Echo

Chapter 20: Sweet Dreams

Author's Notes: Hey everybody, sorry for the belated updated. Without further ado, here is chapter 20.

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Echo

Dreaming was foreign to you. Not daydreaming of course, because that did not really count in the sense that true dreams did, which occurred while you slept. Due to the fact that agents were children when they joined the organization, and had oftentimes been brought there by terrible circumstances, some of them experienced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A large part of PTSD meant that the new recruits suffered nightmares in which they relived the events that triggered their condition. After particularly stressful missions, or even near-death experiences, adult agents came down with it as well. Part of the preventative treatment for the condition included a specially prescribed medication that impeded the ability to dream.

You had come to the agency as a result of your parent's death in a car crash that you had been a part of as well. As a result you had suffered from it at one point as others had, and it had been particularly hard to break. In your case, like so many others, they had put you on the medication to help you recover. What they discovered after a time was that keeping you on it was better than risking letting you go off of it. For that reason, you spent most of your adolescence, as well as your adulthood, having dreamless sleep.

The medication was hard to obtain outside of the organization, however. Unless a psychiatrist formally diagnosed you with PTSD, or another condition, it was impossible to get if you did not want to purchase it illegally. You were too learned about the criminal network to dare venturing that far, but one of the most difficult adjustments you had to endure when re-integrating normal society was dreaming while you slept again.

Fortunately after a while you mostly ceased reliving your assignments and the death of your family. Part of this stemmed from your innate ability to block out unpleasant memories, you supposed, although that shield weakened when you weren't awake.

However, what was presently plaguing you was not a bad dream. As you stood there, watching the bearded dragons you were taking care of perch atop their branch, you couldn't stop lingering on what had happened in your mind while you slept last night.

You knew that sex dreams were common amongst men, but that women had them too; you had looked it up in the morning. Prior to your exiting the agency, due to the medication, you had never had one. Last night had been the first time you had dreamed of being intimate with a man, and the man in question was someone you ought not to be thinking about in that manner.

It was, of course, none other than Dr. McCoy.

You turned away from the little enclosure after dumping some more mealworms into the shallow bowl and letting the lizards flock to it, and bit your lip as you recalled the imagined feeling of his lips on your skin. The way the dream-Leonard had kissed your earlobes, your breasts, and your neck while you writhed helplessly beneath him, loving every second of it.

You shut your eyes painfully tight, trying to force yourself not to remember, only to find that the images were even more vivid when you did.

Today was officially three weeks since you had joined the Enterprise as a veterinary technician, and even though you were assigned the night shift on frequent occasions and given the task of cleaning cages and feeding the reptiles, you were enjoying it immensely. Where the starship had not given you fond memories before, that had all changed now that your job was different. You had made friends in your department, you were successfully socializing the lizards that had the potential to be friendly, and you were on good terms with Dr. McCoy.

To say that you were friends was pushing it a little. You didn't have lunch together or anything, but whenever he came by, or you visited him in the med bay or his office, you talked. Sometimes, you even made him laugh. He more than tolerated you; he seemed to even enjoy your company.