Sometimes he found himself thinking back to a warm night in Aberdeen when he'd been young. One of his uncles had good-humoredly slipped him a wee bit of ale, had watched him and laughed- said it looked like he was trying to drink his way to the other side of the glass.
Tonight, he was running on fumes, the contents of at least eight pints the only thing sloshing around in his stomach, if he had to put a number to them. Through the ringing in his ears, he could practically hear Bones scolding him to eat something, damn it. Hell if Scotty knew where the doctor was now. Or the Enterprise and the rest of the crew for that matter.
As for himself, Scotty was in a back alley with someone whose gaze he'd caught fifteen minutes ago in a crowded bar, an erection grinding into his tailbone. He wanted him to hurry; the air was bloody baltic and any illusion of warmth the alcohol had granted him eariler was starting to ebb away. Not to mention that he's seen enough snow in his lifetime already, thank ye very much. It almost made him reconsider what he was doing freezing his arse off out here, vision blurry, his cheek pressed against damp brick.
During his time at the Academy, Scotty had passed the mandatory psychological screening with flying colors, despite his aversion to the idea of having people inside his head where they didn't belong; it proved that he wasn't one to crack easily under stress, wouldn't suffer some sort of mental breakdown after having to use a weapon. But if he was being truly honest with himself, he'd never really been able to fully reconcile the thought of having a man's life on his conscience, that he could have prevented taking. On the past occasions he'd had to use his phaser, it'd always been set to stun instead of kill.
Flash forward to him nodding mechanically as he heard them try to comfort him under the weight of their own grief, telling Scotty that no matter what he might think, he shouldn't ever blame himself. There had been nothing he could've done to stop what had happened. The fact that he had been the only person with the Captain down in that chamber meant nothing. These reminders were always followed by reassurances that he, Scotty, was certainly strong enough to get through this. All the things friends are supposed to say to each other when tragedies like these arise.
Unfortunately, those things had also been wrong. The counseling sessions had only been static to him, white noise in an attempt to cover up what he'd known all along. What he had failed to prevent, what he'd caused by not regaining consciousness in time- by letting Kirk go in there alone, die alone- was in his colleagues' eyes, every extra line in their faces that hadn't been there before. In the sounds Uhura had made when they'd stood in front of the containment door, her stifled sobs against his shoulder. Spock screaming the madman's name, all rage and no logic. And the fight, the fire, Scotty had always been known for, was long gone. They hadn't realized that part of him wasn't alive anymore.
The man spread him apart, rubbing Scotty's shut hole with the wet pad of his thumb before pushing it inside him. Scotty said nothing, only gritted his teeth at the burn. A hungry, hollow sound rumbled loudly from his gut, breaking the silence. They both ignored it.
"Too goddamn tight," the man grunted, complained, his breath hot and stale on Scotty's ear. Another finger breached him, working him open, its owner murmuring obscenities that he was too gone to really pay any attention to. Scotty didn't like being present much these days, although it turned out that drowning his sorrows was like trying to drown a fire with gasoline. On a pile of matches. But there were more important reasons behind it; the more he drank, the less attuned he was to the differences.
Behind him, the man stroked himself and rolled on a condom; lined up and slanted inside him.
Scotty took it quietly, tasted metal as he bit his chapped bottom lip to keep from cursing. The beer managed to dull some of the pain even as the man slammed violently into him, shoving him against the wall. He was used as a thing, more like a masturbatory aid than a human being. Even Scotty felt strangely detached from his own body, as though he were another person witnessing the sad scene from a distance, thinking that the vaguely familiar person didn't deserve anything else.
'If we go in there we'll die, ye hear me?'
His own voice reverberated around in his skull. It didn't take a lot for him to go back, to experience it all again as his mind slurred the memories together; he and the Captain plummeting through the bowels of the Enterprise, her corridors shaking and bucking around them. The sinking feeling when it had hit him that this great, massive, shuddering thing was dying. They had groped the walls for balance, warning lights flashing around them and the force of the ship's fall vibrating in Scotty's sternum, and nothing had been more important than realigning that warp core.
'Sorry.'
He had stood there, immobile, and watched as radiation poisoning melted his insides. Had stared at the limp form of the Captain slumped next to the glass while he cooked in there, and Scotty's brain had frantically sifted through hundreds of equations and mathematical theories, because there had to be an answer, one that he just hadn't thought of yet. A lot of good that had done them. In the end, he'd done nothing but watch him die.
'Sorry,' Kirk had said through scattered breaths, eyes red and glassy, while his cells were irradiated and his organs failed and Scotty stood there.
The crew had had to wait some time before it was safe enough to take the body up to the med bay. Afterwards, Scotty had gone into an isolated section of engineering and punched one of the pipes until his knuckles bled. The thought made something in his fingers itch; it had also been one of the last times he'd touched a machine.
"Anyone ever fuck you like this before?" the person inside him asked, bringing him back to the present. "Tell me how much you like it, tell me."
If he'd had the energy, Scotty would've told the stupid bastard to shut it already. They both knew that whether Scotty liked it or not wasn't important to either of them. There wasn't enough punishment in the universe to absolve him. And this wasn't Kirk.
(it would never be Kirk again)
It hurt too feckin' much for it to be Kirk. The unwanted fact made him feel like he was choking, on something bitter in the back of his throat that he couldn't swallow. It became too much, compounded by the blunt fingernails digging into the thin layer of fat on his hips, the heavy anonymous body crushing him against the wall.
Scotty had begun to shiver, his teeth chattering. He gripped himself in his right hand, screwed his wet and stinging eyes shut. Took himself away, back before either of them had ever heard the name John Harrison, focused solely on fragments of times he wanted to remember: the bare slope of a shoulder, that shit-eating grin. Hands, reverent hands, that had embarrassed Scotty at first. Parted lips tracing patterns on his skin, even after he'd come back from engineering smelling of sweat and grease.
Pumping his fist faster, he made himself believe that Kirk was still the one pulsing and shifting inside him; made himself believe in this short moment, that he was alive.
"Jim," he said aloud, his voice hoarse as he finally came, shuddering against the cold wall. His muscles clamped down hard on the stranger's cock and he heard the man release inside him with a low groan. He pressed his forehead against the wall, knowing that the other man had heard his pathetic, futile humiliation, but deciding that no part of him cared in the slightest.
The body heat settled against his back suddenly left him, and it throbbed sharply when the man pulled out of him. One of the others had tried to ask Scotty his name before, but fortunately there were no more words, only the odd feeling of the stranger's eyes on him and the sound of footsteps as he left. His breath steaming, Scotty stopped himself from sitting on the ground amongst the littered trash, despite how much he wanted to. His lungs ached from the too cold air, and he thought that it shouldn't be possible to feel this raw and numb at the same time.
He swayed on his feet a little, looking up at the murky, black sky and wishing he could see stars. It wouldn't be long until he found himself back in front of the containment door again, watching as his world shattered behind the glass, and no matter how much he drank, he would always be on the wrong side.