Prologue: Bourbon & Amaretto
He watched the woman sitting across from him. He did it through the bottom of his glass so he could pretend she didn't know what he was doing, but since he'd long ago catalogued every curve and plane of her face, that didn't keep him from getting a good look. He was intimately acquainted with the softness of her skin, knew that sensitive place where her jaw met her neck was the same shade of brown painted over reds and yellows as the bourbon he was viewing it through.
A memory of how she tasted bubbled up from where he'd buried it and he swallowed the last of his drink just to forget her flavor.
It didn't work.
She had always been like bourbon and amaretto on his tongue, and that last sip just left him craving marzipan.
.
She was drinking the bourbon the first night they met. He should've taken that as a sign.
Bourbon had played a role in his family's courtship rituals since the days before Earth was united, since the time when "I'm drunk" was considered a legitimate female mating call throughout the honky-tonks and dive bars that littered the southern United States of America.
McCoys weren't expected to frequent such establishments. Not regularly, anyway. But Leonard Horatio McCoy was too adventurous to stick with the genteel country clubs and the delicate debutantes to be found there. He'd met Jocelyn in a dive outside of Oxford, Mississippi. She liked beer better than bourbon, and he should have taken that as a sign, too.
Upenda Wanjira Uhura was as different from Jocelyn as peaches were from peanuts. In spite of her privileged background – no matter how egalitarian Earth's society was said to be, there were still plenty of de facto caste systems in play – she was completely lacking any sense of entitlement. He found her easy to talk to. It helped that she was a doctor. And that she knew her bourbon from her Tennessee whiskey.
They traded war stories: He trumped her "He said he wanted me, but he married someone else, anyway" with his "She married me, but she wanted someone else from the beginning. And after our daughter was born, she went and got him." He didn't tell her the "him" had been his cousin Joe.
He'd wanted to follow her back to her little New York City flat that first night they met – something he hadn't been tempted to do since the year after Jocelyn had left and a pretty thing named Nancy had looked at him with big brown eyes. She'd thought he was sweet and called him "Plum," but she hadn't wanted a ready-made family, and he wasn't willing to turn his back on Joanna. After Nancy, he'd learned that bourbon was pretty good cure for being sweet, too.
But Leonard McCoy had not been thinking about any of that night he first met Upenda Uhura.
At her sister's engagement party, Pen was a amiable companion – a sharp wit who could talk shop or good hooch with equal alacrity – housed in a fine form that was topped off with a mien more appealing than even the youngest Uhura's. Never mind that to most people the Starfleet officer resembled a shorter clone of the doctor – even Spock had once stated that the shared "a considerable amount of facial similarity for siblings who are not monozygotic twins" – whenever he laid eyes on the elder Uhura sister, Leonard perceived a loveliness that was missing when he looked at his colleague.
Bones had wanted to follow her home that night, but had settled for her contact info and the promise of a dance at the wedding.
He hadn't expected her to spend the next few months stealing his daughter's heart or that she'd bring him dangerously close to admitting she'd stolen his, too.
Leonard Horatio McCoy didn't do serious relationships.
But it had turned out that serious was all Upenda Wanjira Uhura could accept from him.
"I love your daughter, and I love you," Pen had told him, "but she's already had to see you go through one fucked up relationship. If taking us any further means setting her up for more heartbreak, then we may as well end things right now."
He'd done the only thing he could think of at the time and reminded her he'd already signed on for another three years on the Enterprise.
.
"Liked what you saw?" Upenda quipped when he set his glass back on the table between them. She knew people who played with fire eventually got burned, but Len was flame to her moth. Flying towards his light and heat was instinctive.
Maybe it was that slow smile that he tried to pass off as a sneer. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes gave him away every time.
"Darlin'," he murmured, leaning forward until she could breathe in the tantalizing aroma of bourbon and McCoy in the still air, "I could watch you for a year and never get tired of the sight."
And just like that – with just one five-letter word – the spell was broken. A delicious thrill shot out from between her thighs to radiate from her toes to her fingertips, leaving her a little lightheaded. But when she let it, her formidable brain was more than capable of overriding her libido, no matter how appealing the temptation.
She hadn't seen Leonard McCoy in more than a year – and wouldn't be seeing him now if her brother-in-law hadn't wanted her at her sister's side. Perspective. It was the only thing keeping her from making another foolish decision because of this man.
His heart rate had increased and she could Hear the nitric oxide flooding the arteries in his penis as arousal began to overcome the common sense he carried around like a badge of honor. It wasn't enough. Just like Len, Upenda had been there and gotten her heart broken for her troubles, but unlike him, she was an Uhura, and she still believed in second chances.
"Bitter old man," she almost whispered.
"Not too old, sweetheart," he retorted, topping up both their glasses. "Same difference between me and you as the elf and your baby sister."
He was wrong. Spock was nine years older than Ennie. Leonard was only eight years older than Upenda. She didn't bother to correct him. Instead, she lifted her glass in silent toast and drank deeply.
The first night she'd met him she'd said, "I don't get drunk. Ever." That was the truth. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she was a liar.
A/N: If you know my fics, you know I mostly write Spock/Uhura. Although this is a follow-up to an S/U fic (s/5208934/1/Then_Comes_Spock), don't expect to see too much of them here. This is Bones's story. Finally.
Disclaimer: I don't own any Star Trek concepts or characters, and I sure as heck don't profit from writing about them.