Title: Resolutions

Author: Tempest

Series: TOS

Paring: S/Mc

Rating: PG, for some implied suggestions of sex

Summary: McCoy tells the complete history of New Year’s through the resolutions he’s made.

Disclaimer: Star Trek and all of its relations are property of Paramount and Viacom. I only own this story. Problems with male homosexuality? Please stay away. Flames and feedback are welcome. For archiving, please ask author permission first.

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Resolutions

By Tempest

November 30, 2005

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I was born only a few days after New Year’s. My mother called me her little New Year’s wish come true, because I was healthy and strong and looked just like my father. In her own words, what more could she have wanted?

 

      When I was a little boy, New Year’s was a special preview to my birthday. My family would gather at my house for dinner and celebration. Everybody would be happy; I know now that was mostly due to the amount of champagne they consumed. We wore hats and had noisemakers and told stories. I didn’t understand what it was all about, but I loved having the whole McCoy clan there. It was, to me, the holiday triple: Christmas, New Year’s, my birthday.

 

      When I was either six or seven years old, my father finally tried to explain the tradition to me. Mostly, he told me, it was a party, a time for friends and fun. But the New Year also brought with it a sacred tradition: The New Year’s Resolution. Everybody, he said, makes one at midnight and then works the whole next year to live up to it. It could be positive, like resolving to exercise more. Or it could be negative: resolving to eat less fatty foods. These are the lessons we get when our fathers are doctors. Still, I was enchanted by the idea and wanted to participate. I made it to about nine-thirty before falling asleep in his rocking chair. So my resolution was to make it to midnight next year.

 

      It took me another two years before I was able to make it to midnight. Those two years I also resolved to stay awake. So when I finally did, I was shocked. Moreover, I needed a new resolution. I was a cub scout at the time, so I resolved to move up to the boy scouts by the end of the year.

     

      When the time came for me to go off to University, most everybody else in my family, my cousins mostly, had stopped caring much about the New Year’s. It was, to them, a night to party and get drunk. I considered it a time of reflection and a chance for self-improvement. As a result, each New Year’s that came during University, I resolved to work harder. As a result, I graduated Valedictorian and was accepted to my top choice of medical school.

 

      My first three New Year’s in medical school all brought with them the same resolution: “I resolve not to flunk out.” By the time the fourth rolled around, I knew I wouldn’t, and my resolution was far more serious: “I resolve to be the best doctor I can be.” I’d like to think that although I’m not perfect, I’m still living up to that one.

 

      My father died not too long before New Year’s. It had been the worst day of my life. I spent that night drinking myself sick on his favorite brand of whiskey and made the only resolution I hold myself to more than being a good doctor. “Never again.”

 

      I entered Starfleet not too long after. I don’t know what I was thinking; maybe I thought I was needed; maybe my scouting and doctor resolutions got crossed in my brain. My first New Year’s of Starfleet was on a hospital station, helping the wounded of a battle. It’s where I met Jim Kirk, and we became fast friends. Learning about the bureaucracy of the Fleet, I resolved never to become motivated by rank. And I think I’ve lived up to it; I still have a barely marginal respect for the Chain of Command. But that aside; nobody celebrates New Year’s Day harder than the men and women on starships, separated from their families.

 

      The human ones anyway, which brings me to Spock. I signed aboard the Enterprise, because Jim Kirk was its new Captain. He took the reigns a few days after my birthday, and I’d resolved, before we left, that I wouldn’t let him get himself killed. I met Spock two weeks later and decided that I should have been given the opportunity to resolve not to let him get under my skin. I hadn’t, though, and he did, time and time again. The only consolation I had was that I’m pretty sure I did the same to him.

 

      He was the only man I’d ever met who had a strong objection to New Year’s. “An illogical waste of time,” he called it. He concentrated more on the drunken debauchery, and the resulting security reports, than on the spirit of it all. So every year, I made the resolution to make him see the light, to learn to appreciate the holiday. Instead, I slept with him.

 

      Not once, mind you, but more times than I could count over a two year period. That’s right, for two years, I slept with him. Then, without a word of apology, of explanation, he up and left me to return to Vulcan and study Kohlinahr. That year, I made a familiar resolution: “Never again.”

 

      I didn’t quite live up to that one. We all found ourselves back on the Enterprise together, even me and Spock. I’d cornered him on the observation deck after we’d saved the world. I wanted answers. I got them; I think. I woke up the next morning and he was in my bed. And I resolved to keep him there.

 

      I did a better job with that one. I got a legal contract out of it, to the happiness and amusement of our friends, and to the, not quite disappointment, of his clan. Although it did put the nail in the coffin of his unwilling wife selection.

 

      The next ten years, I kept making the same resolution, to make him see the merit in the holiday. I had to make it each year, because I couldn’t make it come true. He’d celebrate, surely, with me, with our friends, with the crew, but he just didn’t get it. And it wasn’t good enough. I would make Captain Spock see the logic in New Year’s. I’d never had a more difficult, and yet heart-warming challenge. It was something I could look forward to trying out.

 

      Then came Jim’s birthday. His birthday’s near New Year’s too, but before it, not afterward. We had a training mission to do, and Spock and I set out to make him feel better about aging. It should have been easy. Instead, I lived through the only day worse than my father’s death. It was the worst day of my life; the day I lost Spock. The day I tried to stop him, and I just couldn’t. The day I had to watch him day slowly of the radiation poisoning. The day he decided my life, and the lives of the crew, were more precious than his own. I did his autopsy, and then I think I informally resigned my commission. Nobody’s asked me to do anything since I filed the report. Never has saving the world made me feel so empty inside.

 

      It’s New Year’s again tonight. Everybody’s been leaving me alone, but somebody, probably Scotty, bless his heart, left a bottle of champagne outside my quarters for me. And although I’m in my fifties, I’m not going to break tradition; I’m going to celebrate, and I’m going to make a resolution. And for the first time in a decade, I’m going to make a new one. I don’t know how, I don’t know where and when, or with who or what, but I resolve to get him back.

 

      And this is one resolution I’m not going to break.

 

                              Finit