Title: Part of the Family
Pairing: McCoy/Chekov (I can't call him Bones when he isn't with Jim.  It just feels weird)
Rating: PG, maybe PG-13 for some verbal sparring
Summary: McCoy meets his sweetie's husband's relatives.  Mama Chekov doesn't exactly take to him right away.  Response to this prompt.

The marriage itself hadn't exactly been a thing of fairytales. Just a bunch of aliens who needed an excuse to party, really. McCoy had been all for getting a divorce, at first.

But the kid...he wanted to see if they could make it work. Apparently he had sent a drunken announcement to half of Russia after the wedding about how happy he was. McCoy told him that was the drugs and liquor talking, but the kid just shook his head a little helplessly and said it would be easier to explain a divorce after at least a few months to test their compatibility.

No one believed this was the kid's idea. Everyone blamed McCoy, which was kind of obnoxious. Jim didn't really blame him, but he did say a few things that didn't bear repeating and speculated about how flexible the kid was.

A month or two into this ass-backwards marriage, after a few meetings that McCoy really didn't want to call dates, the doctor found out just how flexible Pavel was.

Very.

They had been married a year and in a relationship for ten and a half months when they finally had leave on Earth. Pavel wanted McCoy to meet his relatives, a sort of belated wedding reception. McCoy was incapable of saying no to Pavel.

They went to Russia, of course; some village that McCoy could neither pronounce nor spell. Andrei Nikolaivich Chekov had interrogated McCoy for the better part of an hour, but came out smiling and calling for vodka - not McCoy's favorite drink, but he'd acquired a taste for it lately. Most of the Chekovs were thrilled when he matched them drink for drink, though Pavel just smiled. Of course his husband knew where his alcohol tolerance was.

Larisa Petrovna Chekov was not so easy to win over.

To begin with, she hardly spoke to him. When she did, it was Russian, and Pavel refused to translate - which meant it was probably nothing pleasant. More than that were the looks, like he was the worst kind of vermin in the universe. It was the kind of thing that McCoy had gotten in the last year or two of his previous marriage, and he was rather irritated to have to put up with this from someone he was not married to.

Pavel talked to his mother a lot, but none of it seemed to do any good. McCoy counted the visit as an overall success - everyone but Mom liked him. Well, in-laws were always a crap shoot.

"Leonard."

Speaking of in-laws...what in the hell was his ex-wife doing here?

"Daddy!" Joanna cried out happily, jumping into his arms. McCoy held her close and stared at The Bitch.

"Yes?" he asked in a mild voice. Or maybe it was more of a growl. He wasn't very good at mild voices.

"God, what's wrong with you? That kid's, what, eight years older than your daughter? Nine, at most? It's never just one perversion with you, is it, Len? You marry your little Russian child bride, but you can't fall for a girl, either?"

"Maybe you turned me off women, Josie," McCoy shot back.

Well, he would have, if Larisa hadn't taken over. Not to add to the heaping pile of insults Jocelyn was laying on him; much to his surprise, she stepped right into Jocelyn's personal space and started berating her in loud, unaccented English.

McCoy knew she spoke it - she was a schoolteacher, and Pavel had said more than once she taught him English. But hearing it was an experience, and hearing what she said made him smile.

"You will not talk about either of my sons in that tone of voice, you spiteful harpy. Now leave my granddaughter and leave my house."

To Jocelyn's discredit, she actually obeyed both orders, too stunned to collect Joanna. After almost four days of sneers and muttered, foreign insults, McCoy's mother-in-law was now positively cooing over not-quite-eleven-year-old Joanna.

It made a little more sense now. McCoy's own mother had not been entirely pleasant to Jocelyn until Joanna was born. She had died before the marriage ended, to Jocelyn's good fortune, because Louella was fiercely protective of her only son. Of course Larisa would be the same. She probably thought she wouldn't get any grandchildren to spoil.

Joanna hadn't had paternal grandparents since she was six. Andrei and Larisa were not quite the same as David and Louella, but they seemed to get along just fine.

McCoy let the men drag him into another round of drinking, Pavel in his lap. Maybe the whole in-laws thing wasn't so bad.