Fandom:
CSI/Star Trek crossover
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sofia/McCoy
Summary: Det. Curtis runs into an odd stranger.
Disclaimer: Most of the characters and situations in this story belong
to Alliance Atlantis, CBS, Anthony Zuicker, Paramount, the Bride of the
Great Bird of the Galaxy, and other entities, and I do
not have permission to borrow them. All others are mine, and
if
you want to play with them you have to ask me first. No
infringement is intended in any
way, and this story is not for profit. Any
errors are mine, all mine,
no you can't have any.
Spoilers: general eighth season.
Okay, so I had this dream...
...
...
Never mind. Boubabe14 and Smacky30, I apologize.
Deeply.
This story is dedicated to Mingsmommy, Tres Mechante,
Elfling65,
Cincoflex, and Inalichenmanner, who are all complete nutbars.
Every one of them.
Of course, what does that make me...?
*********
Sofia sighed, and prepared
to go through the
round of questions yet again...not that she expected better answers
this time. “What did you see when the gunfire broke
out?”
The man opposite her had his arms folded and a sour expression on his
rather lived-in face. “I told you, I
didn’t see a
thing.” He had a slight drawl, and pain lines in
his
forehead, and Sofia’s cop gut wanted to trust him.
Her head, however, smelled a rat.
“So you’re saying that a full-scale gun battle
erupts thirty yards away and you see nothing?”
The witness snorted. His eyes were a vivid, tired blue, his
features pleasantly ordinary. “That’s
right. As
soon as those young fools started shooting I took
cover.”
Behind an abandoned car, according to his statement earlier.
Sofia wondered wearily why he had been in Las Vegas’ most
dangerous neighborhood; he’d denied all the obvious
reasons.
I suppose he
would, though.
“Yet we found you right next to one of the
victims.” She gave him stare for stare,
unintimidated.
The man--he’d given his name, reluctantly, as
“McCoy”--harrumphed.
“I’m a doctor,”
he growled.
Sofia regarded him with professional doubt.
“I’m sure
the AMA would be happy to confirm your
credentials.” He had
no ID on him, just a handful of odd-looking toys and something that
really resembled a shoulder bag.
McCoy’s face went still.
“I’m...not licensed here.”
Sofia sighed. “Of course not.”
She tapped the
table, rapidly running out of patience. His prints
weren’t
on file, he hadn’t run from the responding officers, and
while
the victim he’d been standing over was dead, the man opposite
her
had been applying pressure to the kid’s gunshot wounds as
though
he’d never heard of AIDS. Strange as it seemed, he
looked
to be that rara avis, a true innocent bystander.
She pressed her thumb between her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to stave
off a headache, then sighed again. “All right, Mr.
McCoy. You’re free to go, though we’d
appreciate it
if you’d look at some mug shots for us
first.”
He squinted at her, a thoughtful look; Sofia thought absently that when
he wasn’t sulking, his face showed an astonishing
flexibility. His eyebrows, in particular--
She blinked. I
need coffee more than I thought.
McCoy smiled slowly, and the expression was surprisingly
warm. “Sure. Why
not.”
So she escorted him from Interrogation Three to a friendlier room,
observing him covertly as they walked. His outfit was subtly
odd,
not fitting any fashion that she knew, but this was Vegas and they got
all types. The cut of his brown hair looked to be left over
from
the previous century, though.
Sofia got him settled at the table where he could look out into the
corridor if he chose, and turned to go fetch the books of booking
photos, but his voice stopped her. “Head
ache?”
She shrugged, glancing back. “A
little.”
McCoy reached into his bag--they’d returned his things after
a
search turned up nothing of interest--and pulled out a small box that
he tapped once against his palm. A white pill dropped out,
though
Sofia couldn’t actually see an opening in the box.
He extended his hand. “Here, take
this.”
Sofia thought about illegal drugs, about dangerous herbs, about her
mother warning her never to take anything from a stranger.
And
then she thought about how much worse her headache was likely to
get.
What the
hell. It’s probably just aspirin anyway.
She took the pill and tossed it down dry. McCoy watched her
swallow, then nodded, serious and satisfied. Sofia refrained
from
rolling her eyes until she had turned away.
It was forty minutes later and deep in a discussion with Captain Brass
that she realized that her head didn’t hurt at all.
Dr. Leonard McCoy, MD, PhD, Commander, and Chief Physician of the
starship Enterprise,
was royally annoyed. Inconvenienced, endangered, discomfited,
but most especially annoyed.
And when he got back where he belonged--assuming he did, and he
wasn’t going to lay any bets just now--he was going to have a
few
words with that bunch of interfering Orions, the Guardian of Forever,
and Spock--in that order.
He grumbled to himself and kept turning pages, letting his eyes search
automatically for those half-glimpsed faces full of sneering bravado
and pathetic youth. Projectile
weapons--barbaric.
Wincing, he rubbed at the ache in his side. It was never easy
to
lose a patient, even if that poor boy had been doomed from the second
the bullets tore into him, and stress only made his condition
worse.
Taking a deep breath, McCoy managed a quick relaxation exercise,
admitting to himself if to no one else that Vulcans were good at
meditation techniques, even if he’d never say so to
Spock.
I
should’ve known better than to listen to him.
It had started small, which was unusual for the Enterprise’s
Science Officer, but when he’d mentioned the Rihannsu McCoy
had
felt his ears pricking up--no offense meant to the company at the
time. Enterprise
had
been due for some heavy maintenance, which meant extended shore leave
for her crew, and after that unfortunate encounter with a Withiki
parasite cloud he’d been looking forward to rest,
recuperation,
and recreation.
Starbase Eight, after all, was in the Boise system, which was blessed
with three M-class planets. And while the citizens of Iota,
Sigma, and Gamma had no imagination when naming their homeworlds, they
did produce some of the best single malts found outside of the Sol
system.
He’d even signed up for a three-world distillery
tour.
But then Spock had cornered him and started up with his top-secret
mission to save the galaxy, again, from some idiots mucking about in
time...again. This time some damn fools were apparently
trying to
prevent the proto-Rihannsu from leaving Vulcan to found their own Star
Empire, and since McCoy had experience with that particular
species--
Well, it was all water under the proverbial bridge, just because some
more damn fools, Orion “free traders” this time,
had
blundered down to the Guardian of Forever just when Spock was getting
ready to use the thing, and in the ensuing firefight McCoy had fallen
through the Guardian and into another battle--more primitive, but just
as deadly.
And now getting
back depends
on Spock surviving, then figuring out where I went, and then talking
the Guardian into cooperating. Not odds I like.
Spock surviving was almost a given, the man had more lives than a cat,
but the rest of it was not so sure. McCoy sighed and closed
the
book in front of him.
I’d
feel a lot better about my chances if I hadn’t dropped my
phosphophthylate when I went through the Guardian.
With the parasite medication, McCoy had been anticipating an easy and
pain-free recovery from the Withiki infestation. Without it,
his
lifespan could be measured in weeks, and not very many of them
either.
Well,
there’s no point in worryin’ about it just
now. Where’d that pretty detective go?
The analgesic had worked; that was easy to deduce from the relaxed
lines in her face. McCoy bantered with her a little--he did
love
a smart woman--but she was clearly busy. He accepted her
card--pretty quaint, an actual wood-pulp sheet with her contact
codes--and was released out into the world again.
A world, and time, that had no place for him. McCoy found
himself
wandering the sidewalk, racking his brains as he tried to remember
something, anything, about the history of Las Vegas.
In his time, Vegas was a rebuilt city five times the size, lush and
green with manufactured water, but it was still something of a gambling
haven. He’d never been there himself,
but...
He halted, taken by a vision. Ahead lay the glittering lights
of
the Great Mohave Casino, and suddenly McCoy knew exactly what he was
going to do to pass the time before he died, or Spock found
him.
Smiling, he felt for the platinum rounds that Spock had given him in
preparation for their leap to ancient Vulcan. Now where around here would I
find a pawn shop?
She’d actually gotten off work early, for once. Not
for the
first time, Sofia blessed her career change to detective; they had two
of the killers from the shootout and a good lead on the third, but the
CSIs were still processing shell casings and footprints.
Captain
Brass had told her to pack it in for the night, and Sofia
hadn’t
argued.
The morning sun felt good on her face as she left the PD behind, and on
impulse she decided to take herself out for breakfast. It was
too
pretty a day to hurry home.
She put down the top on her guilty pleasure--otherwise known as her
Mazda convertible--and drove towards the Strip, playing
eenie-meenie-miney-mo with the casinos. She was in the mood
for
something classier than diner food.
Eventually she settled on the Atlantis, and took the long way up from
the parking garage, passing through the poker tables on the way to the
restaurant. Her eye caught on something familiar, and with a
faint sense of startlement, Sofia recognized the witness from earlier
in the night, seated with four others at one of the tables and looking
pleasantly blank over his hand.
Moved by an impulse to see what the mystery man would do, Sofia halted
and watched as the game played out. The stakes
weren’t
sky-high, but they were fairly respectable, and the hand that McCoy won
wasn’t his first victory of the night to judge by the tidy
pile
of chips in front of him.
As the game finished, the players relaxed, one rising and moving off,
and McCoy stretched and looked around, spotting Sofia as he turned his
head. That slow smile spread over his face, and his eyes
lit.
Sofia knew she should nod and keep walking, but abruptly she
couldn’t remember the last time someone outside of work had
been
glad to see her. So she smiled back.
McCoy swept his chips into his little bag, said something she
couldn’t quite hear to his opponents, and sauntered over to
her,
still smiling. “What brings a lovely lady like
yourself to
this joint, Detective?” he asked.
His flattery was outrageous, but the glimmer in his eyes was humorous,
an enjoyment of the joke and an invitation to share it. Sofia
felt her smile widen.
“Mimosas,” she answered. “And
the lobster salad.”
One corner of McCoy’s mouth climbed.
“Well, how about
that. We just broke for lunch ourselves. Would you
allow me
to buy you a drink? From one civil servant to
another,” he
added drolly.
Sofia regarded him. He was a complete mystery who
wasn’t
telling all he knew, and there was definitely something fishy going
on. But the Atlantis was a very public place, and he
seemed...fun.
He’s
not a suspect, and I’m off the clock.
“Sure, why not.” Sofia was aware of
feeling slightly
reckless, but it also felt good. She’d been too
cautious
lately, and it hadn’t really gotten her anywhere.
Maybe it was time for a risk or two.
“That,” McCoy drawled, “is the best news
I’ve
had all night.” He held out an arm.
“Shall
we?”
Amused, and feeling vaguely like an escapee from the Wizard of Oz film,
Sofia linked her arm through his.
“So tell me, Detective, what’s this city
like?” he asked as they started towards the
restaurant.
Sofia glanced over at him. “I’ll give you
all the
details, if you’ll call me Sofia. And remember that
I carry
a gun.”
His grin widened. “I never go against the wishes of
a lady,
Sofia.” Without bending his spine, he managed to
give the
impression of a bow. “Most of my friends call me
Len.”
Sofia chuckled. “And are you really a
doctor?”
He reached over and patted her hand where it was hooked over his
arm. “My dear, I’ve been known to cure a
rainy
day.”
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