Fic: Such Sweet Thunder, McCoy/Chapel, NC-17

[fringedwellerfic]

Title: Such Sweet Thunder
Author: fringedwellerfic
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None, unless fluff and freak weather conditions scare you.
Summary: One day of shore leave on an actual planet, with real weather, and it has to be ruined by a massive thunderstorm. Good thing that Christine Chapel isn't alone.
Author's Note: A response to my prompt on the kink meme for McCoy/Chapel, weather, because as soon as I prompted it I came up with an idea. Can't wait for other responses though!
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.

Title from A Midsummer Night's Dream, "So musical a discord, such sweet thunder."



Christine was half way to the transporter room when she remembered that she hadn’t got her inoculation. Cursing, she changed direction and headed towards Sickbay, hefting her rucksack on her shoulder as she did so. She only had one day of leave on Miros while the Enterprise’s engineers came to upgrade the planet’s weather control systems, and she wanted to get down there early and make the most of it. It wasn’t until she was a year into her time on the Enterprise that she realised just how much she missed real weather. The holodeck was nice, but it couldn’t really replicate what it felt like to crunch real sand between your toes, or feel a warm desert wind on your back. Christine got off-ship as often as she could, and today she had planned to hike through the forest trails of the northern continent. She couldn’t leave the planet until she’d had her standard shots though, so back to Sickbay she was headed.

The turbolift deposited her outside the doors of her workplace, which was uncharacteristically empty. None of the biobeds had an occupant, and the two junior nurses on duty were doing the dreaded inventory checks. She could see M’Benga’s legs sticking out from inside the three dimensional holographic scanner where he was busy with his ongoing project of recalibrating the holo-emitters for greater accuracy. She was just about to flag one of the nurses down to get her immunisation shot when the tall, dark and not at all handsome, honestly, I mean it Gaila, shut up about it Doctor McCoy peered out from his office door.

“Chris? I thought I scheduled you for shore leave?”

“Oh, I’m going,” she assured him as she hopped up onto a biobed. “I just need my inoculation first.”

McCoy exited his office and loaded up a hypospray. He called up her medical records, and spent a little too long studying them for Christine’s impatient tastes. “You’ve got plans?” he asked idly as he fiddled with the hypospray.

Christine daintily extended a leg clad in thin, brown, lightweight cotton trousers and a sturdy hiking boot.

“I’m hiking the forest trails of Valesh, on the western continent. They’re supposed to be beautiful. It’s been months since I’ve been off ship and I need the fresh air. How about you? Aren’t you supposed to be free now?”

“He is,” said M’Benga’s legs. “But our Fearful Leader won’t leave sickbay. Claims he has too much paperwork.”

Christine snorted in the distinctly unladylike way that made her grandmother wince. “Are you mad? The first peaceful, beautiful, utterly non-hostile planet we’ve come across in months, and you’re spending the day cooped up in here?”

McCoy set his mouth stubbornly and jabbed her none-too-gently with the hypospray. Christine’s eyes narrowed, but refused to give him the satisfaction of hissing in pain.

“Everyone’s already paired off for their leave anyway,” he muttered, updating her chart on his PADD. “It’s not safe to go wandering about alone even on approved planets.” He frowned. “You shouldn’t be down there alone either.”

Christine rolled her eyes at McCoy’s over protectiveness. The medical staff was close knit, more than just colleagues. Something about pulling off medical miracles on an almost weekly basis brought them real friendships. Despite McCoy’s obvious role as Chief Medical Officer and her defacto line manager and boss, their relationship was beyond that. They’d taken the same officer training classes at the Academy, worked the same shifts at Starfleet Medical’s hospital in San Francisco, drank in the same bars. They were friends first, colleagues second. She got away with talking to him in a less than professional manner that would get her put on report with other managers. It did work both ways – other staff wouldn’t tolerate his gruff manner and ignore his frequent snappish temper the way that she did.

“Bull,” she retorted, jumping off the bed and picking up her rucksack. “I’m an experienced hiker, on established and well marked trails. I’ll be fine.”

McCoy actually looked worried as he started a completely unnecessary tricorder scan, and started to reel off a list of ways she could damage and injure herself on the perfectly innocent planet below.

“You could fall down a ravine, and break your leg and die,” he ranted as he scanned, “Get attacked by rabid animals, get an infection and die. There could be all sorts of plants down there that you’re allergic to. Your airways could close up, you’d choke and you’d die...”
Christine fiddled with the laces of her boots, and rechecked her rucksack to make sure she had recharged her communicator, packed her water flask and camera and included a packed lunch and small med kit. Meanwhile, to the obvious amusement of the smirking nurses and the avidly listening M’Benga, McCoy had reached a crescendo of terror. “...kidnapped by bandits, who’ll want to do unspeakable things to you, and as you escape you’ll...”

“Fall off a cliff, break my neck and die?” supplied an amused Christine, noting the white knuckles as he clenched the tricorder and scanning unit. It was unfortunate for her that McCoy got more attractive as he lost his temper; it made the tiny proximity-based crush she may have quite difficult to shift. Lord knows, she’d tried. A nurse having...feelings for a doctor? Christine Chapel was a lot of things, but clichéd wasn’t one of them. Hence the firm resolve to ignore the crush that she definitely didn’t have, and that certainly wasn’t growing over time.

“Don’t worry Len, I can look after myself,” she assured him. “To stop you worrying though, I’ll find myself someone to hike with. The local population have been very friendly so far. I’m sure one of them would escort me.”

The Vein of Doom that usually started to throb before McCoy exploded into one of his famous rages was beginning to pick up pace. All the male representatives of Miros that had visited the Enterprise on a diplomatic tour had been uniformly tall, tanned, muscular and blond. It certainly wouldn’t be a chore to have an escort like that along the trail, Christine thought dreamily.

M’Benga’s legs spoke before McCoy could erupt.

“Of course, you could go with her Len, if you’re so worried about her safety. That way Chris gets to go hiking like she planned and you get a day out of here.” Both Chapel and McCoy were too busy processing this twist to their day to hear M’Benga mutter “And you could just fuck and get it out of your systems and give the rest of us a break.”

McCoy blinked, and turned away to fiddle with the scanning equipment. “I’m sure that Chris has got better things to do than spend her free time with me,” he said gruffly.

“No,” Christine blurted out, mouth in warp while her brain was still in impulse. “I’d like to. Spend the day with you. Hiking, I mean.” She fixed an appropriately neutral look on her face and cursed her colouring, desperately trying not to blush.

“Oh,” McCoy said softly, before nodding. “Well then. I’ll need to go and change. I’ll meet you in the transporter room.” He turned and left before Christine could say anything. Christine blinked, unsettled, then left to add a few more items to her pack. McCoy didn’t sound like an experienced hiker and it would be her responsibility to keep him safe planetside.

Sickbay was quiet again, with just the hum of the biobeds, the clinking of inventory supplies and the muffled thumping M’Benga was giving a recalcitrant part of the holo-scanner.

“About time that happened,” M’Benga’s legs noted.

“Finally,” agreed one of the junior nurses. “Who had today in the pool?”

“The captain,” said the other one gloomily. “I had yesterday.”


McCoy had made surprisingly little fuss about the transporter, given his well known hatred of the technology. He did look a little green when they arrived at the landing coordinates though, so Christine diplomatically slipped off to acquire a trail map and snap some pictures while he collected himself. She came back when she saw him scowling at a squirrel that had got a bit too close; he was probably worried it would mug them for their packed lunches.

“There are six or seven trails marked out for us,” she noted as she studied the map. “Which one do you like?” McCoy moved closer to her, and steadied the map in the light breeze.

“Where would you have gone, if you had come here alone?” he asked. Christine checked the map again.

“The waterfall trail,” she answered honestly. “It’s the longest one, and takes in the most varied scenery. And...“ She broke off, embarrassed.

“What?” he said, interested.

“I probably would have ended up swimming in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall,” she confessed. McCoy looked at her rucksack, puzzled.

“That thing’s not big enough for a towel,” he noted.

Christine started to feel the betraying blush creep up her face.

“If I was here alone, she stressed, “I wouldn’t have needed to worry about the swim gear.”

McCoy’s face broke into a broad grin.

“Well well, Christine,” he drawled, “Skinny dipping? Now there’s an image. I would never have guessed you were so casual about nudity.” Christine punched him in the shoulder, only half playfully.

“Oh shut up Len, it’s not as if you haven’t done worse. The whole ship knows about the time you and the captain got so drunk at the Academy you stripped and jumped in the fountain in front of Admiral K’Tanga’s quarters. I think Gaila still has the pictures somewhere.”
McCoy coughed furiously. “Yes, yes, point taken. Shall we go?”

Laughing, Christine headed off on the path that led to the waterfall trail, McCoy a few steps behind her, muttering about Romulan Ale and idiotic roommates.


It took them a full four hours to hike the path to the waterfall, and Christine enjoyed every second of them. The terrain changed from mostly flat, densely forested shady trails to a more challenging, steeper climb. Birds called gently from the trees, and they saw some native herbivores grazing contentedly in the forested areas. They had paused several times for Christine to capture some shots of the beautiful scenery to send home to her parents in the next data burst to Earth. She even managed to get McCoy to pose for some pictures to send back to Joanna, although she knew in her heart of hearts that a copy of one or two of them would end up in her personal album.

As the day heated up they began to strip off the layers of clothes, with Christine scoring points for her remarkably engineered stone coloured trousers that let her unzip whole sections to make them into shorts of varying lengths. Her long sleeved thin over shirt was also shoved into her pack, leaving her in a black camisole top and shorts. She pulled out the UV barrier cream recommended by the planet’s inhabitants and began to rub it into the exposed skin on her legs. McCoy’s eyes followed every move of her hands in a charged silence, until she offered the bottle to him, turned around and said “I can’t reach my back.”

Christine blamed the gooseflesh that appeared on the sudden drip of the cold barrier cream onto the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck. McCoy’s strong hands carefully spread the cream over her shoulders and back, slipping the camisole straps down with his thumbs. If he spent a little longer than necessary making sure that every centimetre of exposed skin was covered in the barrier cream, neither made any reference to it. Any hopes of returning the favour were dashed when McCoy kept his long sleeved over shirt resolutely on for the next stage of the trail that brought them out at the base of the waterfall. Christine tried not to be disappointed, and failed.

Several large rocks sat at the edge of the crystal clear pool at the bottom of the waterfall, and they used them as a place to eat the lunches that Christine had brought with her. They took off their shoes and socks and dangled their feet in the cool water, throwing sandwich crumbs to the tiny silver fish that came and nibbled gently at their toes. After devouring the packaged lunches that the mess hall provided them with, Christine pulled a plastic tub from her pack.

“I made this yesterday for Ladies Night,” she explained, “but we didn’t finish it.”
“What is it?” McCoy managed through a mouth full of cake, a blissful expression on his face. “And what’s Ladies Night?”

“It started at the Academy,” Christine explained, taking more delicate bites of her slice of cake. “Once a week we’d get together and talk about anything other than men.” At McCoy’s puzzled look, she elaborated.

“There’s not really a true gender balance at the Academy or on the Enterprise. We’re surrounded by you men,” Christine said, “and sometimes it’s nice not to have to deal with you. Just for a night. We talk about anything – politics, music, history, literature, whatever we feel like. The only rule is, no relationship grumbles. It was Uhura’s idea, and once we explained to Gaila it wasn’t about lesbian sex,” she paused as McCoy suddenly began to choke on his slice of cake, “she was fascinated. I don’t think she’d ever been in a group environment that didn’t descend into an orgy. Janice Rand comes along, and Eden Darrow from Cultural Sciences. Some of the women are from security and there are a couple of engineers, a botanist or two and some chemists. I usually make a cake or some cookies. Last night it was a Boston Crème Pie cake, but because of shore leave there were only a few of us there.”

“You bake?” said McCoy, genuinely curious. “Where? I didn’t know the junior officer quarters had kitchens.”

“They don’t,” Christine replied glumly.”I have to use the kitchen in the officers’ mess when Yeoman Ziegler is off-shift. I like cooking. There’s something about creating a meal with your own hands that’s relaxing, somehow. I like sifting flour and beating eggs. Replicated food just doesn’t taste the same. I had a French landlady for a few years who taught me some of her old family recipes. ”

“I never knew this about you,” McCoy said quietly, licking the chocolate ganache from the top of the cake from his fingers. “All through the Academy, two years on the Enterprise, and I didn’t know you could cook. What else don’t I know about you, Christine Chapel?”

Christine’s eyes followed the trail of his tongue as he gently but thoroughly removed the sticky chocolate from his fingertips. The devil that rode on her shoulder prodded her and she said “There’s more to me than hyposprays and blood samples, Len.”

“I’m learning that,” he said, inching closer to her.

“I have a tattoo on my hip I don’t remember getting during Mardi Gras when I was eighteen,” she confessed.

“What else?” he asked, dark brown eyes fixed on hers.

“I’m fluent in French. When I was studying for my first degree in Paris I used to earn extra credits by singing in night cafes.”

“Is that so?” McCoy murmured, his arm stretching out behind her, tugging her closer towards him. “I would have paid to see that.”

“I was worth it,” she shot back, moving herself closer towards his warmth and musky male smell.

“I bet you were,” he countered, raising a hand to touch her hair, his thumb unerringly stroking the rim of her ear, an explosive erogenous zone. “What else, Christine?”

“I’m amazing in bed,” she shuddered, as his face drew close to hers. His eyes were gleaming with an unfamiliar look – lust, she realised belatedly. She felt the puff of hot air on her face as he smiled and replied, “What a coincidence. Me too.”

Their lips had just met, her mouth had just opened to admit his demanding tongue, his arm just tightened firmly around her to anchor her body to his when the first drop of rain fell. Christine would have happily ignored it, hell, not even noticed it, if the first drop hadn’t been followed so closely by another, then another. The sky darkened, and a gigantic flash of forked lightning lit up the air above them. McCoy swore as the rain intensified. He tugged Christine up from the ground and tried to get them underneath the nearest tree for shelter but Christine dig her heels in and refused to budge.

“Are you crazy?” she yelled over an ominous rumble of thunder. “You never shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm! You want to get fried?”

“We’ve got to get out of this rain!” McCoy yelled back. “This isn’t a planned storm, I checked before we left the ship. It was supposed to be warm and clear all day. The weather net is fucked, there’s no telling how long this will last!”

Christine rummaged in her pack for her communicator, but despite their best efforts no signal was reaching the Enterprise. “Whatever’s screwing with the weather net is blocking communications,” she concluded bitterly. Thoroughly soaked, she pulled the trail map from her bag and scanned it anxiously.

“There!” she said, pointing at a location on the map. “There’s some kind of shelter marked on the map about a mile and a half north of here. I don’t know what it is, maybe some kind of emergency station. We should head there.“

Nodding his agreement, McCoy started to pull on his boots as she did the same. Both were saturated with water, their thin cotton clothes plastered to their bodies. Christine was only too aware what she must look like, mud splattered all over her legs, camisole clinging uncomfortably to her skin, her hair in rats tails stuck to her head. McCoy wasn’t faring any better, but men always looked better in these conditions Christine thought mutinously. She couldn’t help but notice how the pounding rain made his mud-stained trousers cling to his strong thighs and how the thin cotton of his shirt stretched over his broad shoulders and thick biceps. He looked so different from the immaculately presented doctor she saw every day, and she had never wanted to touch him more. She may have a doctorate in biochemistry, but she’d never understand her own body’s impulses.

She found north on her compass and they moved off as quickly as they could, the muddy ground making it hard going. McCoy grabbed her hand immediately and held it in his strong, sure grip as she negotiated their route from the map and compass.

It took them an hour to cover the mile and a half, which was a ridiculous amount of time for two fit and healthy Starfleet officers. The crashing rain and sucking mud slowed them down considerably, and they almost missed the start of the trail that would take them to the shelter due to the sheer amount of plant life that had been washed away by the rivers of muddy water that were flowing straight down the hill they were trying to climb. She was intensely grateful for McCoy’s presence; it would have taken her a lot longer to struggle through the rough terrain without him. The fact that he hadn’t let go of her hand once since they had started to look for shelter was a comforting one, even if their brief moment of romance had been washed away by the pouring rain. Briefly, Christine wondered what her life would have been like if she had given up nursing for good and settled planetside like her mother wanted, working in a perfectly safe, gloriously sterile and dry biochemistry laboratory. She’d probably have ended up with a man just as clean and safe; sneaking a look at McCoy’s rugged profile and mud splattered body, she realised that there is an awful lot to be said for a man that was dirty and dangerous.

As they pulled themselves, gasping with the effort, up the last section of the hill, McCoy tugged on her hand and pointed. “Over there!” he called over the noise of the rain, “I see it!” They stumbled onwards towards a sturdy looking small house, set off the ground on strong wooden support beams. It certainly wasn’t the emergency service hut that Christine was expecting, but at this point in time she’d take anything. They climbed the steps to the door, immediately grateful for the shelter that the house’s small veranda provided from the downpour. The door was locked, but before McCoy could dislocate his shoulder in an attempt to prove his masculinity by breaking down the door, Christine’s cold and fumbling fingers had found an entry card tucked on top of the lintel. It slotted into the lock easily, and the door swung open easily.

This was definitely not a service hut, Christine thought dumbly, as McCoy located a light switch. Lamps dotted around the small room came on, revealing a stone fireplace, an entertainment unit, a large, comfortable looking sofa and other doors leading off the main room. The colours were muted greens, browns and oranges, and everything looked clean and well cared for. Everything except the waxed wooden floor, that is, which was starting to puddle with the water dripping from their clothes and bodies. Christine shivered, and started to rub her arms. The constant movement of the last hour had kept her warm, but now the chill was beginning to set in.

“Len,” she managed to stammer, “We need to...”

“Take off your clothes,” he commanded, picking up a large swathe of material from one of the chairs at the side of the room and thrusting it at her. As she struggled out of her sodden clothes he turned away and started to fiddle with the fireplace and the wood stacked there. By the time Christine peeled off her underwear and was wrapped several times in the blissfully soft and dry material, he had managed to start a fire. He led Christine over to the fireplace and gently pushed her to the floor in front of it. As the wood caught and the flames rose, Christine’s chilled body started to respond to the heat from the dancing orange flames in front of her. The slap and squelch of his clothes hitting the floor came from behind her. Moments later he appeared in front of the fire as well, wrapped in a similar throw.

“Thank God for someone’s desire for soft furnishings,” he joked, extending his fingers towards the flames. She nodded in amusement and they sat side by side just taking in the warmth until he shifted to slip an arm around her shoulder. She allowed herself to be brought under the shelter of his body.

“Sharing body heat is an effective way of establishing correct core body temperature,” she told herself firmly. “Standard Starfleet protocol.” She wasn’t sure if resting her head against his chest and slipping one of her arms around his waist was standard procedure, but screw it. She was cold, he was generating more heat than her and it had been a very long time since cuddling in front of an open fire had been a part of her life. Besides, if things down at the waterfall had played out the way they should have in a fair and just universe, they could well have been rolling around the forest floor with no clothes on at this point anyway. Not for the first time that day, Christine cursed whatever inept Engineer had been let loose on the planet’s weather net. God help them during their next physical exam.

She lost track of how long they sat there, watching the logs blacken and burn and the thunderstorm raged outside. It took an embarrassingly loud rumble of Christine’s stomach to break the comfortable silence. “Time to eat, I guess,” she joked as she unwillingly extricated herself from McCoy’s embrace. “How about I look to see if there’s anything edible while you try and contact the ship again?” She started to open doors at random while he tried the communicator again.

“I’ve found a bathroom,” she called, noting the quiet elegance of the room. The fixtures and fittings were very similar to those of Earth, which was a relief. Nobody told you in Starfleet orientation sessions that the hardest thing about intergalactic space travel was often working out how you flushed the toilet. She found a cleaning cupboard, what she assumed was a laundry room and what looked like a study before she found the kitchen. It wasn’t especially large, but it was extremely clean. The appliances gleamed under the ceiling spotlights, and Christine was confident that she could identify most of them. A large basket of fruit sat on one of the countertops, along with a bottle in a Federation standard chilling sleeve. There was fresh produce in the refrigeration unit and the cold store was packed to the brim with packets labelled neatly in the vertical Milosian script. The cupboards dotted around the room revealed cooking utensils, crockery, cutlery and glassware as well as pungent spices and non-perishable foodstuffs. Christine was idly running a finger along the edge of the oven and planning a menu from the food she was able to identify when the door opened and McCoy appeared, PADD in hand.

“Well, we won’t starve, Christine told him cheerfully. “I don’t understand why there’s so much fresh produce here if there aren’t any inhabitants, though.”

“There were supposed to be inhabitants, but they must have been caught out by the weather,” McCoy told her, handing her the PADD. “This is a privately owned retreat, rented out in the high season. This was to be someone’s honeymoon lodge.”

Christine’s eyes widened as she snatched the PADD to read for herself the welcome message left for the unlucky honeymooners who never made it to their celebration night. McCoy started to poke in cupboards and prod the food suspiciously. Sure enough, the PADD contained greetings, congratulations and instructions for the trio who had wanted total privacy for their celebrations. As requested, the lodge was fully stocked and the communications lines were blocked at the relay centre in the nearest town.

“Well, that’s damned stupid,” complained Christine, hiking up her makeshift toga. “Why would you deliberately cut a comm link? That means we can’t tell anyone we’re here. I take it that the communicator still isn’t working?”

The loud pop of a cork made her jump and the PADD clattered to the floor. McCoy had found two glasses and the bottle from the welcome basket.

“Nope,” McCoy said cheerfully, pouring the effervescent liquid into two glasses dextrously. “We’re completely cut off from the world in what is effectively a luxurious honeymoon suite. Shame, isn’t it?” He held out a glass which she hesitated in accepting. Drinking the champagne of honeymooners, appropriating their food and, she vaguely hoped, their bed seemed not quite right. Surely they should be trying to find some way back to the nearest population centre to contact the Enterprise? Thunder cracked loudly outside and lightning lit up the dark purple sky. The ceaseless rain pounded mercilessly at the window pane. Christine rethought. Only an idiot would go outside in that weather, and she was no idiot. Ignoring the real alcohol, obviously expensive, being offered to her by a semi-naked man she’d been attracted to for years seemed a deeply idiotic thing to do also.

She took the glass, clinked it against his and took a sip. The bubbles fizzed pleasantly against her tongue. Together they raided the kitchen for recognisable food, and she managed to cobble together an assiette of cheeses and cold meats , although no self respecting Parisian cafe would have served them together. They raided the fruit basket for dessert, with crisp almost-apples and juicy peach-like fruits disappearing quickly. The bottle of champagne quickly emptied itself, and another materialised from the refrigeration unit where Christine found it lodged behind what looked like chocolate cake but smelt of bananas. They ate standing over the kitchen counter, there being no room for a dining table or chairs in the modest room.

“We need to find some clothes,” Christine said at last, hitching up her makeshift covering for the eighth time, “And a shower.” The mud on her legs had dried and hardened, and was now desperately itchy as it flaked off.

“You go shower,” McCoy told her. “I’ll put our clothes through the laundry machines. There must be something we can wear. Did you find the bedroom?”

The bedroom was completely dominated by the absolutely massive wooden framed bed, its deep red linens providing a vivid splash of colour in the pale room. Neither McCoy nor Christine spoke on first seeing the opulence of its many pillows, curtains and extraneous layers of material; Christine then broke out in a fit of giggles. “It’s huge!” she gasped, wiping her eyes.”You could get an entire Away Team in there!”

“Well,” smirked McCoy, “The Milosian people don’t really go in for two-person family units. The marriage bed has to be big enough to get up to six people in there.”

“Six?” goggled Christine, momentarily taken aback. “Just think of the arguments about stealing the covers!”

“Oh Chris,” chided McCoy, moving closer to her and ducking his head so his mouth was right by her traitorously sensitive ear. “Stealing the covers? Is that all you think about when you see a bed like that?”

“It is when I’m covered in mud and smelling like a forest,” she admitted with a smile, turning to face him. “Ask me again when I’ve had my shower.” His eyes gleamed with the same unholy fire that she had last seen at the waterfall.

She sashayed away down the corridor to the bathroom, confident that this was a moment that deserved a sashay. McCoy followed every movement with his dark eyes, as she knew he would.

The shower cubicle in the bathroom was massive, clearly designed for more than one person. It had the luxury of a water option, which Christine was making good use of. Only the captain’s quarters on the Enterprise had a water shower; everyone else made do with a sonic unit. They certainly worked but there was something to be said for the tactile pleasure of multiple jets of warm water caressing your body. It was certainly a lot more pleasant than the walk through the rain had been. Grateful for the cleansing gels, Christine set to ridding herself of mud and the extraneous plant life that had clung to hair. She lost track of the time she spent in the steamy glass enclosure, and so the sudden draught of cold air and appearance of a naked man in the shower unit made her gasp, jump and slip. McCoy caught her deftly, and she clung to him desperately as she tried to regain her footing.

“What the hell?” she managed as he laughed loudly.

“You’ve been ages, darlin’,” he drawled as his thumb found her ear again. “I thought if I wanted any of the hot water I’d better come and join you.”

Christine found her knees going out from under her again, only for a completely different reason. Taking her heart, her happiness and possibly her career in her hands she raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him firmly and passionately. He responded enthusiastically, his large strong hands running possessively over her back, squeezing her firm backside, skating up over her ribs to tease her nipples lightly with the palms of his hands. Christine responded in kind, letting her hands run through his thick dark hair and down over his broad shoulders. Neither was willing to submit for the other, their lips and tongues fighting for dominance. Christine let her fingers wander lower, pinching gently at his small nipples, exploring the firm muscles of his abdomen, finally drifting delicately over his rapidly hardening length. He groaned in sheer pleasure as she let her touch become firmer before reaching down to gently cup and roll the soft sac between her soapy fingers. He allowed her a few moments more of exploration before he gently disengaged her hands, kissed her fiercely on the lips one last time and dropped to his knees in front of her.

“Ladies first,” he muttered as he kissed and nibbled his way along the soft swell of her stomach, taking particular care and attention on the patch of skin low on her hip where someone had delicately tattooed a magnolia blossom. Christine knew rationally that the skin on that hip was no more sensitive than the skin on her other hip. It damn well felt that way though, as McCoy’s tongue traced the outline of each petal as one hand drifted up and down her leg and the other stayed anchored on her backside. His wet hair tickled the delicate skin of her inner thigh and if he didn’t hurry up and move his damned tongue soon she was going to...oh. No need.

His hands moved to spread her legs wider as he slid his index fingers to gently open her labia and expose the centre of her pleasure. He lapped carefully at the small bud, teasing and suckling at it until she was moaning uncontrollably, the high pitched noises reverberating around the tiled room. Christine felt the pleasure pool low in her stomach, building in great waves. It wasn’t until he slipped not one but two of his fingers into her tight heat and began to pump them quickly in and out that she was catapulted over the edge into the electric sensations of absolute bliss. Her knees, previously weakened from his assault on her mouth abruptly gave out and she sank to the floor. He pulled her towards him and she eagerly explored his mouth, licking the taste of her from his tongue and lips. It was tangy yet strangely sweet, and she couldn’t get enough of it.

They stayed entwined until the seemingly endless hot water started to run tepid. Large, soft towels waited on heated rails and Christine was glad to find the cabinet stocked with combs and brushes. The comb was removed from her hand though, as McCoy started to gently untangle her hair. Drying each other took an age, especially when they found themselves far more interested in running their hands over each other’s body than the towel. Eventually Christine lost patience, grabbed McCoy’s hand and towed him back to the bedroom.

“Get on your back,” she told him, sucking at an earlobe. “I’m going to rock your world, you may want to brace yourself.”

Laughing, he pulled her down with him and they lost another ten minutes to his new found obsession with her ears and the reaction that the slightest of touches could bring.

“You’re not part Ferengi, are you?” he joked. She bit down on his left nipple none too gently in retaliation.

“Shit! Ow! Sorry! Not a Ferengi! All woman!”

Smirking, Christine kissed, laved, nibbled and sucked her way down his body until she lay on her front between his raised knees. At first she tried to keep an eye on his face to gauge his reaction, but after a while she became so engrossed in what she was doing and listened to his moans and deep pants of breath for guidance instead.

She started at the tip of his erect and engorged shaft and started to delicately suck while stroking the slit with the very tip of her tongue. She slowly took a little more of the thick shaft into her mouth with each bob of her head as she reached down with one hand to delicately roll his balls. The sound of the water pounding on the roof of the house disappeared from Christine’s ears, and only the pants, moans and soft curses that fell unbidden from McCoy’s mouth held any meaning for her as she worked her magic. She knew she had him teetering on the edge of orgasm when she slipped a finger into her mouth and then ran it gently past his balls and backwards over his perineum towards his anus. It never failed to driver her lovers over the edge, and sure enough, it had the desired effect. His large hands closed over her arms and dragged her up to meet him face to face. He tried to roll her beneath him but she manoeuvred back on top to sink down quickly onto his thick length.

Determined to make good on her earlier boast, she began to move quickly up and down, canting her pelvis to wriggle out letters of the alphabet. Another old trick, strangely appropriate for once, was to spell out Mississippi, making sure to clench her interior muscles around the length buried deep within her whenever she had to dot an i. Watching him pant and gasp helplessly beneath her was an incredibly erotic experience. For once, the control in their dynamic was shifted to her, and she was enjoying every nano second of it. It took her only a few practiced flicks of her fingers to induce her second orgasm of the night; the sight of her wantonly seeking her own pleasure as she was impaled upon him was what was needed to break his control. His orgasm consumed him like a tsunami of pleasure as she slumped, exhausted over him. They lay together, tired and sweating, completely sated. Christine moved, winced slightly and fumbled for one of the discarded towels to clean herself of their joined fluids. McCoy batted her hand away and did the job himself, then rolled them both over to an unused and pristine section of the mammoth bed.

“Best thing about this bed is that no one had to sleep in the wet spot,” he yawned as he tugged her more securely into the circle of his arms.

“Mmm,” Christine managed in agreement before the rhythm of his heartbeat lulled her to sleep.



Christine woke first, the weak sun filtering through the shaded windows. For a terrible second she had no idea where she was, then the memories came flooding back. Sure enough, she was naked in the largest bed she’d ever seen with the softly snoring Leonard McCoy half buried under a pile of pillows. At some point in the night she must have rolled away from his tight embrace, but his hand still rested on her thigh as if to keep her close. She smiled dopily at the image, glad she was alone and no one could see her indulging in this sort of ridiculous behaviour. She reached out a hand to smooth his soft, dark hair that was sticking up in all directions. This touch was all that was needed to wake him; he yawned loudly, blinked at the sight of her naked body, grinned in a positively wicked manner and pulled her suddenly back into his arms.

“Good morning,” Christine managed. “Sleep well?”

“Like a log,” announced McCoy as he dropped his head to suckle at her rosy nipples. “You?”

“Blissfully,” she gasped. “Don’t stop doing that.”

He didn’t, not until her pleasure peaked for the first time that morning and they lay spooned together, unable to gather coherent words. Their morning lovemaking was every bit as passionate as the night before, but this time McCoy refused to let her set the pace or dominate the position. It was an educational experience for Christine who was used to leading the way with her previous lovers.

“We should try and contact the ship,” she said at last.

She could feel the eye roll she knew he reacted with, even though her back was to him. “I know, I know,” she placated. “It’s the last place I want to be right now either. But I’m betting that nobody else down here last night managed to find themselves an empty honeymoon suite to pillage. There may be people up there that need us.”

His arms tightened reflexively around her, but he reluctantly agreed. Neither wanted to be the first to move. He played with a lock of her blonde hair, she intertwined her fingers with his other hand.

“We’re still doing this on the ship, aren’t we?” he blurted out suddenly. “I know that there’s a chain of command issue, but...”

“There’s no chain of command issue,” Christine said firmly, wriggling around to face him. “When we’re on duty you’re in charge of all the medical staff. It’s as simple as that. There will be times when you have to tell me what to do, and times when you can’t put my needs or wishes above the good of the ship. It is the way it is, the way it’s been for two years. That won’t change.” She grinned. “Until I get recommended for promotion to Lieutenant Commander Chapel, anyway, and that can’t happen for another two years.”

She ran her fingers over the rasp of stubble that formed overnight as he nuzzled into her hand like an overgrown cat. “I can’t promise that I’ll like being bossed around by you,” she said honestly, “ But I’ll cope, as long as you understand that the first time you try anything like if off duty I’ll slice your balls off with a laser scalpel and have them for earrings.”

He laughed, and kissed her again.

“Deal,” he said, with a smile that lit up his handsome face in a way Christine had never seen before.

“Come on then, boss,” she teased, stretching and pushing off the heavy bedcovers. “Let’s go and try the communicator again and see what’s happening in the outside world.”

The rain had eased off to a light shower, and the communicator was able to establish a patchy connection to the nearest relay station and from there to the Enterprise. McCoy was able to explain a highly edited account of their predicament to a stressed Lieutenant Commander Diaz, the Operations Officer who was trying to locate all the errant members of the crew who had got stranded by the planet-wide weather problems.

“It’s a relief to hear from you, Doctor,” she said, her voice faint and crackly because of the bad reception. “You’re one of the last people to make contact with the ship. We’ve already retrieved all crew members that were injured by the weather conditions. No fatalities or serious injuries.”

“Who’s in command up there?”

“Chief Engineer Scott is currently in charge, but he’s overseeing the final adjustments to the weather net. I’m running day to day issues until we can dig Commander Spock out. He’s currently snowed in somewhere near the planet’s southern pole, the Captain with him. I get the feeling that unless we get him out soon...” The Operations Officer picked her words carefully, “...well, let’s just say that retrieving Commander Spock has become a priority. Neither you or Lieutenant Chapel are injured?”

“No, we’re in good health and have adequate shelter.” Christine rolled her eyes in a perfect imitation of McCoy that the entire medical team could pull off. Adequate, indeed, if a bed the size of a football field was adequate to their needs.

“Then would you mind if we moved you down the priority list? I still have yet to recover our pilot and navigator from,” there was a pause as Diaz obviously checked her PADD’s readout. “Good god, how did they end up in a monkey enclosure?”

Manfully holding back the laugh that Christine felt no compunction about letting out, McCoy assured Diaz that they would be happy to go to the bottom of the list to wait for rescue. The Enterprise signed off, with promises of retrieval within six hours.

“So,” McCoy said, eyes gleaming in a way that was becoming all too familiar, “We have six hours to kill. How will we pass the time?”

“A bath, I think,” decided Christine, firmly. “That tub in the bathroom looks big enough to hold a small army, and it’s been an age since I had a really good soak. Then I’ll make us a proper lunch in the kitchen, something sinfully rich and fattening. We can sleep it off afterwards, or...” her gaze ran appreciatively along the length of his naked body, “...not sleep.”

“Quite the sensualist, aren’t you” he teased as they made their way back to the bathroom and started the taps on what had to be the biggest sunken bath either of them had ever seen. Christine was gleefully pouring scented gels into the water to create clouds of fragrant bubbles.

“Oh sweetheart,” she purred, slipping into the wonderfully warm water, “You have no idea. Get over here and learn.”

As he jumped to comply with her demand, Christine realised gleefully that following the orders of her lover during her working day would be made all the more bearable if he were this eager to obey her during their downtime. After all, the best relationships were about compromise. And sex, of course. Lots and lots of sex.