the devil's water, it ain't so sweet (uhura/mccoy)

[LT. CMDR. MONTGOMERY SCOTT]

OF SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN HEART
THERE IS NO LIMIT

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Scotty was doing his very best to keep himself upright. His mind was doing overtime both helping him balance and contemplating the horrible things that could happen if he happened to lose that balance. He and Uhura could fall over and end up in a pile of limbs, where someone would find them. Probably Spock, who would then either use that kung fu he had so powerfully demonstrated on Kirk when Scotty'd first come on board, or maybe the nerve pinch he'd heard Vulcans resorted to in some situations. Oh, wouldn't that just take the cake, he thought, and then he'd still have to wake up in the morning with a hangover. He rested the hand that wasn't supporting Uhura on the wall next to him as they continued, trailing it against the wall to help him keep his balance.

He had a feeling he was going to catch hell from McCoy about this, too. He might be able to avoid revealing his drunken state to the doctor initially; chances were that Uhura would probably be enough of a distraction that he might not notice right away, but after all, the man was a doctor, and he'd probably pick up on it before long. Then he'd be in hot water, too, probably for encouraging the younger woman in her reckless ways. But honestly, Scotty thought she deserved the chance to drown her sorrows. Not that she'd deserved the sorrows in the first place, but now that she had them, surely she was allowed a little slack when it came to putting them out of her mind. McCoy could either see that, or not, he could go along with it, or he could threaten to kick both of their asses. Of course, that wouldn't do much good, and Scotty was fairly certain that regardless of threatening, he probably wasn't allowed to do that under the oaths he'd taken as a doctor.

"We should sing something." Scotty suggested brightly, hoping that if he kept Uhura focused, maybe she'd avoid passing out completely until they got to sickbay. Carrying the dead weight of another human being was never easy, even if they were at least fifty pounds lighter than you were, and he hoped that particular circumstance wouldn't pop up tonight. "What kind of songs do they have where you come from? We've got a lovely lot of them in my home town, none of that dreadful stuff you hear on the radio these days. If you ask me, alcohol only increases one's ability to sing." In Scotty's case, it probably wasn't his singing ability that increased so much as it was his own appreciation for his singing ability, a fact that he was well aware of, but as long as he could keep talking, maybe she'd keep listening and keep walking instead of falling over.

To his relief, they soon reached their destination, and Scotty debated what he was going to tell the doctor. "You just let me do the talkin', lass." he told Uhura, moving towards the door, which swished open. "Dr. McCoy!" he called, in what had been intended as a cordial tone of greeting, but which had ended up more as a frantic call for help due to his underestimation of the volume of his own voice. "Got a bit of a situation for you here." he added, fortunately a little quieter than his entering shout had been.

"Seems someone's done herself a little damage, and I was hopin', as I'm sure she is as well, though she might not be sayin' it for a while, that there's a chance you'd put her up for the night, or maybe hand along one of those little miracle cures you've got. Something to keep her from wakin' up in the morning wishin' she'd never been born, y'know?" He was well aware of the fact that he was rambling as he came in and let Uhura down gently on one of the beds that littered the room, and he wasn't even sure if McCoy was even around. He reminded himself that not everyone worked the odd hours he did. "There you go, lass, rest your head and don't worry about that fellow any more tonight, all right?"

THERE IS NO FAILURE HERE, SWEETHEART
JUST WHEN YOU QUIT

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_{ooc; maddie, if you are no longer interested in participating in this thread, let me know and I'll just NPC some random nurse. It's been a couple days since we brought this up and I don't know if you're too busy now, but I wanted to get this up just in case you and Bree aren't back on before I have to get off.}

[DR. LEONARD McCOY]

McCoy walked out of his office as he heard the door swoosh open and closed. Perhaps it was something he could actually help with. A lot of scraped knees and paper cuts weren't something he liked to deal with for too long. Everything looked the same after that. Peaking his head out to see who had come in to sickbay, he saw Montgomery Scott with Uhura, who was now sitting on one of his beds, barely being held up by his arm. Was she even conscious? Pulling himself out of the office out of curiosity and familiarity of these people, he walked up to the loud Scotsman and creased his brow as he approached.

"Good God man. Could you be any louder? Make some damn sense too while you're at it." He snarled in a hushed tone, a small boy with wide eyes staring at them as a nurse took care of his black eye. Deep accents like Scotty's were hard to understand unless you put all of your attention into it. Thankfully, being apart of a thick accented sort of place, it was only a little bit easier for him. It just took a while to comprehend.

Staring at the engineer for a moment before all of his words sunk in, he looked to Uhura, trying to look into her face even though it was lowered to the ground as she sat with needed help from Scotty. Gravity seemed to be overtaking her. Pursing his lips in an irritated way, he slowly looked over to Scotty and folded his large arms together. "You mean to tell me, Uhura is drunk?!" He snapped in a scowl, looking from the woman to the man. This couldn't have been her own idea. "And I'm sure you had nothing to do with it." He rolled his eyes with intense sarcasm seeping from his throat before moving to a set of drawers in the wall next to the bed. He opened them before digging around and ultimately pulling out a few pills.

"Not many people want to cure themselves of being drunk, so I'm left with pills to get rid of headaches and help with a dizzy head. Those seem to be the only bad side effects of drinking anyway." He said, trying to look at Uhura again. "I told you he wasn't worth it, Uhura. That's fucking it...I'm going to kill the vulcan bastard." He cursed as she lolligaged from side to side. McCoy opened her hand by force and stuck the pills in her palm, hoping she would at least have the function to move her fingers. He acted as though he were a disappointed father toward the girl, eying the Scotsman as though he was going to pull out a shotgun and start cleaning it just so he would leave the poor girl alone.

[LT. NYOTA UHURA]

Uhura could feel her body start to give into the fatigue it was feeling. She didn't want to collapse in the hallway, she wasn't really in the mood for more drama. She didn't want to cause Scotty any more discomfort. She giggled loudly when he started using the wall for support as she ran her hand down her face. She was trying to stay focused, but Scotty was doing a fairly good job at holding her attention. She appreciated that, but there was also a part of her that just wanted to curl up and go to sleep. She wanted to forget about everything, forget that she had ever been in love with a vulcan, forget the way his eyes looked so human when he stared at her. Forget the way his touch felt when he actually did touch her, the way he made her feel whole.

She looked to Scotty as he mentioned something about singing. She had been listening, or at least she thought she had been. However, she couldn't remember if he was asking if she could sing, or if she wanted to sing, but she did notice that they had finally reached the sick bay after a long walk from the bridge. She gripped Scotty as he Scotsman entered the sick bay, calling out to McCoy. McCoy had quickly become one of the only people she truly trusted in her life. He held her that night that Spock had cut ties with her. She had gone to him and he had been there for her. She still remembered the intensity of his heart and she would forever remember that night.

Uhura felt the bed as Scotty placed her there and she nodded to him as he spoke to her, reassuring her. She would make it, she knew that. She also knew that any fear of vomiting had disappeared. She had managed to hold the alcohol down and she knew that she was out of the woods when it came to purging. Then she looked up at the sound of McCoy's gruff, angry tone. Oh, she knew he would be angry with her and with Scotty. She felt something being pressed into her palm and she opened her hand to see that it was pills. She turned them over before looking to McCoy, remembering that he had spoken before placing the pills in her hand.

"Don't get mad at Scotty, McCoy. He was just helping me." She said, looking to the Scotsman. She smiled to him, reaching out and touching his arm gently. She would find him later, to thank him more, but she knew that her words would just slur together more if she continued to speak. She removed her hand from him and then turned to McCoy, sniffling a bit as she groaned. With that, she slumped against McCoy's arm and patted his stomach.

"Calm down, I'm not dying. I'm floating." She said with a giggle before looking at the floor. She felt like an idiot and she had a feeling that McCoy wasn't going to let this go right away. She had completely inebriated herself. She was a mess, and he could see that. Hell, she could see it, and she couldn't really form a completely coherent thought at that moment. Uhura wished she could just sort of slump back and fall asleep, but she knew that couldn't happen just yet. She looked to Scotty for a moment before looking up at McCoy, who's arm she was still leaning on as she sighed.

"Are you mad at me?" She asked, pouting a bit as she looked down at the floor. She seemed to be a bit childish at this point, which was proof she had drank beyond her limit. Uhura was the uptight one, the one who was always level headed. This wasn't a levelheaded woman here, that Uhura has flown the nest and wouldn't return until morning.

[LT. CMDR. MONTGOMERY SCOTT]

Scotty was only mildly offended by McCoy's implication that he'd been somehow responsible for Uhura's current state. After all, he was drunk, she was drunk, the evidence was all there. "Obviously she's drunk." he replied, although his attempt at mustering the same snarky tone the doctor had used fell much short of the original. He didn't like the way McCoy was looking at him, though, and almost wanted to turn around and run away. But he wasn't going to leave Uhura here until he was absolutely certain she was going to be all right. He figured maybe it would be safe to agree with the other man.

"That's what I've been tellin' her." he said, nodding vigorously. "Anyway, I didnae start this, I only helped finish it. No sense lettin' her drink alone if she's going to be doin' it anyway."

In spite of his attempts to placate the rather annoyed physician, Scotty was glad when Uhura reiterated his claims. He really wasn't trying to do anything dishonorable, he'd just been trying to help her, and was glad that she was conscious enough to tell McCoy so. He raised an eyebrow, though, when Uhura claimed to be floating. He was going to say something, but he had a feeling that arguing with her in her present state wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he decided to reinforce something else that she'd said. "Aye, don't get mad at Scotty." he said, nodding again.

He wished he could ask for some of whatever those pills were McCoy had given Uhura just now, but he thought he'd better not press his luck. If the doctor wasn't already to kick him out, best not to give him any more reason to do so than dragging a drunk girl in already had. Obviously, the doctor had violence on his mind, and Scotty was glad he wasn't the vulcan who was the subject of the threats McCoy was now spitting out. On one hand, he thought maybe he ought to say something to try to calm the other man down, but on the other hand, he wasn't going to stick his neck out for the guy who'd gotten them all into this situation in the first place by stepping on this woman's heart.

"Will she be all right, then?" he asked, curiously, trying not to appear inappropriately interested. It seemed like McCoy was already convinced he'd been trying to get Uhura drunk intentionally with some sort of lascivious goal in mind, and he didn't want to do anything to encourage that particular idea.

[DR. LEONARD McCOY]

Just looking into her eyes made him ashamed. He acted too much like a father when it came to Uhura and he didn't know how to stop it. Having a baby himself was one of the options, but that wasn't going to happen any time soon so she was just going to have to snap him out of it if she hated his constant assurance that she was alright. "Helping you?!" He almost shrieked, glaring between the two of them. "Did you know that alcohol is a depressant? Yeah. It is. Sure you forget about everything for one night, but the next morning it comes back and bites you in the ass harder than it had been before." He lectured, shaking his head back and fourth with a heavy sigh. "Now take the damn pills so you don't throw up on my floor." He ordered, folding his arms and furrowing his eyebrows, looking menacing, but actually just thinking about the issues at hand.

"Mad? I'm disappointed. Don't get worked up on one guy. There are plenty of stars in space, Uhura. You just found a dull one that was about to supernova." He puffed, petting her hand once in a loving gesture. Now that she was ending up drunk, he was worried that she would keep going until she over did her mourning. McCoy just didn't want to see Uhura like himself, a mess. As she was being childish, McCoy was being more like a guardian every moment she wobbled around on the bed.

He then looked to Scotty to now have a word with him about the situation. "You're supposed to have discouraged it, dammit. Not help her drool on the ship's floor." He spat, knowing he was right to keep her away from the stuff. She was small and definitely not the type of person to be drinking on a regular basis. Scotty and McCoy were the only real drinkers in the main group and even then, McCoy seemed to much less than the Scotsman. They just enjoyed the taste, but Uhura was there to get drunk and she knew it. That was her plan the moment she walked into the bar or wherever she got the alcohol. "No. She's going to die. Of course she'll be alright. She's just drunk, like you said." He said with a thick sarcastic tone to his voice.

[LT. NYOTA UHURA]

Uhura was tired of feeling like a waste of space. She knew that McCoy wasn't going to be thrilled about her state of being, but there really wasn't anything she could do about it now. She was far gone and he knew it. She just hoped that the doctor didn't verbally lash Scotty too much. It wasn't the Scotsman's fault that she was like this. He may have not stopped her, but he didn't force the bottle to her lips. That was her own doing and he had to know that. Then the slender woman heard the tall, bulky man say that he was disappointed. Like a guardian, like a father, he was disappointed in her. That stung, knowing that someone she cared about, someone she looked up to, was upset with her. She looked down, almost like she had suddenly sobered up. She licked her lips, her eyes staring down at the pills before she heard him say that there were more stars in space. She didn't want those stars, she wanted the one that went 'supernova'.

"Yeah whatever." She grumbled and with that, she swallowed the pills dry, like he instructed before looking to Scotty as McCoy told him he should have discouraged her behavior. She wasn't a child, she could make decisions on her own. She moved off the gurney that she had been propped up on before she turned to him.

"Don't let listen to him. You did nothing wrong. I am going to be fine." She said, her words slurring ever so slightly before she turned to McCoy, her eyes glistening as she stared up at him. What was she supposed to say? She was sorry for acting like a heart broken teenager, but she didn't feel like being talked down to like a child.

"I'm sorry okay? But I didn't know what else to do. I was tired of crying like an infant, okay?" She said, looking away, tears welling up in her eyes. The pills had not taken effect or anything, but the alcohol didn't exactly help either. It made her feel even more sensitive than she already was. He was right, alcohol was a depressant, and it was making her feel worse.

"I just wanted it to go away." She whispered, referring to her pain. She wished Spock would just open his eyes and realize that she was here for him. That she loved him, but that wasn't enough for him. That, or he was too stubborn to really open up to the possibility of a relationship. He was half vulcan, yet his father had loved and lost a human companion. Why couldn't he consider her, knowing his father had done the same thing all those years ago?

[LT. CMDR. MONTGOMERY SCOTT]

Scotty hung his head, his happy buzz taken down a couple pegs by the doctor's reprimand. McCoy was right, of course. He shouldn't have been encouraging Uhura to get this drunk, but up until now, he hadn't actually realized that was what he'd been doing. Was he really that much of an enabler? He'd been about to do some drinking himself anyway when he'd come across the girl. And she'd already been rather inebriated when he'd found her. Oh, yes, that was right.

"She was well past sober when I found her, you cannae blame this all on me. Or on her either," he elaborated, not willing to toss Uhura to the wolves (or wolf, as the case might be) to save his own neck. "Blame the bastard that did this to her in the first place." It seemed he hardly needed to tell the physician that, seeing as he was already threatening death towards the commander in question. He felt a little hypocritical when Uhura mentioned in that rather pathetic voice that she'd just wanted things to go away.

Scotty didn't even have a legitimate reason to be drinking the way he did. He hadn't lost anybody, nobody'd gone and trampled his heart with their logical vulcan heel. He just did it because he rather enjoyed it, when he wasn't doubled over hurling the next morning or cursing everyone who dared to inflict a bright light upon him. He knew he wasn't the first person to drink recreationally, and would certainly not be the last, but Uhura's problems made his little habits seem a bit trivial.

"Well then, if she's not going to die, I suppose I've not done anythin' worth skewerin' me for, eh?" he said, after a moment. "I only didn't want to leave her there alone." He hoped that would warrant some forgiveness, at least, if not a complete pardon for himself. Uhura wasn't mad at him, he hoped he could avoid incurring the same wrath the ship's first officer had when he'd instigated all of this to begin with, as far as their doctor was concerned, anyhow. Scotty wasn't particularly interested in receiving glowering looks from the man who might have to save his life someday. You never knew what might happen, and it was best not to anger the people who just might have to choose whether to operate on you at some point.