AN: So, um, this is a thing that happened. It's based on a conversation with the amazing JazzyAli that happened at lunch one day, and it's pure crackfic. That's... about it, really. Just crackfic. Hope you enjoy it!
"What does she even expect me to do with all these?" Leonard grumbled, staring at the large carton of mandarin oranges in front of him. He'd never asked for any oranges. Never, at any point in his career, could he remember expressing desire for oranges, except maybe once or twice ordering them at the replicator. They weren't bad. He had nothing against them. He just didn't know why his mom had sent him a hundred of them.
"Eat them, maybe?" Jim said from next to him, reaching across to grab an orange. Leonard slapped his hand away. "I dunno, just a thought."
"Ha ha. Hilarious, Jim." Leonard grabbed a letter attached to the side of the carton, still half-glaring at Jim's face as he flipped open the paper. Paper. Who even used paper anymore? "My ma doesn't normally send me any oranges, let alone this many. At least they're small." He shook his head. "She should've sent me peaches. God, what I wouldn't do for a nice fresh Georgia peach right now. I could make a coupla pies with the same amount of peaches."
"Bones, focus. Read the letter."
He shook himself from his reverie. As nice as peaches would be, the crate was full of mandarin oranges instead, and he should probably take Jim's advice just this once and read the letter. "Fine, fine," he said, and looked down at the paper.
Dear Lenny,
I hope you are doing well on board that starship of yours. I've been worried about you, flying around in space. It's a dangerous place, you know, make sure to be careful.
He rolled his eyes. Of course he was careful, he was the only goddamn crewmember who was sometimes.
I saw a published article recently that made me think of you. They mentioned new findings that suggested that the only way for us to get the proper amount of vitamin C daily is to eat 40-50 mandarin oranges a day. I wouldn't have believed it, but the source was very reputable. I'll enclose a copy of the article for you to read yourself.
Leonard couldn't help it; he laughed. The idea that someone would have to eat that many oranges a day was quite frankly one of the most ridiculous things he'd ever heard. And living on the Enterprise, he heard a lot of ridiculous things. Seriously, he loved his ma, but how gullible was she?
Can you believe it, all these years with humanity not getting their proper nutrients! Imagine how different we'll feel.
I wasn't sure if you'd seen the study, so I sent you a hundred oranges to get started. I want to hear that you've eaten them all next time I call you, Lenny. And that you're continuing the diet on your own. I don't want to have to send you even more oranges, but I will if that's what it takes.
By then, Leonard was simply shaking his head at the contents of the letter.
Well, that's about all I had to say. Stay safe, darling. I'll be sending you lots of love from planetside. We all miss you very much, and can't wait to see you in three years.
Love,
Ma
"What's it say?" Jim asked, and Leonard handed over the letter without comment. The utter ridiculousness of it all couldn't even be put into words. It was just so...stupid. The fact that this level of sheer stupidity could even happen was baffling to him. "Heh, she calls you Lenny? I'm totally calling you that from now on."
Leonard shot Jim a death glare. "You damn well will not call me Lenny," he growled.
"Can Spock call you Lenny?" Jim grinned, apparently very amused by his own idea. Leonard was not.
"No, he cannot call me Lenny! No one on this ship gets to call me Lenny! Ever!"
"Soooo, we can use it on shore leave then."
"No! No one who works on the Enterprise is allowed to use that name. Now shut up and keep reading, kid."
"You're no fun," Jim pouted, but kept reading anyways.
Leonard sighed and turned back to the crate, picking up the other papers that had been in the letter. Sure enough, his ma had sent the article she'd talked about, and it looked hideously fake, just as he'd thought it would. He shook his head and set it aside; it was useless, and just thinking about the conversation he was going to have to have convincing his ma that it was useless made his head hurt. And he had enough headaches just dealing with the crew.
"This sounds serious," Jim said, and Leonard looked back to him. "Good thing she sent you those oranges, huh?"
McCoy blinked at him. Was Jim...was he falling for it, too? "You don't actually believe that crap," Leonard replied, hoping against hope that Jim was just messing with him.
"Well, it seems pretty real to me, Bones." Oh dear god, he wasn't kidding, he actually...
"Look, Jim, it's obviously fake, can't you see that? Here, look at the article." He thrust said article at Jim's chest. "There's no way that this thing is a legitimate scientific source. My ma just saw it and got irrationally worried. She does that sometimes."
"I dunno, Bones, did you read it?" Jim looked...concerned. Not good. "These statistics look pretty good to me."
"No, Jim, no they don't. And you should know better, too," Leonard said, then crossed his arms. "You probably do know better and you're just messing with me, aren't you?"
"I'm not messing with you," Jim said. "I'm dead serious. We need to do this."
"Wha - are you crazy?! No we don't! No one can eat 50 oranges in one -" Ah great, there was that look in Jim's eye he got whenever he took something as a personal challenge. Leonard instantly regretted saying anything.
"We have to, Bones. It's the only way." Jim grinned, a look that shot a spear of terror through Leonard's chest. "After all, what would happen if I called your mom and told her that you didn't eat all the oranges? She'd be so... disappointed in her Lenny."
Any illusion of Jim buying into the letter dissipated, and Leonard narrowed his eyes. Jim wanted to play rough - fine. They'd play rough. "Fine. But you're eating them too." He gave his best intimidating smile, the one Chapel said was scarier than when he yelled. "After all, we wouldn't want our Captain having vitamin deficiencies, now would we?"
And that was how the pair of them ended up in one of the rec rooms after their shift, surrounded by exactly 100 satsuma oranges and staring each other down from across the table.
Each had fifty oranges in front of them. Leonard had tried to place his in a moderately organized fashion; Jim didn't even bother. "We have fifteen hours until our next shift," he said, blue eyes boring a hole in Leonard's skull. "Are you ready?"
"I think the better question is, are you ready?" Leonard shot back.
"Bring it." Jim smirked, and began peeling his first orange.
They ate in silence for the first few minutes, both concentrated on their work of peeling and eating. Not that it was particularly difficult work, but to go quickly required concentration - and whoever finished first won eternal glory from the damn orange eating contest. Leonard was not about to be outdone by James Kirk. It was a stupid contest, but he was going to win, dammit. He couldn't let Jim have the satisfaction of winning, or he'd never live it down.
Eventually, though - or what felt like eventually - he had to pull away and take a breather. He had eaten only five oranges, and already he was sick of them. It did not bode well for his chances in the competition, but he conveniently ignored that. "Done already, Bones?" Jim asked, and tried to smile as he swallowed a mouthful of orange. It came out more like a grimace.
"No," Leonard said. "I can do this. I'm not gonna let you win."
"Uh-huh." Jim reached for another orange, and even he couldn't hide the vaguely pained expression at the thought of eating even more. "You just try, buddy, you just try."
"You're gonna have your ass handed to you, kid." Leonard stared at his pile of oranges, and forced himself to grab another.
Five oranges later, they both gave up the pretense.
"Nope, I'm done," Jim groaned, leaning onto the table and knocking aside oranges and discarded peels in the process. "Fifty is too many oranges."
"Agreed," Leonard said. His stomach rolled unpleasantly at the citrus scent in front of him, so he leaned back in his chair as far as it would go. "This is one of the worst ideas we've ever had."
"Hey. Not our idea this time. It was your mom's idea."
"No, it was whatever idiot who decided to create that stupid fake article. I blame them."
"Sure. That works too."
They sighed in unison, and looked up at each other. Leonard watched Jim warily across the table. Judging by the inner conflict playing out across his face, Leonard had a fair idea what would come out of that kid's mouth next, and he didn't like it.
"We have to keep going," Jim said. There it was. "Giving up isn't an option. We have to prove we can do it."
Leonard didn't like it. But, hell, he agreed with it. "Yeah. Alright. Let's go."
They groaned, and each grabbed for another orange.
Normally, Spock didn't take two shifts in a row. He might take alternating ones on some days, but rarely one after the other. After all, even Vulcans required rest. And, as Doctor McCoy was fond of saying, "the crew needs a break from your particular brand of crazy, Spock."
But it was not a normal day. Because contrary to what most of Starfleet seemed to think, it wasn't actually a normal occurrence for an entire science lab on the Enterprise to become overrun with creatures that were somewhere between plants and animals. (The crew had taken to calling them "planimals," but Spock did not stoop to using such unscientific terms.) As the cleanup job was rather difficult, he had volunteered to stay and aide his scientists, which had taken a whole second shift. By the end, the humans were practically stumbling towards the sonics, replicators, or their beds, and even Spock was far from peak energy. Retiring to his room for sleep and meditation seemed like the logical choice.
He had not thought that walking by one of the rec rooms would present any sort of problem.
As he walked past, he was scrolling through the final report on the "planimal" incident, making adjustments and signing things off. His mind was occupied, and he was not paying much attention to his surroundings. But he did pick up two distinct voices coming from the room, and what they were saying...didn't make much sense.
"No, Jim, no, it's too many oranges!"
"We have to, come on!"
Spock paused, and decided to step into the room, just to ensure that nothing had gone wrong.
He was met with the sight of Doctor McCoy and the Captain slumped over a table, several small oranges piled in front of them and peels scattered everywhere. And if that wasn't strange enough, as Spock walked in the Captain practically yelled, "It's the only way!"
"Captain?" Spock asked, and the pair turned to look at him.
Jim's hair stuck up in all directions, as if he'd been running his fingers through it, and his eyes were wide and wild and desperate. McCoy's hair may have been unusually messy as well, but he barely even blinked at Spock's appearance, simply made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a groan and leaned his cheek against the palm of his hand. His eyes were heavy-lidded, almost shut but still forced open.
Spock looked back and forth at the pair of them, opened his mouth, then closed it. Perhaps it would be best to leave them to their...whatever it was they were doing. Spock wasn't really sure he wanted to ask them about it. So he turned and left for his quarters instead.
"We did it," Jim gasped. "We ate fifty of those little oranges each in less than fifteen hours."
Leonard groaned. He was past the point of words, really. There was just...nothing that could possibly be said that he couldn't express in monosyllables. He was exhausted and disgusted and not sure how he'd even forced that last orange down but damn, he was never going to touch another one again.
"I know," Jim said, and reached over to pat Leonard on the arm before collapsing on the table.
Leonard blinked at him, wondered vaguely what idiot would think it would be a good idea to eat fifty oranges daily, then slid off his chair and curled up on the floor to sleep.
The next day, they would wake up and clear away the peels, swear never to eat that many again, make themselves presentable and try to pretend like nothing happened. But they both knew what had been done. Neither was entirely sure how, but the facts were there. They had done it. And Spock knew about it. And neither would ever mention it again while sober.
AN: There may or may not be a follow-up chapter explaining the real reason behind the carton of oranges, depending on how motivated I am and how much time I have. We'll see. Also, apologies for any ooc-ness that may have arisen in my attempt to create this strange plot.
But anyways, as in my previous stories, I would love to hear any reviews you have to give. Thanks for reading!