Author's Note: For Noel who requested Bones and the prompt storm. Set post-film with mini-spoilers for the TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles but barely any at all. Sadly, it's unbeta'd—apologies. Cheers!
Disclaimer: Characters mentioned are used without permission and are trademarks of CBS/Paramount/Gene Roddenberry. I do not own them and am simply borrowing for my purposes. Please don't sue.
The Tribble Storm Cometh
by, Caliente
It was one of the facts of life when living in close proximity to James T. Kirk: when it rained, it fucking poured. Which Leonard McCoy could generally handle when it was in the literal sense (with the very big exception of lightning storms in space). This, though—this was becoming a real shit storm.
Bad enough that Jim was letting the crew take Shore Leave on Deep Space K-7 at the same time as a Klingon vessel but some idiot had gone and fed Scotty's pet Tribble. They were already up to their ankles in the damned fuzzy things and, since the little alien puff balls had gotten inside the grain being housed on the station, that didn't look to be changing anytime soon.
McCoy had been trying to find a humane way to make them sterile or something before the goddamned things filled up the quadrant—which wouldn't take nearly as long as he'd like to believe (something the half-Vulcan calculator called Spock had been helpful enough to point out). Unfortunately, it wasn't going so well and every time he turned around it seemed like another dozen Tribbles had popped up.
The senior staff assembled in the meeting room, surrounded by a frustrating number of pleasantly cooing balls of fluff. Jim's expression was uncharacteristically frustrated and McCoy suspected it was because people kept slipping Tribbles onto the Captain's seat when he wasn't looking. "Someone tell me they've come up with a way to get them out of here."
There was a mournful expression on Scotty's face. "Still workin' on gettin' the sensors t'isolate the lil' buggars, Captain."
McCoy didn't have much better news. "I haven't been able to figure a way to stop them from being born pregnant. S'long as they're not fed, they won't have any more babies but that still leaves the population growing at a steady rate." And increasing infinitely.
"Indeed." Fuck, it was a bad day when Spock was agreeing with him.
Scowling, Jim looked at Yeoman Rand. "I want every available hand on Tribble clean-up. I don't care how we do it but we are getting these damned things off my ship." He glanced at the chronometer and made a face. "I have to go meet with our friendly neighborhood station manager." His gaze swept over his staff. "Figure something out."
Yeah, right, as if it was that easy. McCoy rolled his eyes. Yup, it was pouring, all right. (Because the Klingons hadn't been problematic enough.) "Shit storm," he muttered to himself, shaking his head as he headed back to Sickbay. Of all the ways he could die in space (and he'd thought about it at length and in great detail), drowning in Tribbles seemed the least dignified. So he was going to not do that if possible.
Damn Jim Kirk and his damned ridiculous luck. When this was all over and he and Scotty were commiserating over a bottle of something good, McCoy was not inviting Jim. (He meant it this time, too. Really.)