To Hover Is To Love

.

.

.

For the doctor, it's his family at his feet. Its Joanna wrapped in obscurity, strewn across the floor like one of her dolls, bent and broken. The shadows manipulate her young face, curving it and bending it like it's toy, making her shrivel up under his eyes, making her seep into the black before he can grab at her.

It's his baby at his feet, perfect lips shaped in their last moments, forming the sound he'd hear in his mind for eternity. He could practically hear her shrill screams, the garbled moans, the begging, the pleading the sobbing-

It's his little girl, eyes open but unseeing, with a gloss over them, a gloss Leonard knows far too well, given his profession. It's her little fingers, all ten of them, bruised and battered like she had done her best to put up a fight. A fight for a life that wasn't meant to be taken so soon, or so horribly. It's the way her freckles fade into her gray skin, and the way her eye lashes are clumped together, that makes him fall to his feet just as the shadows glide in and over her corpse, seemingly sinking her body into the cool floor.

He turns around at the sound of a thump, audible over the combinations of low moans and chaotic murmurs. He doesn't even hesitate to crawl toward the tufts of blonde stained brown.

Hand's fly over discolored skin, bloodied lips, matted hair. The stench of blood is thick, curling in around Leonard's senses, pouring down his throat and causing him to choke on the bile threatening to spew from his mouth.

He's a doctor, why can't he do anything?

His Captain, his friend, his brother, is cold beneath the pads of his fingertips. His eyes are blocked by purpled eyelids, because even death couldn't fade the brilliant blue that Leonard was so familiar with.

For the doctor, it's not being able to do his job; fix, help, mend, bind, steady or guide. Thought's flicker to a dying man, his father, pleading for him to end his life. Unplug him from those retched machines and steal away his last breath, steal away the last pain he'll ever know, the pain that Leonard knows will not follow him around as he walks through the clouds far above their heads.

So he lets him go.

So he lets him go, and 4 days later, the incurable disease is cured. People rejoice, people celebrate, and lives' are saved. Leonard wonders if there's a heaven over his second bottle of booze.

Leonard curls over Jim's body, dragging it towards his daughters. He lies down between them, their cold corpses cooling the ache in his heart, chilling his scattered thoughts, tumbling through an empty mind.

He fails to hold them both.

There's only so many miracles in the world.

The voices grow louder and he curls up, eyes tightening, trying to block them out. They're too loud, too chaotic and beginning to push him toward the edge. They're howling his name, echoing and bouncing off the walls, assaulting his ears.

He wants silence.

It absolutely terrifies him.

'Doctor,' a soft voice says.

Leonard, through the haze forming over the corners of his vision, and the pounding at his temples, looks up.

'It is not real.'

The words don't process in his mind, but his body seems to act before he can think, his hand reaching for the pale one offered to him.

Those shrill screams, those utterly horrific shouts of pain and agony, ever increasing, he realizes, are his.

He gasped, chills coursing through his body as he shuttered. It felt like a cold bucket of water had been poured over him, retracting all of the air from his lungs. A pain similar to being punched settled in his chest, and it was persistent, never fading.

Everything was black, but it was not painful. His breathing became easier, and he noticed that his hands were wrapped around something. Carefully, with trembling lips and a shaking frame, he opened his eyes.

"Spock," he choked quietly.

"None of what you just saw was real, Leonard," he said firmly. Leonard was sure there was something quite wrong with him, especially since that was concern in the man's eyes across from him.

The room around them was quite a sight, dents and stains littering the walls. He was on the floor, curled in on himself, blocked from view by the man's body. His blurry vision swung back to the Vulcan, and he felt nauseous. "Both your daughter and James are in good health."

The cool water that had been poured over him turned hot, and it registered that he was sweating.

The punches to his chest were the frantic beats of his heart.

Leonard passed out.

XXX

"Leonard," a quiet voice breathed. The doctor shifted in one of the bio bed's he was usually hovering over. He peeled his eyes open, body feeling entirely too heavy. His mouth tasted weird and his eyes burned slightly. It was strange to be hovered over by someone whom you couldn't quite make out at first.

But slowly he adjusted.

Warm brown eyes were bathed in the white light of the ships medical bay. It's all he can make out, but the familiar smell of strawberries reach his nose causing him to squeeze Nyota's hand back.

"Drugged?" he asked weakly. He knew the signs, he was a doctor after all. The dark skinned woman nodded, a sad smile on her face. He's aware of her warm hand sweeping over his forehead, pushing back his hair. He stared up at her, beautiful and reassuring. It wasn't fair.

"You've been out for a few hours," she explained, "No injuries. It was all in your head."

"What the hell happened?" Leonard asked letting out a pained breath. His body felt sore with every little movement. Even breathing felt too tedious. Was he really that drained?

"Well, the drugs brought out what you feared most," Uhura responded simply, "And in your case, Spock said it was your family, dead."

He let out a breath, tired eyes shutting again as if he were reliving the agony. It had all looked so real, so terrifyingly and utterly real. A tremor went through him and the thumb sweeping over his knuckles gently quickened its pace.

"Where's Jim?" he asked. If he'd been on Earth, he would have ordered for a phone so he could call his baby. But he focused on Jim, because it had been the three of them who had been beamed down to the planet, and they were split up.

"Expecting him?" Nyota questioned amused, but she doesn't tell him where the blonde is.

"You're a far nicer substitute," he admitted, and maybe it's the pain medication he's on, but he really feels like kissing her.

"He and Spock are on the bridge, speaking with the leader of that planet," she explained voice hardened with disgust. It softened as she added, "You know how they are, Leo, only revealing what they really feel to one another. They could be having panic attacks inside their own heads right now, and we'd never know."

"Leo," he repeated, making her face melt into a gorgeous smile. "I like that."

"Good," she said, "Now why don't you rest? Jim will be down here as soon as he's able, we both know that."

The good doctor doesn't need to be told twice.

XXX

He's up and walking around by the time Jim managed to get down to medical. Spock's trailing after him like a loyal dog, shoulders squared and jaw set. It doesn't take a genius to know what the Vulcan's greatest fear is.

Jim, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

"Up and about already?" Jim asked, making the doctor jump. He turned away from a nurse and stared at his friend like he was an angel sent from heaven. The blonde offered him a smile before he was being pulled into a tight hug.

Jim didn't say a word, didn't tease, and didn't even acknowledge the nurses gape; he just slowly wrapped his arms around his friends back, and he hugged him.

But when Jim did speak, it was some of the best words Leonard has heard in a long while.

"Joanna is waiting on the line, I had Uhura patch it through to your office. You're off duty for the next couple of hours."

He wanted to say that he didn't need to see her, and that they could talk first before he focused on Joanna, but he knows that look in Jim's eyes, the determination and the 'dare to defy me' look; he's seen it before. He wanted to tell his friend that he could come lean on him and scream it out, come into his office until they're both drunk and laughing at everything that's ever caused them pain- but the word's don't leave his mouth.

Spock stepped forward, and Leonard looked to him as he stepped away from his friend's body.

"Go speak with her Leonard."

The doctor understood the message in those simple words. His respect for the Vulcan possibly sky rocketed, as well as the adoration, and the guilt that Spock wasn't lying on the floor amongst his families corpses in that drug induced haze.

He glanced between the two of them, feeling like new parent all over again, because look at the progress both of them have made, the changes they've accomplished because they love each other so much.

He took a hesitant step backward before he turned and hurried into his office. He missed the quiet order Jim gave to leave their CMO undisturbed.

I will take care of Jim, you know this. Go speak with her Leonard.

The two strode from the med-bay just as Leonard smiled at his little girl in his office

XXX

He acknowledged the closeness Spock required in order to gain a control over his emotions again. He didn't mention it, but he certainly accepted and appreciated it. He noticed it as they stripped, stepped into the shower together, under the water Spock didn't protest to have switched to a sonic, just used it as leverage to be closer to Jim under the cool wet, to slipping on pajama pants, and to the immediate action of Spock pulling the blonde flush against him.

"What did you see?"

The words are whispered in Vulcan, and Jim shifted closer to his lover beneath the warm blankets. They had been lying their together, enjoying the calmness, for quite a while.

He pressed his hand over the brunettes chest, relishing in the quick beat of his heart, the tingling each brush of skin sent off, and the overall closeness, in mind and in body.

He breathed in, and then he breathed out, eyes slipping shut.

"Nothing," Jim responded, in English, "I saw nothing."

The Vulcan remained quiet after that, rubbing his long fingers up at down his t'hy'la's back in a soothing motion.

He became aware of the tremors coursing through James' body a few minutes later. Jim curled against him like a child, burying his face in his lover's neck, breathing in his comforting scent. It was burnt and dry, like the deserts of Vulcan, but at the same time, it was smooth and unpredictable, like the seas of Earth.

That's what they were, he supposed, opposites that attract so beautifully.

"How screwed up am I?" the blonde asked laughing in broken Vulcan, "How screwed up, that that drug couldn't figure out which thing to play in front of me like some sadistic show, and corrupt me?"

Spock doesn't know how to respond. He rubbed his hand over a scar protruding from his mate's skin, one incident he could recall quite clearly. He'd been stabbed there, with a fork, by an unsuspecting child who had darted out of the shadows of a home they believed to be abandoned, on a planet they weren't supposed to be on.

He found that he was smiling at the memory. He heard quiet laughter, this time softer around the edges, and sweeter sounding.

"Why are you thinking about that?"

"Nyota once told me, that humans are stories where Vulcans are dictionaries."

"Was this during an argument?" Jim joked quietly.

"It was," the Vulcan said, pausing to listen to his friend's laughter, "But I found it an interesting metaphor. She was right at the time, ashaya. A dictionary has no substance, no content for amusement but to learn and to teach, and therefore unchangeable, where a story, as she put it, could be changed, the outcome could be altered."

"So?" Jim asked after a quiet minute. He pulled back to look at Spock who was staring up at the ceiling of their room. Spock met his eyes and smiled, a smile only Jim ever had the privilege to see.

"So," he continued with the same tone he used when addressing admirals, "You have heart."

"Well so do you," Jim countered a bit irritated, "Don't try to tell me different."

"I have learned quite some time ago that I am unable to do just that," he responded easily making Jim snicker. He allowed the golden haired man pick up one of his hands and message his thumbs into its palm. If the younger man heard a hitch in the Vulcan's breath, he didn't mention that either.

"I don't see how that relates to my fork scar, I mean I always liked that scar. Probably the only Captain to be stabbed with a fork," he snorted, brushing his fingers over Spock's absently.

"Scars are, to my understanding, part of the story. My mother had said she liked scars because they were reminders. She loved to paint, though I never saw the appeal. She had referenced paint brush strokes to scars, that a human body is a canvas for life to do its work."

"And how illogical did you find that?" Jim asked cradling that hand to his chest, over his heart.

"I was thirteen terran years of age Jim, I had told her she was being ridiculous."

Jim snorted.

"But now I understand," Spock added, "Jim, what hurts us may feel like heavy burdens to carry, but each is a detail to which we learn from."

"So without my past, I wouldn't be who I am today," Jim summarized. He nodded in agreement, feeling comforted by the unsaid words.

"No," Spock said.

"No?" Jim asked caught off guard, "Wasn't that the point?"

"It might have been to you, which is perfectly acceptable, but it was not the point I was endeavoring to make," the Vulcan answered. He wrapped his fingers around Jim's bony ones, feeling like with them together, nothing couldn't ever touch either of them.

"Well then what was it Aristotle?" Jim asked sarcastically. His words held no bite however, just amusement. Spock rolled over on top of Jim, balancing his weight on his arms as he hovered over the curious man. He leant down and pressed a kiss to his forehead, hoping for that kiss to travel through their bond and wrap it in love.

"You are a masterpiece," Spock breathed against warm skin, "Life's greatest work."

.

.

.

.

Authors Notes: I was really depressed when I first started this story, and I just felt better and decided to give it a fluffy ending. Sue me. I could have had overly emotional conversations. I hope you guys like Bones/Uhura because I do.

I apologize to my new beta for not sending this to you, please understand I wanted this to be put up without any words changed, or any past/present/future endings switched. Some of it was meant to have bad grammar.

Hope you all had a lovely holiday and vacation. Thanks for the support!

~rousey