leftwithmybones | [For Scotty]

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scotty

[For Scotty]

McCoy's lived his life with the belief that all people are innately stupid and will disappoint you in the end. It's why he hasn't exactly held much hope in having his hut completed, but he'll be damned because it's all there. Extra rooms, climate control, and that beautiful still that actually promises that his little vacation away from Starfleet might be a good time after all. He's even run a first go through the still and has tampered it down from everclear to something that wouldn't have his ancestors proud at their boy for creating.

He's offering a glass to Scotty while marvelling at the good work done, shaking his head. "Don't take offense," he starts bluntly, "but I wasn't expecting you to be able to do the carpentry, let alone the rest."

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Scotty was exhausted, aching, and covered in so much sawdust that he'd be tipping it out of his boots for days to come, and he felt magnificent. On his own hut, he was happy to take things slowly and add a little bit more whenever he had the time, but for Doctor McCoy, he'd gone full tilt and got the whole thing done in a handful of days; with some forward planning and clever use of pulleys, a single man could do what it'd usually take a whole team of builders to do. At least, if that man was Scotty, which luckily, he was.

In short, he was proud of his work, and damn glad to be able to sit down in it and enjoy his reward.

"Never underestimate my abilities," he said, grinning at McCoy as he took the offered glass. "When I get going, I really get going." He briefly debated adding a coda alluding to past girlfriends who could attest to that, but decided better of it; he couldn't get away with it the way the Captain could.

"I should've known you were a mad genius the minute you managed to get Jim back on the ship," McCoy grumbles a quiet admittance, tipping his glass in salute to Scotty. "Besides, I'm fairly sure Pike wouldn't let anyone on that damn ship if they weren't an incredible genius. At least, all departments but medical. Swear to god, I was lucky for more than one competent nurse, some days," he bitches, mostly for the sake of doing it.

And maybe, just maybe, some small part of him misses his staff. Even the Nurse that had injected him with a sedative by mistake. ...okay, maybe not her.

"Sure they weren't just doing it to spite you?" Scotty said, his grin turning mischievous as he took a sip from the glass. That was some damn good rotgut, even if he said so himself. "Not that I'd want to criticise your, er, unique bedside manner, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of 'em just liked winding you up."

He knew he certainly liked winding McCoy up; it was so easy, for one thing. And for his part, he missed the little pranks that used to get played in Engineering - asides from, possibly, Keenser's habit of appearing out of nowhere and leaping onto his back. That little bugger was heavier than he looked.

"My unique bedside manner?" McCoy echoes with an arch of his brow, wondering if that's the way of saying 'you're a mean bastard' these days. He knows perfectly well that he isn't exactly as fluffy with his patients as Chapel might be. "Well, no need to worry about that here. Still haven't decided to work at the Clinic. Goddamn place has next to no injuries."

"Aye, that is a bit odd, isn't it? I've noticed that myself," Scotty said, nodding thoughtfully. "Plenty of doctors here but nobody seems to get seriously sick or even hurt. Probably a blessing - I've not taken too close a look at the clinic, but I've got a feeling that if anyone needed an operation, we wouldn't have the kit."

He frowned and reached into his pocket to get his notebook, riffling through the pages but finding little of use in his notes. He sighed and put the notebook down on the table.

"There's something odd about this place. Asides from the obvious stuff, I mean," he said. "It's sort of... dreamlike, y'know?"

"You think we're in some kind of strange virtual program?" McCoy wonders, jumping from what Scotty said to a leap so very far away that it's probably far too off. "If that's the case, I don't think I'd be here without..." He stops and shakes his head. "No. No, it's not that. This isn't a dream, it's just another example or real life gone bad."

"Now, I never said that," Scotty said, amused by how McCoy immediately jumped to some conclusion he'd never intended. "Just that the laws of physics - and chemistry and biology and all - around here aren't what we'd expect, and that's something somebody ought to get to the bottom of."

To be fair, given the prevailing theory that this was a miniature universe unto itself, it made sense that the rules of operation were different from the norm, but it was still perplexing. Scotty didn't like the thought of being in a dimension so unreliable.

"Though the more I look around this place, the more I feel like it's all set up so nobody can get to the bottom of it," he went on.

"When you get hurt, you get hurt," McCoy says, more sober than a second ago, even if they're both holding drinks. "I've read the historical logs of this place. There's been a fair few decent injuries and deaths, so don't go around thinking you're invincible, you got it?" he half-growls, not ready to be performing surgery when he's on vacation, damn it.

He takes a hard swig of his drink back and glances to the side of Scotty's head as he thinks about that. "Figured out any pattern to appearances?"

"Depends what you mean by patterns," Scotty said, not wanting to commit himself to making any solid statements on the matter. "There's definite tendencies going on. You'll have seen for yourself that almost everyone here is human, mostly from the 20th and 21st centuries - like the technology here, which is interesting - mostly of American or European origin, and there's more men than women. Disproportionate amount of ex-military types, too, though I think the data's a bit skewed there because there's about 10 blokes here from the same army unit."

He flipped through his notebook, trying to see if there was any other stuff about demographics he'd got down. "I've got a lot of notes and not a lot of explanations. A lot of people here talk about magic, which I don't hold with myself, but I can see why they think that way."

He sighed, and turned to get a refill. Felt like the only sensible response to something this confusing.

McCoy watches Scotty get really invested suddenly in all of this, arching his brow as he tries to just focus on his drink (strong as it is) and not worry about things like that. "How about you put away the science, Scotty," he advises mildly. "I'm not the physics genius that you'll get with Chekov, I won't understand half that stuff anyway."

Scotty grinned and folded the notebook up again.

"Well, ye did ask," he said. McCoy of all people ought to know not to get him started on his research; when it came to science, Scotty had a difficulty knowing when to stop.

"So," he said, changing the subject, "Asides from the fact it makes absolutely no bloody sense, how're you liking the island? Made any new friends?"

That gets a snort out of McCoy, possibly because of all the crew of the Enterprise, he'd fail the hardest when it comes to making friends. "Funny enough, I have. I don't know what that says about the people who live here, though," he points out. "A woman named Rogue from the South and a doctor named House. He seems to like the diagnostic riddles I leave him."

"You busy making everyone's best friend list yet?" McCoy asks, tipping back his drink.

Scotty's smile took a turn for the sheepish.

"I've not talked to as many as I really should've," he admitted. It wasn't that he was socially inept, not quite; more that he got so wrapped up in his projects he forgot all about people. "I mean, I've talked to people, but I don't know there's that many here I'd call best friends. Maybe... there's this Russian lass, Natalya Zamyatin, that helped me when I first came here. We've talked a few times. She's an admirable lady."

Well, admirable didn't entirely cover it, but Scotty was doing his best to be sensible and not get any silly ideas in his head.

"There's so many people here, though, I can't keep them all straight in my head right now. Terrible with names, me."

"I'm continuously surprised you know who I am," McCoy deadpans with as much humor as he can inject into the phrase. "A Russian, huh? I guess Chekov gave you a good round of practice understanding the vowels and the special little accent that comes with that nationality, huh?"

"Aye, though she's a little clearer than him - doesn't chatter at ye ten to the dozen, and she doesn't mix up her w's and v's," Scotty said. "Anyway, it's not so hard to understand. People have said worse about the way I speak." Stupid people who didn't listen properly, generally, but it was still something that happened, now and then, and he'd accepted it as a fact of life. If only because he wasn't as young as he used to be and wasn't so sure he'd win if it came to blows.

"There's definitely some funny sorts round here. One fella I met just seemed baffled by the idea of anyone wanting to build their own house. And I might have overheard something wrong but I'm almost convinced there's a woman here who's from a Jane Austen novel."

"You like her, then?" McCoy asks bluntly, arching his brow curiously, seeing as he doesn't see the point of beating around the bush. "Is this one of the friends that Jim Kirk would have? The kind that really enjoys your bed?" he wryly smirks. "...a woman from a Jane Austen novel?" he asks, raising his brow. "What in the hell kind of place is this?"

Scotty flushed, just a little, and hastily took another sip of his drink.

"Oh, ah, she's no' that kind of a friend. I mean, she's a fine lass, but I've not - I -" He paused, swallowed, took a deep breath, and hoped to abandon the subject.

"As for what the hell kind of place this is, best answer I've got is that it's a very strange one indeed," he said, and grinned. "But c'mon, that's what Starfleet's about, right? Exploring new worlds and figuring out how things work? I can't wait to see the report the Captain'll have to write when we get back home."

McCoy just watches without allowing his facial expression to change the once except for the upward and curious arch of a brow. "Is that because she's holding out on you or because you're holding out on trying?" he wonders. "I watched Jim Kirk charm his way through the Academy. I might not be Casanova myself, but I can offer some advice."

"Starfleet is about what was left for me," he grunts evenly. "That's all. The exploration comes second behind the healing of people and aliens."

"I don't need help," Scotty muttered, arms folded, much in the manner of a sulking child. He certainly didn't need to have McCoy patronise him about it, thank you very much.

"As for Starfleet, I was mostly in it for the machinery, but, y'know, there's plenty of opportunities for us both to do what we do best here, too. We've just got to get used to having different tools to work with." He grinned. "Give me enough time and I could probably fix you up with a decent scanner, as long as ye don't mind it being made outta bamboo."

"Oh, well," McCoy says, making those two words draw out as he smirks and raises a brow at Scotty. "In the event that you do need help, my door is open. I mean, you helped build it, I'd hope it would be." He takes a long drink from his cup, hardly anything near a 'sip', and tries to think of opportunities. "I've got my tricorder and my datapadd, but I'm lacking cases. I'm not a science officer, goddammit, I'm a doctor."

"Oh, that again," Scotty said, rolling his eyes. "I keep telling ye, be glad for the holiday. I'm sure any day now we'll have a nice outbreak of dysentery or scarlet fever for ye to get your teeth into."

To be honest, he did sympathise with McCoy a little - he missed the Enterprise so much it hurt, and although he had plenty of engineering projects to keep him busy, it really wasn't the same at all. And McCoy didn't even have a substitute. Unless...

"Maybe ye could take up cosmetic surgery. Or dentistry. I bet there's a demand for that, even if everyone's horribly healthy otherwise."

"I've checked the records, Scotty, we're not getting anything like that," McCoy says and wishes that he didn't sound so disappointed by a populace's good health. It just leaves him useless because there's already more than enough doctors. "And I don't exactly have the skills for cosmetic surgery. People look right the way they were born, damn it."

The one thing he could do, the one place his skills might be helpful are twofold: he doubts there's much of a vaccination program and he also thinks the psychiatry department is a little short-staffed. It's been ages since he worked in either department, but they used to call him a boy-genius back before his father's condition crushed down doors for his future. He could still remember, he supposes.

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[For Scotty]

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ooc: damn, sorry for letting this slip

Re: ooc: damn, sorry for letting this slip

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