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You come around to the low hum of a containment field and too much fluorescent light, and the first thing you register, before you're even fully oriented, is how impossibly warm you are — the kind of warm that has nothing to do with the room's actual temperature.
"There you are." A man's voice, vaguely familiar, southern-inflected, entirely too calm. "Lie still a second. You've had a rough beam-back."
You blink the ceiling into focus, then him — full PPE, faceshield up, the name stitched over his chest reading MCCOY, L. CMO. "What happened?"
"That's what I'm hopin' you can help me figure out. Says here you're a science officer, survey team. You disturbed some kind of fungal growth on the planet surface about forty minutes ago, and your biosigns have been climbin' steady since. You're in an isolation chamber as a precaution till we know exactly what we're dealin' with."
You try to sit up and immediately regret it — a wave of heat rolls through you, low in your belly, nothing at all like a fever from any infection you've had before. "Something's wrong. I feel—" You don't have a clinical word for it. "Doctor, I feel like I'm burning up from the inside."
"I believe you." His voice stays level, but you catch the flicker of something crossing his face as your biobed readouts spike again. "Bloodwork's back. You've got a compound in your system consistent with a xenobotanical irritant — spores, most likely, absorbed through a cut or a graze. It's mimicking, near as I can tell, an extreme arousal response. Adrenal, hormonal, the whole cascade. Your body thinks it needs somethin' it isn't getting, and it's gonna keep escalating till it gets it."
You stare at him. "You're telling me I have space pollen."
"I'm telling you you've got a xenobiological reaction that requires regular release to keep from redlining into something dangerous. Best guess is you're contagious for the next twelve to twenty-four hours, which is why you're sealed in here with just me attending — after that the compound should clear your system enough that the risk drops off. But in the meantime, if we don't manage the symptom, your body's gonna keep escalating this fever past what's safe. I've seen this pattern before, once, on a survey report from a sister ship. It ends in seizure and cardiac arrest if it's left unmanaged."
"So I need to—" You can feel your face heating, and it's not just the fever. "You're saying I need to orgasm. Regularly. For the next day."
"That is, in the least clinical terms I can manage, correct." He has the decency to look faintly embarrassed even through the professional delivery. "I want to be plain with you about exactly what that means before we do anything. I can provide medical equipment — a therapeutic vibrator, standard MedBay stock, used for exactly this kind of thing more often than people'd guess — and administer it myself, since you're isolated and I'm the only one permitted in the chamber. If that's not something you're comfortable with, I need to know now, and we'll figure out an alternative, even if it's a worse one."
You appreciate, distantly, that he's giving you the option to say no, even though the room and your own body are both making it clear there isn't really one. "What's the alternative?"
"Restraints and sedation to manage the fever without release, which comes with its own considerable risks and a much worse prognosis." He meets your eyes, steady. "I'd rather not do that to you if there's a better option. But it's your call, not mine."
You swallow, deciding. "Let's do the better option."
"Alright." A short nod, something in his shoulders easing slightly. "You tell me to stop, at any point, for any reason, and I stop. Clear?"
"Clear." Another wave of heat crests through you, sharper this time, and you have to bite back an embarrassing sound. "Please. I think we're running out of time to be polite about this."
"Alright." He moves to the equipment tray, pulling out something compact and clinical-looking, entirely unglamorous. "This is gonna be procedural. I need you to try and relax, let it work, and tell me if anything feels wrong versus just — intense. Understood?"
"Understood."
He positions the wand with the brisk, impersonal efficiency of someone who's spent his career touching bodies without making it about anything except the job, and when it finally presses against you and switches on, the relief is so immediate and overwhelming that you nearly sob with it — the fever-ache easing back from a roar to something almost bearable.
"There," he murmurs, mostly to himself, watching your vitals rather than your face, professional to the last. "That's it. Let it work."
You come faster than you'd ever admit to under normal circumstances, the pressure of thirty minutes of building heat finally breaking, and he eases off the wand the second your biosigns crest and start to drop, giving you a moment to breathe.
"Good," he says, checking the readout. "Good, that's a solid drop. We'll give it twenty minutes, see how fast it climbs again, and go from there."
"Twenty minutes." Your voice comes out thinner than you mean it to. "How many times is this going to happen, Doctor?"
"Call me Leonard," he says, not quite meeting your eyes now, some of the professional composure finally cracking at the edges. "Given what's gonna be happening in here for the next while, I think we're past Doctor."
You manage something that's almost a laugh, despite everything. "Leonard, then. How many times?"
"Depends how stubborn that compound wants to be." He sets the wand aside within reach, sits back on the stool beside your bed, and for the first time since you woke up, looks like a man bracing himself rather than a doctor running a protocol. "Could be a long day. I'll be straight with you about that."
"Then I guess we'd better get comfortable with each other."
Something flickers across his face — not quite a smile, but close to it. "Guess we better."
The twenty minutes pass slower than any twenty minutes you can remember. He busies himself at the console outside the direct line of your bed, ostensibly monitoring your vitals, though you catch him checking the chrono more than once like he's counting down along with you.
By the twelve-minute mark you can feel it building again — not the sharp shock of before, but a low, insistent climb, sweat gathering at your hairline, your thighs shifting restlessly against the sheet like your body's trying to solve a problem your mind hasn't caught up to yet.
"Leonard." His name feels strange in your mouth, too intimate for how little you actually know him, but it's the only handle you've got left. "It's starting again."
He's at your side almost before you finish the sentence, eyes flicking to the readout, jaw tight at whatever he sees there. "Yeah. I see it. Climbing faster than last time." He doesn't sound surprised, exactly — more like he's confirming something he'd already suspected and hoped he was wrong about. "Well, ain't that just perfect." A beat, then the doctor's cadence comes back over it. "Compound's not gonna make this easy on us. We might be lookin' at shorter intervals as we go, not longer."
"Wonderful." It comes out breathless, half a laugh, half a groan as another wave crests. "Please, Leonard—"
"I've got you." He reaches for the wand again, and this time there's less hesitation in it, less of the careful stranger's distance from twenty minutes ago — not familiarity exactly, but something adjacent to it, the ease of two people who've already been through one round of this together. "Same as before. Tell me if anything's wrong, otherwise just let it work."
"Okay." You force yourself to breathe, to loosen the grip you've got on the sheet beneath you. "Okay, go ahead."
He presses the wand to you again, angled a little differently this time, some clinical part of him clearly adjusting based on what he learned from your reaction the first round, and the relief that floods through you is almost worse than the heat had been — so total, so overwhelming, that an embarrassing sound tears out of you before you can stop it.
"That's it," he murmurs, watching the readout more than your face, though you catch his eyes flick to you anyway, quick and helpless, like he can't quite keep from checking. "Let it work. You're doin' fine."
You're not sure "fine" is the word for the state you're in — rocking your hips against the pressure without quite meaning to, little moans spilling out of you that you'd never make in front of a man you'd just met under any other circumstances — but you don't have the presence of mind left to be embarrassed about it, not with the heat finally starting to break under the steady hum of the wand.
"Leonard—" His name again, useless and necessary at once. "I'm close, I'm—"
"I know. I've got you. Just try to relax into it."
You do, shaking through it, the fever-ache shattering into release with a force that leaves you gasping, and he eases the wand back the second your vitals crest, same careful timing as before, giving you the room to come down.
For a moment neither of you says anything. He sets the wand aside, checks the readout, and when he finally looks at you properly there's something new in his expression — something a little more raw.
"Faster climb, faster crash," he says, voice a shade rougher than his prior clinical cadence. "Which means shorter breaks between rounds from here on, if the pattern holds. I won't lie to you—" He scrubs a hand over his jaw. "This might not stay quite this clinical the whole way through. Might get to a point the wand's not doin' enough on its own, and I have to get more hands-on about it."
"You mean touch me. Yourself." Your voice is still unsteady, but you manage to hold his eyes anyway.
"Maybe. If the fever keeps escalating like this, yeah." He doesn't look away, doesn't dress it up. "I need you to tell me now if that's somethin' you can consent to, so we're not workin' it out in the middle of a crisis later. No pressure either way. I can find another doctor to relieve me if that's what you'd rather. Maybe you'd prefer a woman…"
You think about it as much as the heat still humming low in your body allows you to. "No. I don't want someone else. I trust you." A shaky breath. "If it comes to that, I'm okay with it being you."
Something eases in his shoulders — relief, plain and unguarded for just a second — before he seems to catch himself, clearing his throat and looking briefly, deeply uncomfortable with the whole exchange. "Well. Don't go makin' a habit of that." The clinical mask slides back over his face like he's grateful for the excuse. "Alright. Then let's see how long the wand holds up first, and go from there."
"Okay." You let your head fall back against the pillow, already dreading and half-wanting the next wave building somewhere under your skin. "How long this time?"
He checks the chrono, mouth twisting. "Fifteen minutes, if we're lucky."
You're not lucky.
The next several hours blur together into a rhythm that stops feeling like anything but a fight to survive it — the fever climbing faster each time, the breaks between shrinking from fifteen minutes to ten to something that barely qualifies as a break at all. Leonard works with a doctor's grim efficiency through all of it, timing everything against the chrono, adjusting the wand's settings, murmuring low reassurances you've stopped fully processing and started just letting wash over you like something to hold onto.
Between rounds he presses cool, damp cloths to your forehead, your throat, the inside of your wrists, anywhere he can reach without disturbing whatever fragile equilibrium your body's managed to find. Once, when the ache settles somewhere low and merciless even in the supposed rest period, he tucks a coolpack between your thighs and against your aching core with a murmured apology, like even that small mercy feels like an intrusion he needs permission for.
"I know it's not much," he says, adjusting it carefully. "But it'll take the edge off till the next round."
You've stopped being able to tell anymore whether you're dreading the wand or craving it — whether the sight of him reaching for it makes your body coil tighter in anticipation or recoil in exhaustion, the two responses tangled together until you can't separate one from the other.
So when he reaches for it again, some unmeasured stretch of time later, your body reacts before your mind catches up — flinching back against the pillow, a small whimper of protest escaping you.
"C'mon darlin'." His voice is gentler than it's been all day, worn thin with something that might be exhaustion or might be guilt. "I'm sorry, but I have to. I can see your temp climbin' on the monitor. We can't just let it run."
"I can't." Your voice cracks on it. "I don't want it. Please, not that again."
He goes still, actually looking at you rather than the readout for a long moment, and whatever he sees in your face makes something in his expression soften further. "Okay." He sets the wand back down, gently. "Okay, no wand. Just gonna use my hand instead, alright? Lemme get some lube."
You manage a shaky nod, some of the tension leaving your body at the simple fact of being listened to.
"Okay." He reaches up first and flips his faceshield back, some contagion protocol clearly deciding it's outlived its usefulness against whatever this actually is, and for the first time since you woke you can see his whole face properly — tired, focused, more human without the barrier of plastic between you. He slicks his fingers, unhurried despite the climbing numbers on the monitor, and settles beside the bed instead of looming over it, some instinct making the angle less clinical, more like a man sitting with someone rather than operating on them. "Here we go. Just me, this time. No more machine."
His touch, when it finally comes, is nothing like the wand's relentless hum — slower, warmer, adjusting instantly to the small sounds you make, easing back the second anything reads as too much rather than holding a fixed setting regardless. It should feel like a small thing, the difference between a tool and a hand, but it doesn't. It feels like the first genuinely kind thing that's happened to you in hours.
"There," he murmurs, watching your face now instead of the monitor, something in his voice gone rough and unguarded in a way it hasn't been all day. "That better?"
"Yes." It comes out on a shudder, relief and want tangled together past any hope of separating them. "Yes, Leonard, please, don't stop—"
"Not goin' anywhere." His fingers find a rhythm, patient and attentive in a way the machine never was, and you feel the fever-ache start to bend under it, not just suppressed but actually, finally, being met by something that seems to want to be there. "Just let me do my job. That's all this is."
Whatever the compound makes of human touch versus a machine's, it seems to register the difference — because for the first time since you woke in this chamber, the respite after actually holds. Ten minutes stretches into twenty, then thirty, your body finally slack and quiet enough that exhaustion catches up with you all at once, and you drift, some dim part of you registering Leonard's presence nearby, the soft murmur of him logging something to his PADD, before the rest of you gives out entirely and you sleep.
You wake to the fever climbing again, slower this time, almost gentle in how it builds, and Leonard's already there beside you — gloved, patient, like he never really left.
"There you are," he says quietly, voice pitched low for someone just surfacing. "Didn't want to wake you till I had to. You've been out near on forty minutes. Longest stretch yet."
"Forty minutes." Your voice is blurred with sleep and the low, insistent heat already gathering beneath it. "That's — that's good, right?"
"Good enough that I'm startin' to think the hand's doin' something the wand couldn't." He's already reaching for the lube, unhurried, some of the day's earlier tension gone soft at the edges from how tired you both are. "Gonna take care of you again, alright? Same as before."
"Okay." You let your eyes fall shut, let his fingers find you slick and careful, circling slow instead of chasing anything urgent, and for a while it's almost gentle — the ache building at its own unhurried pace rather than the frantic climbs of earlier rounds, his touch patient and unbothered by the clock for once.
But it builds anyway, the way it always does, and somewhere in the haze of it you become aware of an ache that isn't just about pressure or friction anymore — something hollow, something his fingers circling your clit aren't quite reaching, however good it feels.
"Leonard." Your hips shift, restless, chasing something you don't have the clarity left to name properly. "Leonard, please—"
"I'm here, darlin'. Just let it build, I've got you—"
"No, I mean—" You catch his wrist, guide his hand lower, past where he'd been so carefully staying. "Please. Inside."
He goes still, and for a moment you're not sure if he's going to argue clinical protocol at you, keep things exactly where they've safely been all day. But then his breath comes out unsteady, and when he speaks his voice has lost whatever was left of its professional distance.
"You're sure." Not really a question, more like he needs to hear you say it anyway.
"I'm sure. Please, Leonard, I need—" The words dissolve into a shaky exhale as his fingers finally shift, slow and testing, easing into you with a care that has nothing clinical left in it at all. "Yes. Yes, just like that."
"Okay." His voice is rough now, unguarded, any pretense of this being purely procedural gone. "Okay, I've got you. Tell me if it's too much."
It isn't. It's the first thing all day that's actually felt like enough — his fingers curling deep, slow and deliberate, his other hand returning to your clit to work both at once, and the sound that tears out of you this time isn't relief so much as something closer to being finally, thoroughly seen.
Somewhere after the second round, he gives up on the stool entirely — some unspoken calculation deciding that sitting apart from you isn't doing either of you any favors — and eases onto the biobed beside you instead, gathering you in against his chest so you can lean into him properly, one arm banded around your back while his other hand keeps working between your thighs. You bury your face in the curve of his neck, fingers twisting into the fabric of his scrub shirt like it's the only solid thing left in the room, and something about being held instead of merely attended to seems to ease you as much as anything his hand is doing.
For a while, it seems to be enough. His hand works you through three more rounds with something almost like ease — the intervals between them holding steady, then stretching, forty minutes becoming close to an hour, your fever curve on the monitor finally looking less like a threat and more like something being managed. Somewhere in the third round he even huffs out a quiet laugh against your temple, murmuring that you might've actually turned a corner, that the readings are startin' to look like a recovery instead of a crisis.
Somewhere in the middle of it all — you're not sure exactly when, time having long since dissolved into fever and reprieve and fever again — the comm chimes, and Jim Kirk's voice comes through the speaker with a tone to it that makes it very clear this isn't the first time he's checked in.
"Bones. How's our patient doing?"
Leonard doesn't even look up from what he's doing, jaw tight. "Fine, Jim. Under control."
"Just fine? That's all I get?" A pause, entirely too casual. "You've been in there for hours. Sure you don't need a hand administering treatment — if that's what we're calling it these days?"
"I will end your career," Leonard says, with the flat, weary conviction of a man who's had this exact conversation in his head several times already and is only now being forced to have it out loud. "I will end your entire Starfleet career, Jim, and I will enjoy it."
"Just offering a second pair of hands, Doctor. In the name of efficient care."
"Get off my comm channel."
"Roger that. Don't forget your charting, Bones." The click of the connection cutting is somehow smug all on its own.
Leonard exhales through his nose and pinches the bridge of it.
"Ignore him," he mutters, turning his attention back to you like the interruption never happened. "Man's got the emotional maturity of a cadet on shore leave."
"Does he know?" Your voice is thin, worn out, but curious despite everything. "What's actually happening in here?"
"Enough of it. More than I'd like." He shakes his head, some of the tension easing back into focus on you instead. "Don't you worry about Jim Kirk. Not somethin' either of us has the energy to spare for right now."
"Fair," you manage, and let the next wave of heat pull your attention back where it belongs.
You want, badly, to believe him that the worst might be over.
The spores have other ideas.
It comes on without warning, no gradual build this time — just a sudden, brutal spike that has you crying out before you even understand what's happening, your whole body seizing around the ache like it's trying to fold in on itself. Leonard's at your side instantly, reaching for you, and it should be exactly what worked every time before.
It isn't.
"That's it, I've got you—" His fingers find you, familiar and careful, and you're already shaking your head, pulling away.
"No, too much, it's too much—"
He eases back immediately, adjusting, gentler this time, barely any pressure at all. It's not enough. You can feel yourself climbing regardless, the ache going hollow and desperate in a way his hand alone can't seem to touch anymore, no matter how he adjusts.
"Talk to me," he says, voice tight with something that isn't quite panic but is standing right next to it. "Too much or not enough, darlin', I need you to tell me which."
"Both." It comes out wrecked, a sob more than a word. "I don't know, Leonard, I don't know, please—"
He tries again, slower, then firmer, then something in between, and every single adjustment lands wrong — either an unbearable overload of sensation or a maddening absence of it, nothing landing in the narrow, brutal space your body actually needs. You can see the moment real fear crosses his face, quickly schooled back into something steadier for your benefit, his eyes flicking to the monitor and back to you like he's running out of options and knows it.
"Okay." He pulls his hand back, and you nearly protest the loss of even that until you realize he's not stopping — he's recalculating. He drags a hand over his face, eyes darting from you to the monitor and back again.
"Okay. God help me, this sure as hell wasn't covered in med school." His gaze fixes on the steadily climbing numbers for another heartbeat. "There has to be somethin' I'm missin'..."
Silence.
"...Dammit."
"Leonard—"
"I know." He's already moving, some last thread of hesitation visibly snapping in him. "I know. I'm gonna use my mouth. Last resort, but I think it's what your body actually needs right now—more give, more precision than my hand's got left in it. You tell me if that's not somethin' you want, and I'll find another way, I swear to you I will."
"I don't care." Another wave crests, and you're gasping through it, past any capacity for modesty or hesitation of your own. "Please, just — anything, Leonard, please—"
He doesn't make you ask again.
The first drag of his mouth against you is nothing like his hand, nothing like the wand — impossibly more precise, adjusting to every involuntary twitch and gasp with an attentiveness that finally, finally seems to land in exactly the space your body's been screaming for. You sob out something that might be his name, might just be a wordless sound of relief, fingers twisting into the sheet as he works you with a patience that belies how badly his own hands are shaking against your thighs.
"There," he mutters against you, voice wrecked, like he's the one being undone by it. "There you go. That's it, darlin'. Let me have you."
He doesn't let up, doesn't slow, working you with a focus that seems to have narrowed down to nothing else in the world but the two of you and the shape of what your body needs — his mouth relentless and precise, one hand splayed flat against your hip to keep you steady, the other returning to press two careful fingers back inside you, curling up again in perfect counterpoint to the maddening drag of his tongue.
The build this time is nothing like the others — not a slow climb or a sudden spike, but something that seems to gather from everywhere at once, every hour of the day compressed into a single unbearable point of pressure, until it finally breaks with a force that has you crying out loud enough you're distantly grateful for the isolation chamber's soundproofing. It goes on and on, wave after wave, his mouth and hand never quite stopping even as you shake through it, wringing out every last aftershock until there's nothing left in you to give.
You flop back against the biobed, utterly spent, limbs heavy and useless, breath coming in ragged pulls that take a long moment to even out.
Leonard doesn't move for a second either — forehead resting briefly against your inner thigh, breathing hard himself, some visible effort going into pulling himself back together before he finally sits back on his heels and drags a hand over his mouth.
"Christ," he mutters, mostly to himself, voice rough and a little dazed. He gives himself one more beat — eyes closed, breathing slowing — before something in his posture visibly shifts, the doctor sliding back over the man like a coat he's putting back on. "Alright. Let's get you sorted."
He reaches for a cloth, cleaning you up with the same brisk, impersonal care he'd shown at the very start of all this, though there's something gentler in it now, some tenderness he's not quite bothering to hide anymore. He checks the monitor next, and whatever he sees there finally eases the last of the tension from his shoulders.
"There it is," he says, quiet, almost reverent. "Compound's clearing. Vitals are settlin' into somethin' that actually looks like normal for the first time all day."
"Is it over?" Your voice comes out slurred with exhaustion, eyes already fighting to stay open.
"Close enough. I think you're through the worst of it." He pulls a blanket up over you, tucking it with more care than the gesture strictly requires. "You're gonna be sore for a while — you've earned that much, given how the day went — but that's a normal kind of sore. Overuse, not the fever. Nothin' I need to treat, just somethin' you'll feel for a day or two."
"Mm." You're barely tracking the words anymore, warmth and exhaustion pulling you under fast now that the frantic heat's finally gone quiet. "Feels different. Good different."
"Good different's about the best outcome I could've hoped for today." He brushes a strand of hair back from your face, the touch lingering just a beat longer than a doctor's would. "Get some sleep. I'll be right here if you need anything."
You're asleep before you can manage a response, and if some part of you registers him staying at your bedside long after the readouts settle into steady and unremarkable, watching you with an expression he'd never let you catch him wearing while you were awake, you're too far gone to do anything but let it happen.