Chapter 4 – Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones
"Well, you can't have it!" Lily-Lee slapped his hand hard and backed away.
"I've never heard anything so cowardly in my life! Bad weather, Spock! Are you going to try to CUDDLE by PROXY?" Spock still sat with his hand raised, not moving. Lily-Lee was stomping and gesticulating in the air. "I have some reluctant respect for your culture, Spock, but this behaviour shows the worst kind of indecisiveness. If you want to be vulcan, then be it, or if you want to be human, then be it, or if you want to combine the two THEN DO SO! But I refuse to believe that you would make either parentage proud with this emotional leeching! Grow some balls, will you? External or internal, I don't care!"
Lily-Lee stormed out of the room and left Spock to his misery.
–***–
Spock didn't come to dinner that evening, and not the next day. On the third day he was back to his usual routine and was sitting at the officers table again when Lily-Lee came in with a sawed-off femur on her tray.
"May I inquire as to why you are bringing that object to the dining table?"
"Of course you may, Spock. The answer is that this beautiful thick marrow bone is going to be my dinner." Lily-Lee sat down between Spock and McCoy at the table, tucking her legs in under her on the chair to get a bit higher up.
"Jesus, Lily-Lee! Where did you get it? The food synthesizer don't make raw animals that size and I doubt that we got any in the ship's freezer."
"Black market. That last port was full of opportunities." Lily-Lee took a small spoon and started digging in the open end of the bone. The marrow was pink, fat and malleable and melted on the tongue. It didn't take long until she could no longer reach down to it with the spoon.
"Spock, can you break this open for me? I haven't got the hand strength."
"No. That is revolting."
"What?" Lily-Lee looked up with a frightened face and took a napkin to cover the bone. "Revolting against whom? I don't want to take part in a rebellion."
After the laughter had died down, Lily-Lee was a bit pink in the face from having missed a double meaning. Spock still declined to assist, choosing to focus on a plate of sliced vegetables in front of him.
"All right, sorry to upset your sensibilities. I'll ask someone else. Who can break this for me?" The marrowbone must have come from some large sturdy animal because nobody at the table was able to crack it open. Kirk used both hands but without results. Someone at the next table reached over.
"Fine, gimme it. You're a bad influence on them, lass. Why are ye all trying to use your bare hands? You'd think we didn't have tools on this ship." Scott took out some complicated pocket instrument and wedged it into the opening. He turned a screw around and around and the bone split in two smooth halves with a creaking sound.
"Thank you, Scotty."
"Hmpf." Scott turned back to his own dinner and put the expander tool in his front trouser pocket.
"Bone marrow is a human foodstuff too, right captain? I looked up some references and recepies from earth and there were plenty of them."
"Yes, but a bit old-fashioned. We prefer it cooked in soups and such. Back home in Iowa, my mother would cook with marrow sometimes."
"I found this reference also: "Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, Be he live, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread."
Kirk had finished his meal and got up from the table.
"You know what, Lily-Lee, I'll get back to my post and you grind your Bones." This double meaning could have passed unnoticed if Kirk had been able to resist winking to underscore it. But how could he resist that?
–***–
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All right readers, now I need your help. There has now been 39 chapters of Lily-Lee stories, and no real K/S action yet. I can't put it off any longer, they are in agony now. But how? Suggestions, please! Give me a place, or a circumstance, or an object, or anything to inspire me. Absurdities welcome (it can be very inspiring to say "Well not THAT!").
EXTRA NOTE: No longer open to suggestions.