It wasn't that Emmy didn't try to ignore him—she did, but after that night it was like trying to ignore a mosquito bite.

It wasn't as though they'd been friends before that night. In fact, other than the occasional nod in passing, they'd never actually had any contact. She doubted that, before that night, he'd even known her name.

She wasn't a high ranking officer, just a simple nurse. The CMO, Dr. McCoy, whom she reported to daily, couldn't even remember her name—Misha Marie Marshalls—or Emmy, as her friends called her.

Emmy didn't have a specialty; she wasn't friends with any of the bridge crew or officers. In fact, she thought they were rather clique-y. But she supposed that, with all they went through together on a daily basis, they couldn't help but form strong bonds with each other. They probably didn't do it on purpose.

Despite their distance, Emmy couldn't deny that she had noticed him before that night. She couldn't ignore the fact that she had a crush on him. But that was all it ever had ever been—a simple crush destined to amount to nothing…which was fine with her. Well, maybe not exactly fine, but she had accepted that girls like her weren't even tiny blips on the radars of guys like him.

She knew she wasn't the only one who had these thoughts. How could she be after the Nero incident? There were always girls vying for his attention, girls much prettier than her.

Emmy was aware that the events of that night were random, and in no way meant anything to him. It wasn't some deep down emotion that had just broken free. In fact, it was a miracle he even remembered what had happened. It was chemically induced, by an enemy of Starfleet.

Thoughts like these were always on the forefront of Emmy's mind, no matter how much she tried to remove them.

Flopping back on her bed after a long shift was nice, though it would probably be more relaxing if her room wasn't the size of a broom closet. Emmy liked her solitude, though, mostly because her people skills sucked. It wasn't that she didn't try…but whenever she was asked a question, she suddenly felt like she was on stage in front of thousands.

Emmy remembered when he'd been up in front of all of Starfleet during the resultant hearing for the Kobayashi Maru test. She knew that she would have died had she been in his place.

She knew she had to tone her thoughts down. She needed to sleep—she was pulling a double tomorrow due to shore leave. Though they weren't expecting any trouble, they always liked to have a nurse on duty. She'd had last shore leave off, which was when it had happened, so she wasn't exactly eager to leave the ship again.

Laying back she tried to clam her breathing and sleep, and within moments she was sleeping peacefully.

"Your name," he demanded before his lips crashed onto her, not giving her the opportunity to respond.

She didn't even try to resist him. She'd been dreaming of this since she'd first seen him on campus years ago.

"Emmy," she gasped quickly when they parted for air, before his lips were upon her once again.

She was lifted up and carried before being slammed aggressively against the wall of the bar. Her legs wrapped around his hips, increasing the friction as he ground his hips against her core. A moan escaped her without Emmy even noticing.

He growled a growl that didn't sound human and bit down on her neck, causing her hips to jerk against his and blood to drip down between her breasts—

She sat up, gasping for breath. She loved and hated when she had dreams of that night. Her hand unconsciously went to her neck, where the scar from his bite was visible only when she was out of uniform.

Thankfully Emmy was a nurse, and able to treat her wound herself, though she had been unable to treat it with supplies from the med lab, due to inventory. She had treated it naturally, but it left a scar.

She'd planned on having Dr. McCoy or one of the other nurses treat her, but when she'd arrived in the sick bay the next afternoon early for her shift, she'd lost the courage to explain what had happened, though Dr. McCoy already knew all about it.

In fact Captain Kirk knew as well. She'd been so worried that they would want to talk to her about that night that, for a whole week, she jumped when anyone said her name. Emmy knew that if she had Dr. McCoy treat her, it would bring the subject up and he may want to talk to her about it, or worse call the Captain in to talk with her. Those were the last things she wanted, so she decided to treat the wound naturally and get the scar removed back on earth.

She wished she could say that she'd only let herself be used by him once, in the alley. But there had been many times that night. In another alley closer to the ship. The turbo lift. His room. Her room. And, finally, again in his room…before their talk.

At this rate, she was never going find sleep tonight. Her body was tingling with the memories of that night. Sighing Emmy shut her eyes and took a deep breath, relaxing her body before she began to count backwards from 300 in threes. 297, 294, 291,288, 285, 282, 279……and she drifted off to sleep shortly after that.

The next morning started off no better than the night before. As soon as she woke, Emmy's mind was swarming with memories of that night and the morning after. It had been a week exactly yesterday, and nothing had happened to keep the memories recurring, but she just couldn't shake them.

Stifling a sigh, she rose from her bed, grabbing her uniform as she headed for the shower. It was going to be a long day and although she had no reason to feel like it, she knew today was going to be a bad day.

Dressing quickly after her shower, Emmy stood in front of the mirror and glared at herself. She hated to say it but she was short—very short; 5'1" to be exact. Maybe that was the reason no one remembered her; they could literally overlook her.

Her hair was a light auburn-brown and long, reaching past her shoulder blades with a defined curl at the end. Her mother always got on Emmy's case about cutting her hair, but she wouldn't. It was the one thing about her appearance that she liked, and she wasn't about to take that away from herself.

She had pretty olive skin, hazel eyes that were much too wide and open in her opinion, and plump lips that she hated. All in all, she'd be very pretty…if she was about 5'7", she frowned to herself.

Looking at her uniform, she noticed it was sagging slightly. She'd lost a lot of weight in the past week, waiting for the 'axe to drop'. Her normal 120 lbs was now around 110—maybe lower; she'd stopped checking after reaching that mark.

It wasn't that Emmy had been avoiding eating, but she was a nurse and her schedule, although not as hectic as if she worked in a hospital, was demanding. Having the CMO on almost all her shifts added stress due to his close relations with the Captain and Commander Spock, and meal times had never been a fun time for her. She'd left most of her close friends on Earth, and the others had joined different starships. No one but her had been able to fulfill the Enterprise's rigorous requirements.

Sighing to herself once again, she dabbed some gloss on her lips before heading out the door and toward sick bay. Her shift didn't start for another half an hour, but she liked to be early and be up to date on everything before the shift change. Some of the senior nurses didn't like to stay over time to catch everyone up. Emmy found that she received fewer glares if she arrived early, allowing the night nurses to get off early as well.

Strolling into sick bay, she could see that nothing catastrophic had happened overnight. One patient was lying in the bed—Ensign Williams, but he was here almost weekly complaining of some sort of illness. Emmy wasn't quite sure if he was a hypochondriac, or just in love with Jenny Mattel, a fellow nurse.

Emmy said her quiet hellos to those she passed as she headed toward the roster for the day. One nurse was always assigned and the other slot left empty, sometimes not filled until the day of leave. That slot was kept open for the nurse and or doctor who pissed CMO McCoy off the most. It was nice to know that Emmy didn't have to worry about that—to get on McCoy's bad side; he had to know you existed, she thought, smiling to herself.

Having arrived at the roster, Emmy couldn't help but do a double take before a strong feeling of dread filled her stomach. Dr. McCoy was on duty with her, pulling a double also. Never in the six months they'd been on this journey had they ever worked alone together. Emmy had assumed it would be that way for the whole five-year journey. Boy had she been wrong.

Well now or never, Emmy thought as she headed to McCoy's office to check in for her shift. She couldn't help but wonder if he was going to acknowledge the fact that he knew her name, or if he was going to play dumb as he had all this week, though she was sure he'd been keeping a constant eye on her.

Knocking gently on the glass, Emmy waited patiently for him to mutter his usual 'come in' without actually looking up. But today, as soon as she knocked, his head shot up and his eyes widened just a fraction.

Emmy wasn't sure if she was being paranoid or just too observant for her own good. Most likely a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Colum B, she decided.

"Nurse Marshalls! Come in, come in," McCoy said, standing slightly and motioning toward the chair. Emmy sat down, but only because she might die of shock that he was actually used her name for the first time, and it wasn't in his normal sarcasm and distain, she almost dared to say he was being polite. She was sure the universe was going to collapse any second now.

"Dr. McCoy," Emmy stated quietly by way of greeting, not sure exactly how to approach this situation.

"Please call me McCoy. Or Bones, if you prefer," he said with a small smile.

"Umm…okay," she answered, though she had no intention of following through with it. She'd give this newfound interest about a week, and then he'd go back to forgetting who she was and probably wondering why some random nurse was referring to him in a less than professional way.

"So, Nurse Marshalls, how have you been? Adjusting to space travel all right? Anything you need to talk about? My door is always open, you know," McCoy said in an extremely understanding tone that Emmy was sure she'd never heard leave his lips before. She couldn't help but wonder who had threatened him to make him act nice. Maybe they were experimenting on him with some sort of mood stabilizer.

"I've been fine. There's nothing I need to talk about…but thank you for the offer," Emmy replied careful to keep her answers brief and not to use his name.

For an instant his eyes met hers, and she knew he knew that, with everything that had gone on between her and Commander Spock, she was anything but fine. But the thing Emmy couldn't help but wonder was, if they both knew that she was lying, would he call her on it? He recovered before she could think any more on the subject.

"Are you sure? This past week you've seemed quite preoccupied, and I want my sick bay running at 110%. So…if there is a problem I'd like to know so I can help you in any way possible," McCoy said, gently edging around actually saying 'you and the green-blooded hobgoblin had sex—many times—are you okay?!'.

Emmy was shocked. He was good. Very good, in fact. If Emmy didn't know for a fact that, up until last week he had no idea her name, let alone that she worked for him, she would have fallen for his act. But she did know, and she wasn't going to let herself be drawn in by his deception. Anger flooded her; she knew that if the events with Commander Spock hadn't happened, he would have gone right on ignoring her for the rest of the journey, and now he wanted to act like her best friend.

"With all due respect Dr. McCoy, please don't treat me like a simpleton. You and I both know that if certain events hadn't gone on last week, you wouldn't even know I existed, let alone report to you daily. So let's cut the act and how about you try to treat me with some respect?" Emmy demanded, her voice low but angry.

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Huge thanks to my beta the crazy insane redheaded one I couldn't have done this with out her!!

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