Lending a Hand

K/S Fanfiction
Title:	Lending a Hand
Author(s):	Dana Austin Marsh
Date(s):	2001
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
External Links:	on AO3
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Lending a Hand is a Kirk/Spock story by Dana Austin Marsh.

It was published in the print zine Beyond Dreams #3.

Summary

"Just as Kirk and Spock declare their love and plan on becoming lovers, a series of flu strains hit the Enterprise, making time alone together impossible."

Reactions and Reviews

I have been steadily working my way through those 60 zines I bought at Shore Leave (plus an additional 30 I ordered afterwards!). I've read a lot of stories by Dana Austin Marsh that I liked very much, so thought it was time I did a LOC on one of them. This author's specialty is humor, which is hard to do well, and even harder to do while keeping Kirk and Spock in character. I think Dana always manages to make Kirk and Spock believable, and I've enjoyed her stories. "Lending a Hand" is a short but fun story told from Uhura's POV. She has inadvertently witnessed the first declaration of love between Spock and Kirk, then watched as a flu epidemic has kept them either too busy, too sick, or both, to have any time to get together for 2 months. Finally, when it looks like a joyful consummation of their love is about to happen, new orders from Star Fleet seem about to place yet another obstacle in their way! However, Uhura has had just about enough of this, and decides to take matters into her own hands, and with McCoy's assistance the would be lovers finally get their opportunity to be alone together. The location of where they end up alone is a bit unusual, but to find out more, you'll have to read this story.

"Lending a Hand" by Dana Austin Marsh is a six page story and the shortest story in BEYOND DREAMS 3 which features several long stories in its 298 pages. It is Stadate 4618.2, and the Enterprise is a plague ship and has been for the past 60 days. 207 people at the time of the story are on sick call, and that's about half the ship. This is definitely a "fluff" story, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Uhura and McCoy get together and decide to lend a hand to help a certain situation. I normally like Marsh's writing, and this story is no exception.

This was a short but quite unusual story in that it is not told from either Spock or Kirk’s POV. Instead it is a view of the two of them and their developing relationship from Uhura’s point of view. We learn that, in the middle of flu epidemic which is sweeping the ship, she accidentally overhears Kirk and Spock’s declaration of love for each other on the observation deck, only for them to be interrupted by a call back to duty. Because so many people are ill, neither of them has any spare time to spend with the other, so Uhura and McCoy devise a unique way of helping them to get together. I must say, I loved McCoy’s calm and unruffled response when Uhura dramatically breaks the “news” to him about Kirk and Spock, only for him to burst her bubble completely when he says he already knows! This was a fairly short, but entertaining story and I have to admit, McCoy’s solution to the problem of Kirk and Spock’s lack of spare time was certainly unusual to say the least!