips felt numb as he pushed the words out. "We're traveling back in time."
"Bones, that's impossible!"
A tinny voice coming from a small distance from Jim started speaking. It sounded distinctly like Spock, logically explaining that the theory was an accurate one. Bones grinned smugly. If Spock was defending his position, he had to be right.
"Thanks, Bones. Gotta go. Kirk out."
And so Bones flipped his communicator shut again. He watched the seconds disappear on his clock, watching the minutes wind backwards. How many seconds would be lost?
As the numbers slowed, Bones watched in anticipation. Slowly, ever so slowly, they stopped moving altogether, and then proceeded to go forward as they had before. By Bones' extremely scientific calculations, the Enterprise was now traveling in normal time again.
It was six o'clock in the morning of the same day.
Bones smiled and sighed in the joys of being alive to fight another day before groaning and smacking his forehead.
"Now I have to live through another October 23rd! Why did today of all days have to repeat itself?"
He grumbled to himself, before finally getting a start on that paperwork.
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END OF PART 1
Author's Note:
haha, poor Bones… you gotta love him.
Just a warning: this fic will most likely result in Scones. That's Scotty/Bones for anyone who can't tell a wombo from an ordinary word.
I'm not sure if I can, but I'll try to get every chapter up to the bar this first one has set… I think the length will be about the same for each chapter, so they might take awhile to update. Perhaps a week for a new chapter? You want quality, don't expect instant quantity, now. Be patient, please.
This fic is going for severely deep character exploration and development. It's gonna go slow. I also don't want anyone under a false impression at the start: this is not about a random fling, this is about a developing relationship. That means LOVE. So no explicit, random, thrown together sex scenes. Thus, though the fic is rated quite high for maturity, it is more because of the violence/deep insights than the homoeroticism.
Quick note: I want to keep the characters as they are, and not shuffle around their baggage just to fit my infernal schemes. If you ever see something that they do or say that's so incredibly wrong your hair stands on end, tell me. And I really want to portray the fact that both of them are supremely manly and awesome, so if you see that, mention it and I'll know I've done my job.
By the way, all the medical stuff is legitimate. I swear. Look it up. (Except some of the equipment might be a little made up by the franchise… But that's another story.)
Oh, and if you like the fic and want me to work a bit more enthusiastically (and therefore more quickly), just review. I will take anything, even blatant abuse, and use it to fuel the fires of my inspiration.
Thus ends the longest Author's Note ever.
~happysquid08
