At precisely seventeen forty-five, Bones pressed the doorbell to the captain's quarters and the door whisked open almost instantly; he stepped inside and blew out a quiet breath before Kirk appeared from behind his holo-station, his tone equally chipper as a summer's morning in June and lethal as a heatwave.

'Bones!'

'You asked to see me, Jim?'

'Yeah, come on in, sit down.'

Wary, as Bones knew this was his captain sounded like when someone was about to be shredded officer-style, he took a seat near the captain's wet bar in his ready room. Even worse, Kirk was wearing his formal uniform, surely not a good sign.

'How can I help, sir?'

'Sir?' Kirk made a point of looking around. 'Who you calling sir?'

'Well seeing as you're wearing the dress threads-'

'Oh, that.' Kirk brushed absently at his chest. 'Holo-meeting with Admiral Paris to follow up on the finalized launch of Yorktown's new defence systems. Seeing as it was my vessel at my command involved in that little debacle, it means my presence is necessary at the update meetings and I figure it looks better if I suit up.'

'Understood.'

'Drink?' Kirk asked, leaving the door open to his personal quarters as he changed back into casual wear to keep the conversation going. 'God knows I need one after listening to that much tech speak. I haven't been in that much mental pain since my basic holo-programming courses at the Academy.'

'What was your specialty? Everyone's got one, even that pointy eared know-it-all.'

'Tactical operations,' he hollered over, tugging on the loose fitting sky-blue tunic with relaxed trousers in navy before joining Bones once more. 'Figured it would be handy since I wanted the chair.'

'Quite.' Bones looked around, saw the addition of a trio of snapshots from the wedding banquet they'd had for Kirk and his beloved Doctor Carol Marcus after the nastiness of preventing a genocidal coup d'état by Deputy Governor Kodos on Tarsus Four had been resolved. They were hanging on the wall in a place of honour beside George Kirk's official Star Fleet portrait, and Bones noticed that Kirk had taken to wearing the simple white gold wedding band more and more frequently between their away missions. 'How about we make that drink a light one? I'm chatting with Joanna once I leave here and I'd like to stay awake until Christine is off shift.'

'How about it indeed.' With a grin Kirk pushed the button to open his bar, reached for the good doctor's favoured bourbon and poured him a few fingers. 'Kinney somehow sweet talked your beloved into giving him some Pride and Joy lemons from the greenhouse and he made some killer lemonade.'

'Christine made me pie,' Bones bragged, never one to waste a moment to glow about his woman. 'Real sugar in the meringue and everything.'

'Here, drink up, my request won't feel so sticky.' Kirk passed him the glass, tapped it against his own while chuckling at Bones' fish-eyed glare.

'Spit it out or swallow it down, Jim, I've got plans and we're losing daylight.'

'After we hosted that field trip back in May for the diplomatic school, word got around that we'd made great hosts and now the board of governors for the Diplomatic School Union is asking us to take on some year-three to year-five students for a month to complete a practicum placement as part of Star Fleet's new recruitment initiatives.'

'What does that have to do with me?'

'Well, I wanted to run it by you first, but to save everyone on this ship a whole lot of headache-'

'You mean, you don't wanna do the paperwork and are looking for a shortcut,' Bones interjected, which earned him an affable shrug.

'We all have our strengths, Doctor. I wanted to ask if you're okay with me selecting Joanna as one of our candidates.'

Bones said nothing at first - having Joanna on the ship for four whole weeks would be a dream come true. Then a thought slammed into his brain like a sledgehammer - Christine. How would he balance the two women in his life in such intimate proximity? Would one feel slighted by the idea he wanted time alone with the other? As more thoughts crept in, Bones turned away with his bourbon-spiked lemonade and let them swirl in his head. Would Joanna become a sullen teen around him, or worse would she go on a bit of a wild bender being away from home on her own for the first time? Would it make it that much harder to be apart from her once she was gone? And how would she be treated by the rest of the crew outside his core group of personal friends on the ship - would they respect her as a student or would they handle her with kid gloves since she was his kid? Would they treat her like a child or would they be respectful of how she was growing up and becoming a young adult?

'McCoy?'

'Huh?'

'I asked if you think I should put the paperwork through to confirm her selection or if I pick someone else.'

'No,' Bones replied immediately. 'No, I want Jo to have the experience, I want her to see if Star Fleet would be a career option for her on her terms not mine, I'm just thinking how it would work.'

'I can give you the literature I received about the program and the housing options and meals and such,' Kirk offered, reaching for his PADD to send the details. He knew that more than anything else his chief medical officer griped about - and there were gripes aplenty with him somedays; Kirk didn't always understand how Christine enjoyed his company on a constant basis - nothing held a candle to how much he missed his daughter. 'I had a chance to read through it and had this been around when I was a kid, I'd have signed up as many times as they'd let me.'

'Hypothetically, what department would you place her in?'

Kirk grinned at the question - it was asked in the same tone Bones used when Kirk and Spock had taken him to the Archer and Sparrow to help him get over himself and ask Christine on a real date. 'I was thinking Engineering or perhaps Navigation.'

'Engineering,' Bones replied without a moment's hesitation. 'She's here to learn, not to make cow eyes at the chief navigator.'

'So you'd rather have her hanging around Scotty and Keenser all day?'

'Scotty I trust, he's a reliable soul. Chekov, well…' Bones trailed off, considered his drink. 'I see the look my little girl gets in her eyes around him and I'll be damned if I'll let her hormones take over when she's here for school. You think Scotty will mind?'

'We were actually talking with Joanna at Christine's birthday party on the Tantalus satellite, and when the question of wanting to be in Star Fleet came up, she said only if she could be in Engineering because she loves learning the how's and why's of how things work.'

'Been that way since she could talk.'

'Oh?'

'Daddy what's that, was her favourite phrase, right up there with 'why' any time she asked a question.'

'Engineering seems like a good fit for her, then.'

'What about social time, though,' Bones asked, ignoring his own PADD that beeped with the captain's incoming file transfer. 'Joanna loves her friends back home, I don't want her to feel like she's going to be cut off and surrounded by grown-ups here.'

'There are also classroom hours to be completed with the other students, and one of the others I'm selecting is Lieutenant Allen's son.'

'So, on the one hand, it would be a fantastic chance for her to have a taste of what life in the Fleet is like, see if she wants to turn it into a family legacy?' Bones made a face, juggled invisible oranges. 'But on the other, it also means being the only girl in a department dominated by men, and she's just a kid still.'

'Alright, well, you get back to me after you have a look at the details and we'll see what kind of off-duty girls' nights we can set up for her,' Kirk teased him, making Bones scowl deepen.

'Laugh all you want but the moment you get Carol pregnant and find out it's a girl I will savour and relish every minute of it, Captain, because my outrageous behaviour will suddenly seem like sane common sense.'

'I'm sure it will.' Kirk knocked back the last of his own drink, nipped the glass out of Bones' hand to put them in the sterilizer. 'I need to submit the forms by the end of the week so let me know by then, okay?'

'Will do.'

'Great. Hey, you got time-'

Incoming transmission from Tarsus Satellite, Applied Sciences, the ship computer's voice intoned and Bones gave Kirk a cocky wink.

'Looks like you've got plans of your own with the missus too, there Jim. I'll be in touch after I talk to Jo and her grandparents.'