The Things We Do For The Fleet

Chapter 5: Tea And Poetry

💙Eventual Leonard McCoy x fem!reader💙

⚠️: didn’t proof read this one

word count: 1,965

<-Previous-Next->

Dr. McCoy came in the door behind Y/N and put down his boxes as well. “Where should I put my things, darlin?” He asked looking down at his boxes. There’s that darlin again, “Well, I’m not sure what’s in the other boxes, but we can push some stuff back in the closet and you could hang your clothes up in there,” Y/N suggested, “The other two boxes are paperwork and files is all, they might as well stay in the boxes for now,” Dr. McCoy explained with a hand on his hip. Y/N went over to the closet and began to push some of her own things to the side and pulling things she didn’t wear often off the hangers and folding them up so she could switch them out for Dr. McCoy’s clothes. “Okay” Y/N called from within the closet, “There’s room now, if you wanna hand me your clothes I’ll start putting them on hangers,” She said, holding out a hand expectantly. He began to hand her clothes: shirt, shirt, shirt, shirt, shirt, shirt, shirt, all uniform shirts. Pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, all uniform as well. Nightgown, nightgown, nightgown, nightgown, nightgown, nightgown, nightgown, all plain white. Y/N held her hand out again for a moment before pinching her fingers together and making a grabby hand, “Is that all Dr. McCoy?” She questioned tiredly. “You can call me Leonard and yes it is,” Leonard told her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, Leonard. If you wanna get into your pyjamas for bed, I’ll make some tea while you change, if you want some of course,” she offered, holding out one of his nightgowns. “That’d be great, I’ll have mine with lemon,” Leonard requested. He took the nightgown from Y/N’s hand and mosied on into the bathroom to change. Y/N half tumbled into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water and put it on to boil. Normally she would wash up her face while the water boiled, but Leonard was in the bathroom at the moment so instead Y/N picked up her own folded clothes and put them in the box that Leonard’s things had come in. “So,” Leonard came out of the bathroom in his own plain nightgown. “It just occurred to me, should we try to move my bed in here tonight, or should I take my clothes for tomorrow and go sleep in my own quarters?” He offered the two options. “Well,” Y/N seemed to be considering her next words very carefully. “I could sleep on the couch, and you could sleep in the bed. That way we wouldn’t have to do any work on it until tomorrow,” Y/N fumbled with the suggestion. “That’s a sweet offer, darlin, but I couldn’t make you sleep on the couch,” Leonard admitted. “Then we’ll both sleep on the bed,” Y/N stated innocently without thinking about what she was really saying. That was so stupid, so you have any idea what that sounds like?, Y/N internally scold herself for the comment.

“Then we’ll both sleep on the bed,” She had said it like it wasn’t a big deal, and maybe to her it wasn’t. Regardless of how she felt about sharing a bed, they both remained in silence from their respective places for a long moment. Leonard finally cut into the silence, “I dunno, do you steal bedding in your sleep?” He asked lightheartedly. “I wouldn’t know,” Y/N confessed to him with a slight shrug. “But if I do, there’s extra blankets and stuff in the bottom drawer of the dresser,” Y/N proposed as compensation for any sleep thefts she might commit. “Alright then, I call dibs on the left side,” He cheered, trying to push his own ill at ease feelings to the side for the time being. There’s no way this can end-, his thoughts were cut short by the kettle. “That’ll be tea,” Y/N perked up and stated, seemingly more out of habit than actual concern that Leonard might not know what the whistling sound meant. “What kind do you want?” She asked as she scrambled into the kitchen to take the kettle off of the heat. “What kind do you have?” He shot back in a form of noncommittal answer. Leonard could hear the shuffling of small paper packets before her answer, “Chamomile, mint, chamomile-lavender, mint-lavender, and radiantly raspberry,” Y/N rattled off the list, “Radiantly Raspberry?” He asked with a raised eyebrow. “I dunno, I’m not in charge of naming them, it’s raspberry, take it or leave it,” She followed the ultimatum with a small giggle, that Leonard swears he would have missed if he blinked.

“Alright, darlin, I’ll take the chamomile,” His statement was promptly followed by a small tearing sound from the kitchen. maybe havin a roommate won’t be such a terrible thing, Leonard thought to himself as his eyes followed Y/N as she walked out of the kitchen in her cloud white nightgown with her hair out of her face, a mug of tea in each hand. “You’ll have to let it cool awhile,” Y/N warned through a cloud of steam, her usually quiet tone even softer as she handed him his requested tea. Leonard watched the steam rising from the mug and felt the heat radiate from it and seep into his hands. “Thank you,” He drawled, still looking at the steam, “It’s not a problem,” Y/N assures him as she puts down her mug and reaches for a book. Y/N flips through the pages intently before finally settling on a page, she sticks her thumb in between the pages and lets the book fall closed as she comes to sit down next to Leonard on the couch. When she lands on the couch she curls her legs under herself and nestles herself further into the couch, seemingly unaware of his gaze tracking her movements the whole time. Y/N opens up the book again and a look of complete and utter, inner peace melts her previously nervous posture and facial expression. I wonder what she could possibly be reading, Leonard does his best to discreetly catch sight of the title or even just the words on the page, but the way she’s almost protectively curled herself around the book doesn’t lend itself well to his attempts. “What are you reading?” He finally asks with a curious look. Y/N looks up at him in near shock at the question, she relaxes a little, but still hesitates before opening her mouth to speak. “Robert Frost,” She says quietly, looking back down at her book. “I think I’ve heard of him, something about two roads,” Leonard tried to relate, “Diverged into a yellow wood,” Y/N murmured, finishing the line. “What was that?” He asked, genuinely not having heard what she said. “The poem you’re thinking of,” She began, “The Road Not Taken, is what it’s called,” She only looked up at him for a flicker of a moment, “Yeah, that sounds right,” He admitted, still searching his memory for anything he might know about it, but nothing came to mind.

“Would you read it to me?” Leonard asked, “I can’t actually remember any of it,” He explained himself. She looked to him with a demure smile, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveller, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could,” Y/N started not having looked back at her book, but keeping her eyes trained on her cup of tea. “To where it bent in the undergrowth; then took the other, just as fair and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same, and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.” Y/N looked to him now, “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” “Wow,” Leonard started, “I don’t think I could remember all that,” He said in what he meant as a compliment to her. “It’s easy,” Y/N said, still looking at Leonard. I think this might be the longest she’s actually looked at me, “You read it because you love it, at first you can only recall bits and pieces when you aren’t focused on anything else,” She interrupted his thoughts. “Then you wake up one day, distant from where you started, and you can remember all of it without thinking, you can recite it while doing other things. One day when you really know it, you can think and feel how each word feels on your tongue without even saying any of it.” She finished thoughtfully, Leonard wasn’t sure she was talking to him so much as she might have been talking to herself. “Very poetic,” Leonard commented softly, trying not to scare her out of her daze. “Oh, thank you,” She exclaimed softly, appearing to remember that she was actually talking to someone. “Just loose thoughts,” She dismissed her own outburst of poeticism as nothing. “No, it was very nice, where did you learn it?” He asked Y/N, “Nowhere really, I just sort of thought it,” She shrugged to herself. “Well, I thought it was a very- I don’t know, but it was filled with feeling, like you meant it,” Leonard seemed to be forming the thought as he spoke. “You seem surprised by that,” Y/N murmured with a light blush before taking a sip of the tea, Leonard reached for his own forgotten mug of tea, “Sincerity isn’t something there’s a lot of in the universe,” He said with his own shrug as he drank his tea.

His eyebrows furrowed at the taste, “Is it alright, I can go make you something different?” Y/N tried to reach for the mug, but Leonard pulled it back from her reach and drank the rest of it before she could get to it. “No, it’s fine really,” Leonard insisted, “Just a little heavy on the lemon,” He conceded and put the mug back on the table. “You should finish up your tea and we’ll go to bed,” Leonard suggested, moving to put his own mug back in the sink, when he came back he offered to take hers as well. “Okay,” Y/N agreed, waiting for him to come back from the kitchen and then leading him back to the bedroom. She stood shakily in the doorway as he went ahead of her, Leonard looked back at her, “Unless you’re gonna sleep standing up, you should probably come in,” he smiled comfortingly. Y/N timidly walked into the room, waiting for Leonard to take his place first. When he realised what she was waiting for he got into bed on the left side and worked his way under the covers. Y/N waited for Leonard to settle and then slowly came up to the right side of the bed and got in as well, laying as close to the edge as possible. “You can lay further in on the bed, right now if you breathe funny you’ll fall off,” Leonard assured her. Y/N nestled a few inches closer to the middle of the bed, still being sure to give him as much space as she could reasonably manage. “Sweet dreams,” Leonard said, turning off the light, “Goodnight,” Y/N returned the sentiment and rolled over onto her side. They both laid awake, vividly aware of the other laying next to them. Eventually an uneasy sleep overtook them both.

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, but let the chaotic times roll. Or something like that

The Things We Do For The Fleet

More Posts from Darkness-and-books