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“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Jim.” Bones scrutinized a length of copper tubing, squinting at it like he thought it might come to life and slither away from him. Finally he seemed to approve it, setting it down with the rest of the components. “Has to make a good spiral,” he said in explanation, as if Jim, his very amused onlooker, was taking notes.
Come to think of it, it wouldn’t hurt to know how to build a still. He had a reflexive, magpie curiosity about anything Bones got so wrapped up in, and, well, stranger things had come in handy on their missions.
Luckily, at the moment—however Bones felt about it—their lives didn’t hang on whether or not this contraption would produce drinkable bourbon. Holidays had come and gone before with everyone stuck in reluctant sobriety. But this year, for whatever reason, Bones had felt that the synthesizer’s alcohol subprogram being on the fritz was something close to a personal affront.
“I’ll knock something together,” he’d said, his face set in bulldog-fierce determination. “If I don’t, you can bet your britches that some ensign will fill the void by brewing up the kind of lamp-oil that’ll turn us all blind, and I’ll be up to my elbows in alcohol poisoning or worse. At least I’ve got the expertise to crank out something safer—not to mention a damn sight better tasting.”
They were in a rare lull, so it wasn’t any trouble to drag himself away from the bridge for a night to watch Bones at work.
He liked it. Bones inhabited his own skin as fully as any man Jim had ever met, and even when he was ostensibly still, he seemed to be in motion, like he radiated a kind of boundlessness. It was a pleasure to watch him in action. Most of the time, Jim didn’t get a chance for it—any crisis that had Bones hopping usually kept Jim busy, too, and they were all too often in their separate corners. Right now, though, there was nothing stopping him from standing and looking—especially since most of Bones’s attention was somewhere else. He was too focused on doing his moonshine-running ancestors proud to get flustered at Jim’s gaze lingering on some decisive flick of his wrist or the crinkle at the corners of his eyes or the unguarded jubilance that shone out of him when he was proud of himself.
That pleasure couldn’t last long, though. Bones looked up at him, their eyes meeting, and those crinkled deepened further. “You’ve got a good head for engineering, Jim. You ever build one of these?”
Shipboard stills were a well-known Starfleet hazard. The synthesizer would give out alcohol like it would give out anything else—which was to say it gave it out in an only somewhat recognizable form and with only half its usual taste. And on top of all that, it had strict caps built in that only a captain could override. If anyone wanted more than two glasses a night—or wanted something with a better kick—there was always a friend’s liquor cabinet.
And, if the friend objected to being imposed upon, there was almost always a still, usually run by either an enterprising young ensign or a world-weary yeoman.
Jim had enjoyed—or at least drank—his fair share of bathtub gin and Denebian raisin jack (fermented in a footlocker) and the plain sour mash Bones was cooking up now—but he’d never actually played bartender.
He said as much. Bones waved him off: “’Course you didn’t. You’re too much the social butterfly—or the fly everybody’s trying to catch with the honey.”
“I don’t know that you ever needed the honey,” Jim said wryly.
Bones smiled. “Flattery will get you something better than what’s going to be coming out of this.” He bypassed the half-assembled still and went to his own glittering display of dark bottles and decanters, perusing them a moment before selecting some kind of burgundy bulb that, more than anything, reminded Jim of an old-fashioned atomizer of perfume.
He crossed the room, coming so close to Jim that he warmed the air around him. Jim reached out, his thumb running along Bones’s jawline, but Bones said, “Ah—first you have to try this.” He held up the bulb.
“What is it?”
“It’s called ‘the wellspring of hope.’”
“That’s quite a marketing ploy.” He stretched out his hand. “All right, I’ll pour us drinks.”
Bones shook his head. “It doesn’t pour. It’s a vapor. You breathe it in.”
Ah, so he hadn’t been wrong about the resemblance to perfume. He parted his lips, allowing Bones to aim the little nozzle directly at the back of his throat. He never would have thought the pose could come with so little erotic anticipation—frankly, he felt like he was about to have a dose from some kind of asthma inhaler. But he waited until Bones squeezed the bulb, sending a jet of cool mist into his mouth.
Jim breathed it in, feeling a kind of dense prickling, like ice crystals were melting against his tongue. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.
But it was certainly followed by one. The taste was—well, like nothing he’d ever willingly eaten, he was sure of that much. It was like vegetation decayed into dank sludge, oily and revoltingly rich. He swallowed, trying to clear it out, but then something incredible happened: the flavor evolved, becoming like the most decadent caramel, sweet but braced by how it seemed to be spiced. The aftertaste was a clean one, oaky and faintly sweet.
And it sure as hell had a kick to it. He already felt the rosy-cheeked good disposition that came with Bones’s finest stock.
He ran his hand over the back of his mouth, marveling at the slight tingling on his lips. “It doesn’t lead with its best, but that finish—”
Bones looked fondly at the bulb. “Real case of the ends justifying the means, isn’t it?” He placed it back on the shelf. “Now, what I make up on short notice isn’t going to have anything like that kind of complexity, but—”
“You made that?”
“Well, of course I did,” Bones said, mildly indignant.
“I’ve known you for who knows how long, and I never knew you had a whole second career as a distillery man. Let alone one who’d call his hooch—”
“Hooch is unrefined shine, Jim, not something—”
“—the wellspring of hope,” Jim finished, laughing.
Bones folded his arms. “You go through the slog of the first part—”
“The valley of despair!”
“—and then you come out into the light, into something that’s been worth waiting for. The way I see it, that idea might as well be the wellspring of hope.” He squared his jaw, pure pugnacity, and when Jim’s mirth finally subsided, he huffed a little before conceding even half of Jim’s point: “Besides, this bottle’s been mellowing on the shelf for years now. I had a little home-brewery once upon a time, that’s all. With whatever white lightning pours out of this makeshift contraption, you’ll think I’ve lost my knack for sure. I wanted you to try something good.” He leaned forward, his defensiveness melting away in an instant, and smirked. “And I wanted to see the look on your face when you got the wallop that little spray comes in with.”
“I’m sure it was well-worth seeing.” He held out his hand, and Bones interlaced their fingers, coming over closer. “As I’m sure whatever you’ve prepared with your knowledge and expertise will, just like you said, make for a much better holiday than Scotty’s latest batch of rotgut—not that I know anything about who on the crew might be your competition. As the captain, obviously, I wouldn’t approve.”
Bones chuckled. “And as Jim Kirk?”
“As Jim Kirk—I’d still rather taste the brewer than his wares, no matter how good they are.” He kissed Bones softly. “Now, talk me through putting one of these together—slowly, please, my engineering’s better than my chemistry—and then we’ll see what we can do to make me forget it.”
“Hell, Jim, the way you taste—” His voice was low and rough.
“I’ll give you some time,” Jim said, not a little smugly, “to work out what I’m the wellspring of.”