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It’s been a damn week and a half since his best friend died. The stubborn bastard has managed to make a pretty impressive recovery, considering the whole dead part.
All the scans seem fine, he’s stable and his vitals are probably better than they were before all that pesky radiation poisoning. So Leonard tells himself that it’ll be fine, nothing much he needs to worry about.
Except a couple of things, like the fact that it’s been a week and a half since his best friend died. Just because he came back didn’t mean they hadn’t lost him. Hell, they still might.
Leonard is still terrified that the serum didn’t really work. That any minute he was going to seize up, flatline. Go still & cold again, because Jim has died. 23rd century or not, it felt like he’d played god, & there were consequences for that, most days.
That it might have fixed the outward bits but left Jim’s brain scrambled up worse than any of his numerous bar fights. For godsakes, all they’d tested it on was a stray tribble, and they weren’t exactly known for their higher brain functions.
A million other things could go wrong.
He’d revived patients before, in the ‘heart stopped’ normal line of things, but this was death. Brain death, full systems…
It wasn’t something you shook off, not when it was Jim, of the heroic idiocy and ‘there’s no such thing as a no-win scenario’. Leonard was so damn used to the man teetering on the brink of being too brave and stupid to live… It was sobering to find out just how close to the brink he’d been.
Sobering? Well, perhaps that was a poor choice of words, because Leonard is certain if he wasn’t a bit busy at the moment, he’d probably be drinking. Heavily. Everyone had their coping strategies, healthy or not.
Instead, he’s using his off hours paying a very pointed (pun not intended, ears aside, thank you very much) visit to their charming First Officer.
Leonard knocks on the door of the office, loudly, not particularly caring who he disturbs at this hour. He’s damn tired. It’s hardly as if Kirk is his only patient. While the Captain (more than that, his friend) takes priority, he’s also been assisting with the treatment of survivors from the mess that was made of downtown San Francisco.
On top of an only slightly less than dead patient, he’s had to deal with dozens of victims with severe burns, blunt force trauma, broken bones, internal injuries, concussions, lacerations, and a bunch more fun and exciting things. He lost a number of patients that day alone, and they were still pulling corpses from the rubble. Admiral Marcus and Khan had a lot to answer for.
When the voice that drifts out saying “You may enter,” is that particular brand of infuriatingly calm? It’s hard not to take it personally. Leonard thinks he manages alright, considering. He simply stalks into the room, shutting the door behind him, and doesn’t say anything for a moment.
Spock looks up briefly from his PADD, the corner of his mouth twitching. He is seated at the desk, wearing his formal uniform despite being technically off duty. A spread of printouts and data files is spread across this desk in a precise and methodical manner.
Leonard resists the urge to rolls his eyes. Of course the First Officer, no, ‘Acting Captain’, has an office like this one, so completely devoid of anything personal and organized to the point of ridiculousness.
“Please, take a seat.”
The only other chair in the room is in front of the desk. It’s a starkly metal contraption that looks designed solely for the purpose of making one feel uncomfortable. He flaps a hand in dismissal. Tired he might be, but he has no intention of sitting down. “I’m fine, Spock.”
“Do you have an update for me about, anything, Dr McCoy?” Spock says.
The flat affect is distracting enough that he almost misses the subtle pause before the ‘anything’. Leonard sighs, crossing his arms pointedly. “Are you planning on visiting him any time soon?”
Spock blinks. “To whom are you referring?”
“I’m not even going to bother answering that.”
The… Vulcan has the temerity to blink again, and looks back at his PADD, making a correction to something, before setting it aside, hands folded carefully. “If you are referring to Captain Kirk, I was made to understand that he has been placed in a medically induced coma to allow him sufficient time and rest to fully recover from his radiation poisoning and subsequent death. Was I mistaken?”
He will be calm. Polite. Reasonable. “No, you aren’t.” Leonard manages to grit out. “But…”
“I am currently occupied in compiling a report to give to what remains of the Council. This is in order to convince them to exonerate the crew of the Enterprise, the captain included, from any accusations of wrongdoing in regards to recent events, & ensure the full account of events is made in accordance with nothing but the facts.”
Leonard opens his mouth. Spock keeps talking. “If all goes optimally, I believe I can even convince them to allow him to continue in his current post as Captain despite his semi-mutiny and blatant disregard for authority and regulations, & retain our current crew structure as-is. Perhaps even encourage their selection of the Enterprise as the ship to embark on the planned year exploratory mission of uncharted space, as has long been a goal of the command crew of our ship.”
“I’m aware what the fool plan in motion is for the ship. Five years in space…” Leonard grimaces.
He’ll do it, if Jim asks him. Spend five years in space, because something infuriating about James Tiberius Kirk is enough to catch a man bone deep & send you running after him, full willing to follow to hell & back. Not even knowing why, but just trusting it’s right.
Hell & back. He’d thought that a thousand times & never meant it literally until now.
If Jim asks him. If Jim wakes to ask.
There’s one thing McCoy hates, & that’s ‘if’s when a person’s life is involved. He was never good at this.
Spock’s thin hand sweeps across the desk, pulls out a sheet of information, and begins to scrutinize it closely.
A muscle in McCoy’s forehead twitches.
“If you truly believe I would be of more assistance in the medical bay visiting a man who can neither hear nor converse with me, do inform me. Otherwise, keep me updated on his condition and inform me when he is planned to be awoken, and I will debrief him then. Dismissed.” Spock nods curtly, and is clearly bent on burying himself in his desk again.
“Fifteen minutes, Spock. Take a break and at least…” Leonard pleads, embarrassed to be caught begging, but his stubborn streak is too wide to give up now. “Just see him.”
“There would be…. It would serve no purpose. I will visit him when he has fully recovered.” Spock seems oddly… rattled, if a squint and a few pauses in speech counted. For Spock, though? Hell, it counted, alright.
Leonard pauses, then decides that he’s done being polite. If it takes a push to get a reaction out of the hobgoblin, then he’ll push.
“Half the crew has already been by to see him. Hell, even some of the ones that hated his guts and were leaping for joy when the admirals dumped him as captain after his little stunt with the volcano. You know, the one that saved your green hide. Does he really mean so little to you? Are you that much of a…”
The hand shuffling printouts stills, Spock’s entire posture slumping no more than half an inch, but it’s enough. There’s a hint of ice in his voice, the clipped tone demonstrating… something, anyway. “I say this with all due respect, Dr McCoy, but with the exception of Lieutenant Scott, the other crew members had not…” Spock clears his throat, his eyes flickering away.
“Having been a witness to Captain Kirk’s temporary demise, I can say with reasonable certainty that I am quite aware of the severity of his condition. Furthermore, I can announce with equal certainty that as both his colleague and his… friend, have every desire for his safe recovery. I was also instrumental in the capture of Khan and thus contributed to his cause of his recovery, if you would care to recall such matters. As such, it is in my estimation that further actions on my behalf would…” Spock raises an eyebrow, and it’s more effective at cowing Leonard than it ought to have been. “I have already informed you, I can be of most use to the Captain where I am, doing what I am currently doing, not engaged in illogical debates with his medical officer or equally fruitless endeavours. Now, if you are quite done?”
Friend.
Leonard hasn’t been able to bring himself to view the tapes, so he’s not sure what happened down there by that glass door, despite Scotty mumbling something ridiculous about Spock crying. He knows intellectually what went down, knows that Spock went after Khan with what seemed suspiciously like a vengeance, but beyond that…
Seeing this reaction, though? Sometimes he forgets about the ‘half-human’ bit, because that little speech sounded dangerously close to caring. And hell, maybe that’s exactly what it was.
It takes a bit of thinking, pulling together a whole mess of little things and Vulcan double-speak, but when the pieces fall into place, he can’t help but soften. “You don’t want to see him like that, do you?”
It’s not a question, not really.
Spock freezes, then says, very quietly. “It would serve no purpose for me to do so.”
Leonard sighs, struggles with the right words, because he doesn’t want to screw it up for either of the two idiots, not before anything…. “Look, Jim’s my friend, too. I’m just gonna stop trying to speculate about what he is to you, but… I get it, alright? I’ll let you know when he wakes up? And uh… Sorry, I guess?” He pauses. “Hell if I know.”
There’s a tired sort of not-smile, and Spock nods again, clearing his throat. “Thank you, Dr McCoy.”
Leonard leaves. Maybe he’s got an answer to his question, maybe he doesn’t, but sometimes he can tell when to quit. He passes Uhura on the way out, and she smiles at him a bit tightly, and there’s a funny look in her eyes when he tells her that he was updating Spock on Jim’s condition.
When they wake Jim up, he calls Spock beforehand. The pointy eared bastard is there in five minutes flat, and stays until Leonard has to order him to leave. Spock comes back with a tri-D chess board the next day, and Kirk beams wider at the sight of it than he has at any of the girls he’s chased.
The new council, their decision based largely off the testimony given by Spock, absolves the entire crew of the Enterprise of any wrongdoing or guilt in recent events, and announces their decision to select the Enterprise for the five year mission shortly afterwards, following repairs.
And when it’s a few weeks later, and Jim drunkenly bursts into his quarters to confess that he found out that Uhura and Spock had ended their relationship, and that he reacted pretty much by kissing Spock and then bolting?
Bones tells him to go right back.
Jim does.