Echo

Chapter 23: Rumor Has It

Author's Notes: Good evening lovelies! I hope you enjoy this new chapter :)

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Leonard

"You looked!" The captain insisted for the fifth time in a row, prompting McCoy to roll his eyes.

"I did not," he replied, aggravated.

Kirk shoved him and said, "You absolutely did, don't lie, I saw you."

A few ensigns passed them, the girls glancing at the captain and blushing, and Leonard hissed begrudgingly, "Keep your damn voice down, Jim."

"So you admit it," He stated gleefully.

McCoy struggled with his words for a moment, wanting to deny it but knowing it was pointless. So, after a pause, he remarked passive-aggressively, "Oh, like you didn't."

"I couldn't have, I was looking at you," Jim replied, looking quite pleased with himself for having goaded Leonard into telling the truth.

Earlier in the day, they had gone to see you regarding the resident monitor lizard that lived in the veterinary sector to make sure Kumat hadn't smuggled it onto the ship instead of sending it back to the surface of Malbar. While fetching the beast from under the cabinets, you had been bent over, your back arched while you seized it. Your lab coat wasn't long enough to cover the backs of your thighs, and as a result of the position it had hiked up around your waist, exposing the blue uniform beneath it. In a momentary lapse of self-control, his eyes had wandered to your rear end, and he had caught himself admiring the shape of it for a moment before he realized Jim was watching him with a sinister smirk.

Now, as the two of them headed to the gym sector of the ship, he was rubbing it in, because Leonard lost that control so infrequently. He was really careful about not checking out women in the workplace. He had to work in close quarters with a lot of female nurses and ensigns, after all, and it would have been uncomfortable and inappropriate if one caught him glancing at her feminine parts. It had happened to him before, back when he was a doctor on-planet, and the results were unfavorable.

The only reason he had let himself go, in this situation, was that you were looking the other way and happened to have a very lovely backside. The worst part was that there was a chance you had noticed his strange attitude as you walked them out of the facility. He was always a little curt, but he seldom fell completely silent. That in itself was a dead giveaway that something was wrong, but would you be bold enough to ask him?

As of late he had gotten some strange vibes from you. They weren't necessarily bad, you were just unusually polite towards him. Of course you still made sarcastic remarks, but you did not aim them at him, you usually just employed them in attempts to make him laugh. You definitely had a sense of humor. That was something he had not realized about you when you were his bodyguard three years ago; back then you had seemed so serious.

"I can't believe it," Jim continued, sounding positively delighted at the new revelation, "You actually have a hard-on for Echo. Not in a million years would I have thought that possible."

Eyes bulging, Leonard snapped, "Jesus, Jim, just because I looked at her ass once doesn't mean I've got some crush on her."

"Fine, fine, whatever you say," the captain replied, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

It wasn't McCoy's fault that the women's uniforms on this ship were so short, if they were instructed to wear the dress instead of the shirt and pants. In the veterinary department, all of the women wore the blue version of the uniform, most of them with long sleeves, and a lab coat on top for sanitary purposes.