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Jim would like it to be known that, for the record, his injury was not his fault this time.
It’s his fifth trip to sickbay so far since beginning his captaincy of the Enterprise a month prior. Two of those trips were for mild allergic reactions, one was a minor burn he’d received in Engineering, and the fourth had been due to ingesting an unknown substance on an away mission that turned out to be toxic. That one, to be fair, was on him.
This time around, it was supposed to be a quick mission: deliver aid to a mining colony that had suffered an unfortunate accident days prior. Due to a failure in their monitoring system, an overloaded circuit had caught fire, setting off a chain of reactions that led to a small explosion and injured a significant portion of the crew. The Enterprise had been the nearest starship at the time and, consequently, had been tasked with delivering much-needed supplies to the healing colony.
Kirk had personally beamed down with his CMO, several nurses, and his lead engineer, both to check up on the crew’s health and ensure that any remaining hazards in the system had been identified and resolved. While his medical officers began their examinations of the wounded miners, he accompanied Scotty to help out with the inspection.
His first officer hadn’t been particularly pleased about his decision to join the landing party, but bickering with Spock had practically become a part of their daily routine, and so Jim had largely ignored his protests.
It took less than an hour to verify that everything seemed to be in order. Scans showed no remaining faults, and the monitoring system for any future hazards was fully operational and correctly recalibrated.
Everything, in fact, was in perfect condition, save for a platform that decided it would rather collapse than hold up Jim’s weight.
The fall from it isn’t far, but in combination with an awkward landing on his right foot, he knows the limb is broken the second he hits the ground.
The motherfucker he grits out is almost entirely drowned out by the squawking of the engineer that had been a lucky few paces behind him. By the time Scotty manages to get down to where his captain has landed, his CMO is already close on his heels, as is a rather mortified manager of the mines.
“Captain, you gave me a heart attack–”
“Captain Kirk, are you alright–”
“Dammit, Jim,” McCoy grumbles, kneeling at his side with a tricorder in hand. “I’m about ready to put you in a bubble.”
“Didn’t think you had enough patients to treat,” Jim needles. Though he attempts to keep a lighthearted tone, the stabbing pain in his leg is making it difficult to do anything but grimace. “Can’t have you getting bored this early, Bones.”
His CMO ignores him, frowning at the screen of his medical tricorder. “It’s a break, alright. We’ll need to get you back to the ship for a more detailed scan.”
He can already hear the told you so monologue he’s about to get from Spock. The thought alone is enough to give him a headache.
Supported on each side by his chief engineer and medical officer, he manages a one-legged hobble back to the beam-out point. After coming to a stop, McCoy withdraws his communicator with his free hand, ordering, “Three to transport out, one injured.”
“Injured?” Spock’s voice cuts into the channel. Though his tone is almost entirely neutral, there’s an odd undercurrent to it. “Has another accident occurred?”
“Aye, though it wasn’t an overload,” Scotty interjects. “If I’ve ever seen a place more in need of a Space-OSHA inspection–”
“What kind of accident occurred?” Spock presses, the edge to his tone subtly intensifying.
“Did you miss the one injured part?” McCoy snaps. “Now kindly beam us up before we see the heat death of the universe.”
“Aye, sir,” another voice interjects– the same lieutenant that had been operating the transporter when they’d beamed down.
If hobbling through the mines wasn’t already bad enough, hobbling through the halls of the Enterprise in front of his startled crewmen is definitely enough to seal the captain’s misery.
He attempts to maintain tight, reassuring smiles, and to laugh it off the same as he’s always laughed off his medical mishaps, but the pain in his leg is beginning to make him nauseous, and knowing exactly how long he’ll be dealing with that pain doesn’t help.
Once deposited on a biobed in a small private room, Scotty seems reluctant to leave his captain, though a single reminder of Space-OSHA is enough to have him storming off with the intent to call them immediately and file a report. With only his doctor left to face, Jim lets out a low sigh of relief.
“Of all people, it had to be you stepping on that death trap,” Bones huffs. He passes a larger scanner over the captain’s leg, shaking his head as he observes the monitor above him. “You really are a magnet for trouble.”
“How bad is it?”
“Well, you won’t need surgery,” McCoy answers. “It’s a clean break. For anyone else, it would’ve been a few hours with a bone knitter.”
Kirk rests his head back against the bed, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Guess I’m getting a cast, then.”
The doctor nods. “You’ll need crutches or a hoverchair. I don’t want you putting any weight on that leg for at least four weeks. We’ll see about easing you back into walking with a brace then.”
“Christ. I’ve barely even been a captain for four weeks,” Jim laughs, the sound humorless. “And now I get to limp around the ship with a giant cast on me. That’ll really inspire confidence.”
“You’re damn lucky it wasn’t worse, Jim,” his doctor counters, a stern edge to his tone. “If you’d fallen differently, you could’ve easily cracked your skull open. You can live with your leg in a cast for a while.”
The anxiety that’s poorly hidden in his friend’s gaze stops the captain’s frustration in its tracks. With a low sigh, he nods.
The doctor switches his scanner off, taking a step back. “I’ll need to grab some wraps for the cast–”
“Cast?” A voice sounds at the doorway, turning both sets of eyes to the Vulcan that appears even more stiff than usual. His tone still sounds somewhat off, but the exact difference is difficult to place.
“Haven’t you ever heard of patient privacy?” McCoy snaps. “You can’t just come barging into any room you please!”
“As first officer of this ship, I must maintain awareness of any changes in my captain’s health–”
“He’ll be just fine,” Bones cuts him off. “Happy?”
Spock’s brow twitches. The same twitch Jim always gets when he’s said something particularly annoying.
“He is clearly not–”
“You can go ahead, Bones,” Jim interrupts. “I’ll talk to him.”
Grumbling something under his breath, McCoy steps out of the room, leaving behind the Vulcan that approaches the biobed with some uncertainty. “For what reason do you require a cast?”
“Busted my leg in a fall,” Kirk answers, nodding towards the limb that’s slightly elevated on a cushion. “Scotty’s filing a complaint about the colony. Seems like overloaded circuits aren’t their only problem.”
A tiny frown twitches at Spock’s lips, gone as soon as it came. “Why have you selected a cast as your method of treatment?”
A laugh escapes the captain before he can catch it, causing the Vulcan’s brows to twitch upwards. “It’s not a choice, Spock. I’m allergic to bone knitters.”
Spock’s brows climb even closer to his bangs. “That is an unusual allergy.”
“I’m allergic to more things than I’m not,” Kirk points out. “Nothing is unusual for my immune system.”
“I see,” the Vulcan says. Though he appears to have nothing else to add, he makes no move to leave, either. Tension remains woven through him– and his features not quite neutral.
Pissed off with me as always, Jim figures. Idiot captain can’t stay out of trouble.
Spock is too polite to say it, of course, but he doesn’t need to.
“Is that all?” Kirk prompts. Spock’s posture seems to somehow straighten further.
“We have received our next assignment from Command,” the Vulcan informs him. “Our course has been set for Gamma-216 IV to investigate unusual atmospheric readings. At present speed we shall reach the system in approximately one day, 19.9 hours, and 38.6 minutes.”
The captain nods, not quite meeting his gaze. “You have the conn for the rest of shift.”
“Yes, sir.”
With one last glance at Kirk’s leg, the Vulcan vanishes. The captain turns his gaze up towards the ceiling, sighing heavily through his nose.
This is going to be a fun month.
----
Even in the solitude of his quarters that night, the captain is far from able to relax.
Each time he begins to drift into much-needed sleep, the throbbing pain in his leg inevitably wakes him. It’s bad enough for him to cave and use a hypo that Bones had sent him back from sickbay with, and even then, the limb remains nagging at him, only somewhat muted in intensity.
Sleep-deprived and grouchy the following morning, he alternates between bothering with his crutches and one-legged hops around his quarters to get ready for the day. He takes nearly twice as long in the sonic as he usually does with his constant wobbling on one foot, and by the time he’s lacing up his singular remaining boot, he’s already exhausted, and his damn shift hasn’t even started yet.
Finally ready for the day, he rises from the edge of his bed with a sigh. In the middle of making his way on crutches towards the door, a knock at his bathroom nearly causes him to lose his balance before he catches himself.
With a furrowed brow, he calls out, “Yeah?”
The door parts for his first officer– who, as usual, is perfectly put together, not even a single hair out of place or crease on his uniform. Far more put together than his captain, who hadn’t had the time to fuss with his hair as much as he usually would have after wasting so much time balancing on one leg.
“I came to ascertain if you require assistance this morning, sir,” Spock states.
Jim blinks. “Assistance?”
“You will be unable to carry belongings while utilizing crutches,” the Vulcan points out. “As we share the same destination, I am able to carry anything for you that you cannot.”
Kirk doesn’t realize his mouth is parted until dark eyes glance downwards with a slight raise of angled brows. He quickly shuts his mouth, shaking his head as if to clear it. “You don’t have to, Spock. It’s fine.”
His first officer pauses, glancing at the captain’s desk. “You have arrived on the bridge with a PADD approximately 92.2% of our shifts thus far, and have also brought a mug of coffee approximately 68.9% of our shifts, in the case that you had already begun consuming caffeine before arriving on the bridge. I deemed it statistically likely that you would have at least one belonging that you would desire to carry but be unable to.”
Though Kirk is well aware of where the Enterprise is headed, he suddenly finds himself questioning what bizarre fucking galaxy he’s found himself in for his Vulcan first officer to be volunteering to carry coffee for him.
At first, all he can voice is an intelligent, “Oh.” Then, getting a somewhat firmer grip on himself, he amends, “I didn’t realize you, uh– paid attention to that.”
“Humans adhere strongly to habits, and rarely deviate from them,” Spock intones. “It is not difficult to become familiar with their tendencies.”
“Sure,” Jim responds absently, still processing the fact that his first officer somehow has his PADD-carrying habits memorized to a decimal point of precision. He can’t help but wonder what other knowledge the Vulcan is harboring of him.
Shifting somewhat awkwardly on his crutches, he acquiesces, “I guess you can grab the PADD on my desk, if you don’t mind.”
“As I have already offered to do so, your clarification is redundant,” Spock points out.
Kirk bites back the snark that threatens to follow.
Every time they’ve walked the ship together in the past, the Vulcan has always kept a decent amount of space between them. Kirk had never really taken it personally– it was never that hard to infer why a touch telepath might prefer a larger bubble of personal space than others.
But throughout their entire walk to the bridge, Spock remains just about as close to him as possible without getting in the way of his crutches. He’s close enough, even, that Jim can smell the hint of incense that lingers over him.
After the captain settles into his chair and accepts his PADD, the Vulcan remains beside him for several beats longer than necessary. Dark eyes linger on his, unreadable again.
As soon as the crew’s attention is drawn to Kirk and people begin flocking around the conn to get a look at his cast, Spock retreats to the science station.
----
Jim is pretty sure at this point that he’s not in the same universe at all anymore.
What he was certain to have been a one-off favor from his first officer has quickly turned into Spock following him practically everywhere he goes. In the first month of serving aboard the ship, Spock had often taken his lunch in his lab or skipped the meal altogether in favor of remaining at his station, but now that his captain is hobbling around on crutches, he follows him to the mess hall every single day, both for lunch and dinner.
It feels like everywhere Jim turns, there’s a Vulcan at his side– and while he had always known that his first officer takes his duties extremely seriously, practically becoming attached at the hip to his captain feels too extreme even for him.
Once it’s become apparent after several days have passed that Spock’s fixation on stalking him everywhere isn’t letting up, Jim finds a brief respite in his doctor’s office to puzzle over the situation.
“And I thought the hobgoblin couldn’t get more uptight than he already was,” Bones laughs into his drink.
“I really don’t get it,” Jim huffs. “It’s like he feels like he has to babysit me, or something. I guess whatever shred of trust he had in me is gone.”
“You are the youngest captain in the ‘Fleet,” McCoy points out. “And you don’t have the greatest track record for avoiding trouble.”
“Whose side are you on?” Kirk demands, an indignant frown on his lips.
“I’m on whatever side will make you stop landing in my damn bay every week.”
The captain crosses his arms with a scowl. “I don’t think him hovering over me every minute of the day is going to help me, either.”
“He apparently thinks it will,” McCoy notes. “Or, at least, he’ll be there to write you up the next time you do something stupid.”
Jim groans into his hands.
He manages to get four hobbled steps out of sickbay before he nearly knocks into a sudden wall in front of him–
A wall that quickly steadies him with two warm hands at his biceps; one he realizes, only after letting out a less than dignified yelp, is a large Vulcan that is currently towering over him.
“Captain,” Spock greets him with a slightly raised brow, letting go of him only once he’s fully regained his balance.
“Sorry,” he forces out dumbly after a beat, his arms still buzzing from the unexpected contact. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Evidently not.”
Kirk glances at the doors to sickbay behind him, then back at his first officer. “Were you, uh– waiting for me?”
“I recently completed a check of the ongoing experiment in my lab,” Spock answers, which is decidedly not an answer.
“Okay,” Jim responds slowly. “Well, I’m heading back to my quarters, so I’ll just–”
“I am also returning to mine,” his first officer interjects, the perfect picture of nonchalance.
Kirk is half-tempted to suddenly have a different destination in mind, wondering just how quickly Spock would fall over himself to find an excuse to be heading there, too.
In the end, his exhaustion wins out, and he simply allows his first officer to follow him with a silent nod.
“How is your health?” the Vulcan suddenly asks halfway through their walk, drawing a surprised glance towards him.
“Fine,” Jim responds automatically, turning his focus back to navigating as gracefully as he can with his crutches. “I mean, my leg is annoying as hell, but it’s not a big deal.”
His first officer pauses, the hall briefly silent save for the taps of regulation boots and crutches against the tile. Then, he continues, “Do you desire assistance with your present workload?”
That nearly makes him stumble, his wobble apparent enough for Spock to shoot an arm out in front of him. Once recovered, Jim continues his hobbling with a stunned, “What do you mean?”
“I have the capacity to take on a portion of your duties while you continue to regain your health. Human bodies are not as efficient as Vulcan ones, and as such, mending broken bones consumes a significant amount of your energy. Therefore, your overall capacity to work will be reduced until you have fully healed.”
At the door to the captain’s quarters, Spock comes to a halt beside him, his expression giving away nothing. Still, it isn’t that difficult to hear what his first officer is either too polite or too difficult to say outright: Your performance has declined since your accident.
Kirk just barely bites back a sigh under his breath.
“I’m fine, Spock,” he insists. “Really. But thanks.”
The Vulcan pauses for a long beat, seeming almost on the verge of arguing the point. Then, he clasps his hands behind his back, intoning, “Very well. Good night, sir.”
“‘Night,” Jim replies automatically. After the door to his quarters closes behind him, there is one second of silence, then another, before he faintly hears the taps of Spock’s boots receding to his own door, and the soft whoosh of him entering his quarters.
----
Two weeks pass like this.
Every morning, his first officer shows up to carry anything he needs to the bridge, and from that point on, he hardly lets Jim out of his sight. It’s blatant enough to begin hearing whisperings of crewmen throughout the ship gossiping about it– and by then, Kirk is fully convinced he’s about to lose his mind.
It’s bad enough, even, for him to swallow his pride and message the one crew member other than Spock who can barely tolerate his presence–
“This better be good,” Uhura states with crossed arms after she steps into Kirk’s quarters. “You’re interrupting Real Housewives of Starbase 9.”
“Look, just– give me a couple minutes, and you’re free to go,” the captain assures. “I swear.”
His communications officer simply watches him, expectant. After a beat, Jim lets out a low breath, then ventures, “Do you have any idea if there’s anything I can do to get Spock to stop babysitting me?”
Uhura’s brows shoot upwards. “Babysitting?”
“I know you’ve seen it,” Kirk insists. “He acts like I need constant supervision– I don’t think I’ve had more than an hour away from him any day since my fall.”
Slowly, Nyota steps forward, taking a seat across from the captain at his desk. “You think he’s babysitting you,” she echoes, sounding almost amused.
“Why the hell else would he be stalking me? He could barely stand to be around me before.”
Uhura shakes her head, her gaze almost disbelieving. “I know you can be oblivious sometimes, but I didn’t think you were this dense.”
Kirk’s mouth parts. “I’m not–”
“Jim, he won’t leave you alone because he’s worried about you, and I’ve never seen him worry about anything before.”
For several beats, the captain is stunned speechless. He glances at the door to their shared bathroom, then back at his communications officer, incredulous.
“That can’t– why would anyone worry about someone they don’t even like, let alone a Vulcan?”
Nyota leans back in her chair, exhaling a short laugh. “You really are dense.”
Jim’s brows lower. “I have no idea why you’d even think–”
“You’ve had your two minutes,” Uhura announces, rising from her chair. At the door to the captain’s quarters, she pauses, looking back at him. “He doesn’t hate you, Jim. If you think that, you aren’t looking hard enough.”
It takes over a minute for Kirk to stop staring dumbly at the door in her wake.
----
You aren’t looking hard enough.
It’s too absurd to consider. Nyota has to be bullshitting him– or at the very least, she’s just too nice to badmouth Spock.
It’s absurd, and so is looking for it, but Jim looks, anyways.
The following morning, he asks his first officer to carry more for him than usual– a coffee mug, a water bottle, his PADD, and a few data chips just to top everything off– certain that he’ll get that tiny twitch of angled brows, or hear a discreetly annoyed breath from him–
But Spock accepts all of it without so much as a batted eye or single complaint.
For the remainder of the day, no amount of requests seems able to faze the Vulcan. He follows his captain dutifully, walking ever-close to his side as he helps him around the ship, and each time Jim looks harder for that hint of annoyance, he finds nothing.
At dinner in the mess hall, deciding to push it to an extent he’ll surely get a logical protest over, he’s left utterly stunned when he tells Spock he’s too exhausted to get up and grab some silverware he’d forgotten, and his first officer immediately rises to fetch it for him. Even the doctor at Kirk’s other side is startled enough to let out a disbelieving breath.
“Since when have you had Spock wrapped around your little finger?” Bones whispers to him, earning a sharp jab from the captain under the table.
“I do not,” Kirk vehemently whispers back.
“Sure, and he’s at your beck and call by logic alone,” the doctor deadpans.
“I swear to God–”
“Is this adequate?”
Both men turn to the Vulcan, who extends a fork, spoon, and knife towards him, wrapped in a few extra napkins to boot. For a brief second, an angled brow raises slightly at the two.
“Perfect,” Jim forces out after a beat. After he accepts the silverware, his first officer returns to the chair beside him, close enough again to smell the faint hint of incense on him. Close enough that the rising color on Kirk’s face doesn’t let up in the slightest.
“Well, I’m beat,” Bones loudly announces, rising from his chair with a less than discreet smirk at his friend. “See y’all tomorrow.”
At his other side, the Vulcan intones an automatic goodbye, while the captain only glares at his evil CMO.
“How is your health, Captain?”
“Huh?” Jim turns back to him, all annoyance forgotten for the moment.
“You appear to be especially fatigued today,” Spock points out, his tone just barely off again, and his gaze not quite neutral. “Is your workload exceeding your present limits?”
And yet again, when Kirk studies his gaze, he finds no annoyance there; no poorly hidden judgment being cast on him. What is there, though difficult to decipher, is dangerously close to exactly what Uhura had compelled him to look for.
Jim swallows, glancing away. “I’m fine, Spock. But thanks.”
In his peripheral, he sees the Vulcan’s gaze linger on him, then turn away.
The rest of the meal passes in relative silence, filled only with the chatter of other tables around them. Kirk only manages to pick through half of his meal before he rises to turn in for the night– and Spock, of course, follows.
At the entrance to his quarters, Jim hesitates. His first officer has already begun keying in the code to his neighboring door when he finally manages to ask, “Hey, uh– can you come in here for a minute?”
Spock’s brows twitch towards his bangs. He watches his captain for a beat, seeming caught somewhere between curiosity and surprise, before canceling the opening sequence of his door and nodding.
His first officer sits across from him at the desk, watching him expectantly. There are several questions on Jim’s tongue, but they’re all half-formed, jumbled.
“Sir?” the Vulcan prompts. “What did you desire to discuss?”
Kirk lets out a slow breath, forcing himself to meet the dark eyes across the desk.
“Do you trust me?”
Angled brows twitch even higher than they had before. “For what reason are you asking?”
“These past few weeks,” Jim elaborates with a vague gesture of his hands, “I mean– ever since I broke my leg, you’ve barely let me out of your sight, and you weren’t exactly thrilled with me before then. I just figured you were waiting for me to pull another stupid stunt.”
Just barely visible to the captain, Spock stiffens. He wonders, at first, if it’s the unpleasant surprise of a Vulcan being caught red-handed–
But the growing regret in brown eyes is too open to be anything but an accidental slip.
“...I apologize,” Spock states at length. “I was unaware that an increased level of assistance would provoke a sense of mistrust.” He rises from his chair, the movement equally as stiff as his posture. “I will immediately cease–”
“Spock,” Kirk quickly interrupts, “wait, just– I’m not asking you to leave.” He surprises himself almost as much as he seems to surprise his first officer when he adds, “I don’t want you to leave.”
The Vulcan’s brows briefly twitch closer together. “If I have been overly–”
“Were you worried about me?”
The rushed question leaves him before he can think better of it. It’s a reckless, stupid thing to throw at his Vulcan first officer, but then again, not even broken bones have ever seemed able to teach Jim his lesson.
Spock’s mouth opens, closes. He is silent for long enough that the captain almost retracts the question before he answers at length, his tone lowered, “I have held… some concern for your well being.”
And there, nestled deep in Jim’s chest, is a warmth he has no idea what to do with.
Every instinct in him screams at him to laugh it off; to dispel the feeling before it has a chance to settle.
But what comes out of his mouth, instead, is:
“Want to play some chess?”
Angled brows shoot upwards again, maybe even at a record high this time. “Captain?”
“I, uh, heard that you played matches at the Academy,” Jim explains, licking his lips unconsciously. Spock’s gaze briefly follows the movement. “I play, too– not competitively. But I have a board here, if you’re up for a game.”
It’s unbearable, being suspended in that brief space that follows, waiting for an answer– not knowing what Spock will say, or if he’s overstepped his bounds altogether.
But the Vulcan finally offers a softer, “I would be amenable,” and the warmth in Kirk’s chest only nestles deeper.
He offers a hesitant smile, and just barely, brown eyes crinkle in response.