They were aboard the USS Enterprise and...nothing was happening - no red alert, no Klingon warships, no transporter malfunction, no medical emergencies, no...anything!

Everybody aboard the ship was walking around on tiptoe, quite deliberately not mentioning the conspicious lack of impending doom and disaster for fear of 'jinxing it'. The fragile peace was, as far as one Leonard H. McCoy was concerned, nothing short of a miracle; Sickbay was empty and nothing had blown up in Engineering for the last 24 hours; this was as good as it got aboard the Enterprise.

Jim Kirk was bored. There he sat in his beloved chair, staring out of the the view screen, lips slightly parted and hazel eyes glazed over.

Chekov pulled a face and muttered something under his breath in Russian as he stared at the very normal, very unintriguing station in front of him.

Sulu too was just as bored, though hiding it better than the young navigator. Despite the look painted upon his face that said thistaskisrequiringsomuchcon centrationreallyitis, his mind was drifting to his plants, particularly to an intriguing new flower housed in the botany labs that they had discovered on their last planet survey.

Uhura was tired, twiddling her earpiece idly as she monitored the communication frequencies - the usual background noise, the occasional fluctuation, and that was all. She glanced over her shoulder at the captain, who now wore an expression of extreme concentration upon his face as he tried to twiddle his thumbs without them touching one another. The infamous rogue curl flopped onto his forehead but he didn't seem to notice. Uhura heaved a silent sigh and turned back towards her station, the fingers of one slim hand now tapping out a soundless rhythm on her leg.

Scotty thought ruefully of the technical journals in his quarters; aye, it were mebbe different ta what mos' people considered relaxin' but he werenae mos' people now was he? Jus' like this crew werenae any ol' crew.

And Spock? Well, Spock would always be...well, Spock; i.e. the subtly altered look in his eyes was merely the cause of a concentrated, intrigued and scientific study of...the controls of his station?

McCoy noted all of this as he stepped onto the Bridge, unconsciously raising an eyebrow at the sight of the, to him, quite obviously distracted Spock and drawing a single emphatic conclusion from it: We're all bored stiff. The irony of it was just ridiculous; alert followed by an emergency, followed by another alert and another emergency...it had seemed not so long ago that they would never get a break to regroup - and now they had? The ecstatic mood of the crew reduced exponentially once the novelty of the thing had worn off; for despite the imminent-doom-and-disaster thing (mentioned earlier), the grass was always greener on the other side.

So McCoy, saving the day as always, wandered casually up to the command chair and playfully cuffed the Captain upside the head. Jim started, though didn't bother to turn around; there was only one person who ever did that to him. "Hi to you too Bones," he said dryly, though the grin on his face was easily heard in his words.

"I don't know about you Jim, but a certain pointy-eared hobgoblin looks bored stiff to me," McCoy stage-whispers to Jim.

Spock turns around in his chair to face the Doctor rather nonchantly but the gleam in his eyes doesn't go unnoticed. "Why Doctor..."

The Bridge crew seem a whole lot more alert and time suddenly passes a lot faster. The Doctor and Spock seem not to notice they have acquired an audience that is quietly egging them on - and Jim? Well, Jim just laughs at appropriate moments and tries to capture every detail of the scene before him to treasure.

Thoughts? You know where to put them... =)

~ Qalam