My friend Phoenix was a lot of inspiration for dis. He has soft dark hair, soft dark eyes, and a tattoo of a flowering heather stem. It was just too good.

After they materialized, they stood still for a couple of seconds, checking the presence of all the essential body parts and of some surroundings, just out of habit. Then they looked at each other and howled with laughter:

"You couldn't just hide the bottles, couldn't you?"

"Did you see his face?"

Scotty dropped on the ground and hid his face in his hands:

"An urgent shore leave, oh I beg of you… Do you think he believed that?"

"Do you think I think he did?"

"Great! Now the whole bridge crew knows we're a couple of alcoholics..."

It did indeed seem funny to them that an accidental passing by their home planet had coincided with a critical shortage of strong drinks in the sickbay. Scotty and McCoy, without arguing much about whose suffering was worse, had promptly decided that the Doctor would arrange a shore leave for each of them and spend it wherever suggested in exchange for the other's help in choosing the best Scotch.

And they had got lucky (or unlucky, who knows) to have Jim run into them when smuggling their brand new liquor case into the transporter room. They'd had to sacrifice a whole precious bottle to keep the rest of the affair for themselves.

"The soul-rubbing spirit," Scotty smirked, lying flat on the heather flowers. "I'll keep that in my mind."

"You'd say it was engine-rubbing?" Bones tried to wipe his eyes but could not stop giggling.

"You're being rude, sir, offending the good drink like that!" the man cried indignantly but snorted once again. "By the way, where is it?"

"Under your left arm. After we're back, don't forget to tell me how the original Scotch tastes differently from the one beamed back and forth."

Scott felt the bottle, drank a mouthful from it and hugged it tenderly:

"It doesn't. With my machinery, you can transport people, animals, whiskey, perfume..."

"I'd like to see you try and explain to Jim the need for a case of perfume aboard."

Scotty chuckled at it and stirred into a more comfortable position.

"So, shall we go?" Bones reached out to help his friend up, but he didn't move. "Hey, what's up with you? Need a doctor?"

"Yeah, but you're already here." Did he smile with such a lovely squint because he looked at McCoy, or because he looked at McCoy against the sunlight?

"Get up, then, and let's go."

"I won't. I'm perfectly well where I am."

"But you wanted to show me something."

Scotty nodded, his eyes still closed:

"Behold," he waved his hand somewhere generously, "this is Highland."

Bones looked around, just realizing he didn't know where they'd landed. The land covered in heather could hardly be called smooth, rocks were lying here and there, and above the peaks of what could be hills or little mountains only the same hillocks or the clear sky could be seen. He liked it there, though.

He knelt down but did not lie down as carelessly as his companion's position suggested:

"Hey, it's wet here. Has it been raining lately?"

"Are you really going to talk weather to me?"

"Why not? Look, there is a rainbow."

Scotty looked into the sky as if for the first time in his life, and then said suddenly:

"Did it occur to you that the sky is always the same? Or maybe not, not really." He took another gulp and corrected himself. "It's special in your home place, because it has the most beautiful shade," he said sincerely, looking into the Scottish sky-shaded eyes of the man beside him.

Bones answered him with a long gaze and then answered hastily, "Y-yeah, you should be right. It sounds really right."

He took the bottle from the engineer, sipped from it, too, and made up his mind about having a rest. Along with the flowers and the smell of the rain, a priceless earthly feeling, so dear to a space traveler's heart, embraced him. On what another planet, be it a perfect specimen of class M, you could taste the bright dew from a flower and not worry about anything, not counting the impression that the water was as strong a drink as whiskey? No tricoder readings, no dangers in mind. That's Earth.

A warm wind blew over them. The other man's dark hair, probably filled with the smell of wet heather like anything around them, should feel as soft, but McCoy didn't reach to touch it yet; they still had the whole shore leave ahead.

"Are we going to lie around like that till evening?"

"Till whatever you like. But we can go someplace as well."

"Where?"

"To the sea. You know this old joke? 'In here, wherever you go, you go to the sea. Damn this island.'"

The word smelled fresh. Bones thought even his lips tasted salty from it.

"Why not? The bottle will last..."