"Bones?" Jim Kirk stood in Dr. McCoy's doorway, peering cautiously into his chief surgeon's dimly lit cabin. "You're not going to throw a bowl of plomeek soup at me, are you?"

Kirk knew his friend to be a man of wide-ranging, fast-changing moods, but he was not normally given to seeking refuge in a dark room. At the moment, Kirk couldn't even see him and wouldn't have known McCoy was there had he not heard an exasperated "Come in already" a moment before.

Even that not-so-encouraging invitation had come only after Kirk had pressed the door chime a half-dozen times. Following the third, he had fleetingly considered giving up and walking away. It was possible that McCoy, in fact, did not want to be disturbed. But if you can't barge in uninvited on a troubled friend, Kirk reasoned, who can you barge in on?

The captain entered, and the door obligingly slid shut behind him. "Where the hell are you?"

Dr. McCoy's favorite lounge chair sat a few feet away, its back toward him as he squinted into the gloom. The room's ambient lighting was so low, a half-dozen fireflies would have made it look sunny by comparison. As Kirk's eyes adjusted, he saw a hand rise slowly over the chair's high back, give a feeble wave, then sink from sight. He rounded the chair and found McCoy slouched deeply into the cushions, his bare feet pressed against a hassock, a glass of iced amber drink cradled on his chest.

"So," McCoy drawled, "it's come to this: 'How shall I compare thee to a hormone-crazed Vulcan?' "

"Let me count the ways," said Kirk, finishing the fractured paraphrase.

"Have I been that abominable?"

"As a matter of fact, you have. So what's wrong?"

"You do get right to the point," McCoy said, then proceeded to ignore Kirk's direct inquiry. "Y'know, the day Spock threw that bowl of soup at Christine Chapel will always be one of the highlights of my life."

Kirk's eyebrows twitched. "I suppose that says something about your life."

"Just when I think I've seen it all, there's something waiting just around the bend."

"Are you sure you haven't gone around the bend yourself?"

McCoy held his glass up, giving it a measuring glance. "This is my first. Scout's honor." He sat up a little straighter, forcing the memory into focus. "I can still see that bowl flying out through his cabin door, smashing into the wall. Poor Christine. She poured her heart and soul into that vile liquid--"

"Figuratively speaking, of course."

"Of course. Though with Christine, you never knew. Remember how she used to look at Spock when she thought nobody was watching?"

Poor Christine, indeed, Kirk thought. She'd always made such an obvious effort to appear businesslike around Spock when on duty. But she couldn't keep secrets from McCoy, with whom she'd worked so closely, first as head nurse and now as a fellow doctor. Kirk, too, had been aware of her unrequited affection for the Vulcan first officer, despite the fact that Spock was utterly incapable, by constitution and custom, of returning her feelings. Yet, as McCoy had observed, she never gave up hoping -- a persistance that made that one afternoon of excruciatingly public embarrassment virtually inevitable.

Spock had been uncharacteristically irritable and snappish for days. Then came his threat to break McCoy's neck -- a rather inappropriate response to the doctor's well-meaning suggestion that Spock might benefit from a physical exam.

Even before that, Kirk had observed instances of Spock's increasingly odd behavior. But he was as entitled to privacy as the next man, and Kirk had tried to overlook those moments when Spock resembled nothing so much as a pressure cooker threatening to blow its seal. However, the infamous soup incident, recalled so fondly by McCoy years later, was impossible to overlook.

Innocently hoping that the way to a Vulcan's heart was indeed through his stomach (even though, as McCoy had observed on more than one occasion, Spock's heart was where his liver should be), Nurse Chapel had discovered a Vulcan delicacy she thought Spock would find irresistable: plomeek soup.

Disdaining the food synthesizers, Christine had actually cooked the soup herself -- boiling, chopping, seasoning -- only to have her offering hurled by a roaring Vulcan. The bowl barely missed her head as she fled his cabin, then smashed into the corridor wall opposite his door. And it was all witnessed firsthand by Kirk, McCoy, and assorted other passersby.

In Spock's case, there'd been an explanation for his behavior: an instinctual Vulcan mating drive had made him quite unaccountable for his own actions. But Kirk hadn't a clue to the cause of McCoy's current sulk. "Spock was going through pon farr when he tossed that soup bowl, McCoy. What's your excuse?"

"If you mean, have I got an urge to mate with a Vulcan, forget it."

"Then, what is the problem?" Kirk spaced his words evenly for emphasis and to indicate that his patience was not infinite.

"Problem?" McCoy repeated with an innocent batting of his blue eyes.

"Yes -- problem."

"No problem."

"The hell there isn't. If it's the new uniforms--"

"I'm a doctor, not a damned fashion consultant," McCoy growled. "Besides, I kinda like the new uniforms. I just wish Starfleet would make up its mind so I don't have to worry about getting court-martialed for wearing the wrong thing one morning."

Kirk knew deliberate obtuseness when he saw it. He also knew a friend under extreme stress. "Okay. No problem. Then how do you explain the incident in the lab?"

McCoy turned a bland eye toward Kirk. "The incident in the lab?"

The incident in the lab...

In the examining room, Dr. Chapel had just finished a routine check of sterile-field generators when she heard the first crash from the adjacent laboratory -- the unmistakable sound of unbreakable glassware bouncing off a wall. For a moment, she attributed the crystalline impact to someone's clumsy lapse of attention. A moment later came a muttered string of curses, punctuated with one final loud oath, then the clatter of more falling glass.

She rushed through the doorway just in time to see McCoy clearing a jumble of beakers, tubes, and bottles off a lab table with an angry swipe of his left arm. "Dr. McCoy!"

He jumped at the sudden sound of her voice intruding on his private tantrum, then whirled and glared at her. "Good God! Doesn't anybody knock anymore?!"

Chapel stared at him, quite astonished.

"I didn't know you knew about that," McCoy said mildly to Kirk.

"Well, I do, including the fact that you refused to explain your wrecking-ball routine to Christine. And then you stood me and Scotty up for dinner the last two nights -- when I planned to cleverly and subtly interrogate you about the lab incident -- and you pretended you weren't here when we came to check on you. Should I go on?"

"So that gives you the right to bust in here and pry into my personal miseries?"

"You're the one who opened the door."

"Yeah, well, I'm starting to regret that," McCoy said tartly as he got to his feet and padded over to the small cabinet he used as his bar. "You want a drink?"

"No," Kirk said, following him across the cabin. "I want an explanation."

"I'm fine. I'm a grump. I've been a grump ever since you've known me. What's more, I was a grump long before that. Now go 'way and let me stew in peace."

Kirk reached over and grabbed the bottle of amber whiskey before McCoy could. Then he poured generous drinks for both of them and ushered the doctor back to his chair. Kirk pulled up a second chair and set it face-to-face. "Talk to me, Bones. I'm not leaving until you do."

"Bull. You've got a ship to run."

"Bull. I left Spock in charge, and you know what an iron pants he can be. He could stay in that command chair for days without my relieving him... so I've got nothing pressing to pull me away."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "There's never a damn bowl of soup around when you need it." With a rueful shake of his head, he puffed out a defeated breath. "All right, dammit. If there's no other way to get rid of you--"

"There isn't. Talk."

"Is that an order?"

If McCoy was hoping Kirk would get tired of his verbal dodging, give up, and go away, he was bound for disappointment. Instead, Kirk pointedly ignored the sarcastic question and pressed on as if conducting an evidentiary investigation. "As near as I can recall, this started right after we got our orders to divert to Starbase 86. Is it something about Starbase 86?"

"Don't be ridiculous," McCoy said with a dismissive wave of one hand. "Even I'm not that eccentric."

"Is it Mark Rousseau?" His tone of voice made it clear Kirk considered the question a rhetorical toss.

But when McCoy greeted the name of the Federation ambassador they were to pick up at Starbase 86 with stony silence, Kirk knew he'd uncovered the burr under McCoy's saddle.

"It is, isn't it?" Kirk prodded with a slight arch of his eyebrows. "What do you have against Mark Rousseau?"

McCoy responded with a lengthy silence. "Do you really want to know?" he finally said. At Kirk's nod, he added, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"As someone once said, 'Scout's honor.' "

"All right, Jim. What do you know about Mark Rousseau?"

"Not much. He's about your age, used to be a starship captain. I met him once years ago. He was on the fast track to his admiral's braid when he quit Starfleet and went into the Federation diplomatic corps. As far as I know, he's considered to be a gifted mediator--"

"A natural," McCoy said.

Kirk looked hard at his friend, trying to read McCoy's expression and the way he'd said that one word: natural. A jumble of sarcasm, irony, deference... even envy? If Kirk was right, McCoy had a serious case of mixed feelings about this man. "I assume I'm safe in saying you know each other?"

"Since I was nine and he was eleven. Met him on the first day of school..."

...We'd just moved to this small town, so I was the new kid. Hardly had time to learn anybody's name, much less make any friends. Hadn't had my growth spurt yet either, so I was this skinny little kid whose jeans were a little too baggy and hair a little too short, thanks to one of Mom's famous kitchen haircuts -- a nice ripe target for gettin' picked on...

"Nice haircut, kid," hooted the beefy boy with the blemished face. He and his three friends orbited around nine-year-old Leonard McCoy, keeping pace with him as he trudged along the tree-shaded sidewalk. They didn't impede his progress, but they did form a threatening ring from which they drawled their taunts.

They were not particularly clever or creative. Their teasing was rather mundane, aimed at the underwhelming physical attributes of the scrawny boy with the uneven thatch of hair. The bathroom mirror had told him the unavoidable truth that morning: He was not the fairest of them all, not in Georgia or any other land. Why did his mother have to cut his hair so short on the sides and back and leave the front long enough to keep falling limply in front of his eyes?

"Whose pants you got on? Your daddy's?"

Leonard tried to ignore them. It was only seven-thirty in the morning, but he already felt a trickle of sweat down his back. Southern summers didn't care that the calendar said September. They lingered, as damp and persistent as the morning mist hugging the grass and hanging over the stream gurgling alongside the road to the old-fashioned clay-brick schoolhouse.

Had they been placed in an old-fashioned police lineup, Leonard would not have been able to identify the bullies. All he knew was that two were skinny, two were stocky. They were all older boys, maybe eleven, and all a head taller than him. He'd have had to look up to see their faces, and he was too busy watching his feet, making certain that he didn't trip over the sidewalk squares pushed up by the roots of the old trees stooping like drowsy old men watching the world pass by.

Without thinking, Leonard hugged his lunch box tight under one arm. A moment later, he regretted the action.

"Hey, kid, must be some special lunch you got!"

Though it was only a momentary distraction, it was enough to make Leonard trip and sprawl on the rough walk. The lunch box skittered free of his hands, coming to rest just out of reach. The lead bully snatched it up. For the first time, Leonard looked up at the bigger boy's face. It wasn't what he'd expected. No scars, no cruel eyes, no sneering mouth.

No fangs.

Just a bland round face with freckles and sun-bleached hair. The bully took a quick glance at the lunch box now in his hands. It was as unremarkable as he was, except for the corner labeled with Leonard's name. "What do they call you, kid -- Leeeon? Or maybe Leonardo."

"Leonard," said the smaller boy as he tried to get up. One of the skinny junior bullies used his foot to shove Leonard back onto his rump.

"Well, you're Leonardo to me," said the leader as he shook the lunch box next to his ear. "What'd yo' mama give ya for lunch, Leonardo?"

"Hey! Don't shake it!" Leonard desperately wanted his voice to come out as a snarl, but all he got was a quavering plea.

The bully turned his attention to the lunch box latch. "Must be somethin' special -- like baby food." He basked in his friends' derisive laughter.

The latch snapped open. Leonard's eyes widened with fear, which turned out to be a surprisingly strong motivation. "Don't open that!" he shouted, scrambling to his feet and springing toward the bully, reaching for the elusive lunch box.

But Leonard's headlong leap was aborted by several hands that held him in place while the leader laughed. "Why not?" he teased, lifting the lid partway. "Well, lookit! Leonardo's got a live frog for lunch!"

Leonard felt his face flush hot and red with anger and embarrassment as his four tormentors exploded in loud laughter.

"He's not lunch, you jerk! He's a pet!" He tried to wriggle free, but hostile hands held him tight. God, he'd never wanted to punch anybody as much as he did right now! But all he could do was watch in horror as the bully opened the lid all the way, and the frog literally leapt at the opportunity for freedom.

It landed awkwardly on the grass, then bounced straight for the stream.

"Let go of me!" Leonard wailed.

But the bullies ignored him, as if they'd forgotten they were holding him. They were fascinated by the frog. "Lookit 'im jump!"

From a well of fury Leonard McCoy didn't even know he had, he summoned up a genuine snarl. "Let me goooo!"

"Hey, Leonardo, that's no way--"

"Calvin, you might want to let him go," said a deeper voice from behind McCoy. It was calm, but the tone left no doubt the speaker wasn't merely making a suggestion.

Leonard turned to see his would-be savior. He was a black boy with a patient expression instead of the avenging fire McCoy had hoped to see in his eyes. He didn't look any older than the bullies, and he was no taller than they were. But he was broader than even the beefy leader, and the contours under his knit shirt made it obvious he had already developed real muscle where the bully had baby fat.

Calvin's wide smirk shrank down to a wan smile. "Hey now, Mark. Don't want no trouble."

"Never said you did," said the savior, Mark. "So let's get to school before we're late -- unless you all're headed for the pond for a little extra summer vacation."

The bullies were still holding McCoy, but their grip had relaxed as their attention turned toward Mark and making a face-saving retreat. Leonard finally pulled free and watched for a moment, even though he really wanted to search for his runaway frog.

"What if we were?" said Calvin. "You weren't plannin' on tellin' on us, were ya?"

Mark shrugged. "I don't care what you do."

Calvin and his junior thugs backed away. "Okay then, Mark, we'll see y'all in school" -- he laughed, doing his best to sound superior -- "in a coupla weeks or so."

The bullies left the scene of their crime, sauntering with a studied casualness, trying to make their exit look as voluntary as possible. Watching them go, Leonard tensed as he felt a hand on his shoulder.

It was just Mark. "You okay?"

McCoy shrugged. "I guess. Thanks."

"My name's Mark Rousseau."

"Leonard McCoy."

"Not Leonardo." The boys shook hands. "You want some help looking for your frog, Leonard?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"We never did find that frog. But I found a friend... my first friend there--"

"--and my best friend for years after that."

Kirk frowned as McCoy paused to drain his glass. "And then what?"

"What do you mean?"

"That's obviously not the end of the story. The guy saves you from bullies, you become best friends, and forty years later the very mention of his name makes you want to throw crockery against the wall."

"You're the one who thinks I want to throw crockery--"

"Do you love the guy or do you hate him?"

"Yes." McCoy sighed in reaction to an exasperated roll of Kirk's eyes. "It's not that simple, Jim. Mark was one of those kids who was good at everything -- sports, music, school, you name it. He had umpteen girlfriends and every one of 'em ended up being best friends with him even after they broke up. Everybody liked him. It was hard not to like him..."

McCoy's voice trailed off but not before betraying his conflicting emotions toward Mark Rousseau, the man who wasn't there -- but who would be in another day or so. Before Rousseau set foot on the Enterprise, Kirk wanted to understand this complex relationship between his chief surgeon -- Kirk's best friend -- and the special ambassador coming aboard to execute some vital mission still to be revealed to Kirk and his crew by Rousseau himself.

"It was hard not to like him," Kirk repeated, "but--?"

The pained flinch in McCoy's jaw made his resistance obvious. It was almost as if he felt he'd be committing sacrilege by saying something negative about Mark Rousseau. But he knew Kirk wouldn't let him get away with any sidesteps at this point. His shoulders sagged. "Have you ever known anybody who was just too damned perfect sometimes?"

"Other than you?"

"Very funny. Sometimes, as hard as it was to not like Mark, it was just as hard to be his friend. You know how competitive kids can be. With him, it's like there was this natural law: I'd never be better than him at anything. And God knows I felt inadequate enough without knowing that. I'm not proud of this, but sometimes I just wanted him to fall flat on his face in front of the whole town." McCoy paused in his difficult confession. When he finished, it was a whisper. "Sometimes I prayed for it."

"Did it ever happen?"

"Of course not."

"And you survived your childhood envy?"

"I survived. And we grew up." McCoy poured himself a refill, then went on without any further prodding from the captain. "And even though we moved again, Mark and I stayed friends. We hadn't seen each other for a while when I got invited to his going-away party..."

...It seemed like only yesterday we were wading into that stream, looking for my damned frog. And now he was heading off to Starfleet Academy...

The four cars of the bullet-shaped trolley slid silently to a stop at the Savannah station platform. As McCoy stepped out, his overnight bag slung over one shoulder, he caught sight of an onrushing bulk coming from his right. He barely had time to brace himself when he felt Mark Rousseau's strong arms wrap him in a bear hug.

"Leonard! It is so great to see you. Your being here means a lot to me."

"How could I miss it -- now that you finally decided what to do with all that talent." With an exaggerated gasp, McCoy slapped his hands to his cheeks in a sarcastic imitation of distraught youth wrestling with life's choices. "Symphony pianist -- or starship captain? Oh whatever will I do?"

"Very funny, McCoy." Mark looked his friend up and down. "So you're finally as tall as me, even though you'd still get blown away by a stiff wind."

It was true. At seventeen and nineteen, the two young men were eye to eye, but McCoy still felt small compared to his muscular friend.

"So how about you, Leonard?" Mark asked as they followed the shady walk away from the station. "You made any decisions yet?"

"Well... medical school, probably."

"Mmm. The family business," Mark said with a knowing nod. Then he looked directly at McCoy, eyes bright with possibilities. "Hey, you should join Starfleet, too! We could serve on the same ship."

McCoy gave his friend a slow, dubious glance. "I suppose you're gonna be the captain?"

"Naturally," Mark said with a grin. "You'll be my chief surgeon."

"You'll never get me into a transporter, I can tell you that."

"Then I'll just have to court-martial you."

They both laughed, then walked quietly for a while. McCoy really wasn't sure what he wanted to do. All the nights he'd lain awake, hours after going to bed, listening to the sounds outside his bedroom window, the clicks and chirps and croaks he'd always found so soothing... And now they were like so many voices peppering him with choices about what to do with his life and who to do it with and where they'd go and who they'd be.

Choices that had to be made, sooner or later. Choices that no one could make for him. McCoy had read enough psychology to know that struggling with seemingly momentous decisions was an inescapable part of coming of age. But preparation didn't make it any easier. Even Mark, who'd always seemed so sure of himself, had taken a year off before setting course for Starfleet. But now that the decision had been made, McCoy had no doubts that his friend would sail smoothly toward inevitable success.

"You met somebody," Mark said flatly, interrupting McCoy's tangential thoughts. It wasn't a question, but a statement of certain fact.

It caught McCoy off guard. "Huh?"

"You met somebody."

"What makes you so sure?"

Mark shrugged and smiled. "You look even more confused than usual, that's what. I'm right, aren't I." Again, a statement, not a question.

"Of course you're right," McCoy said with a rueful shake of his head, glaring at Mark as he bit off each word. "You're always right. Don't you get tired of being so damn right all the time?" Then he turned away, wondering if Mark had noticed the angry edge that had crept into his voice. He hadn't meant for that to happen... or had he? In any case, Mark either hadn't picked up on it or he'd opted to ignore it.

"And how does this special lady feel about beaming around the galaxy?"

"I don't know. We haven't gotten that far yet."

There was that all-knowing Rousseau nod again. "You will," he said cryptically.

The comment and tone might have been infuriatingly smug from someone else. But so many times in the decade they'd been friends, Mark really did seem to know, so McCoy could neither get very mad at him nor stay mad for long. "So, how about you?" McCoy asked in fair turnabout.

"I -- I guess I'm seeing somebody," Mark said with uncharacteristic hesitation.

"You guess?" McCoy teased.

"I'm seeing somebody," he said with more certainty, grinning sheepishly at his own equivocation. "Erica."

"Is Erica as perfect as you?"

"Actually, she really is perfect," Mark beamed. "She'll be there tonight. You'll like her, Leonard."

McCoy's brows lowered like stormclouds into a mock threatening frown. "Oh-ho, that's why you wanted to know if I was seein' somebody. You wanted to be sure I wouldn't steal perfect Erica away from you."

With a laugh, Mark threw his arm over McCoy's shoulders and pulled him close. "That's it. Thanks to your lady-friend, I can relax and enjoy myself..."

"Nobody ever stole a girl from Mark Rousseau," McCoy said, peering into his glass as he swirled the brandy around.

"So he went off to Starfleet--" Kirk prompted.

"--and I lost my best friend."

"Didn't you keep in touch?"

"Yeah. But it wasn't the same. Didn't get to see each other much... I got married, and then I started med school. He had Erica, two perfect kids in perfect domestic bliss, and his Starfleet career. And then, well, it's a big galaxy. You know how that goes."

Kirk scratched the back of his neck, looking perplexed. "Then I don't get it. If you and Rousseau were such great long-lost pals, why aren't you thrilled at the prospect of seeing him again?"

"Let's just say we had... a falling out."

Kirk blinked in disbelief. "After all that, a 'falling out' hardly begins to--"

"Jim, leave it alone." McCoy's tone made it clear he considered the subject closed.

Kirk raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. "Fine. If you feel like telling me the rest, you know where to find me. Otherwise, consider it left alone--"

"Good."

"--except for one thing."

McCoy groaned, but Kirk continued without comment. "Mark Rousseau's coming aboard for this mission whether you like it or not. Is that going to be a problem for you?"

"I'll manage."

Kirk left, but he found himself wishing McCoy had sounded more convincing -- both to Kirk and to himself.