This story exists thanks to the reviewers of Just go ahead, Admiral, who have been awesome and made me want to write more about my favorite Captain.
Thank you, CuppaTea13, for beta-ing the story so quickly and efficiently, you've made it better.
Expect 4 chapters in total. Hope you like it!
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Leonard McCoy couldn't help but swear out loud when he realized he'd been reading the same sentence three times on his PADD but still had no idea what it said. He sighed, put the PADD back on his desk, and checked his comm again just to make sure he hadn't missed a call.
He could feel the look of Nurse Chapel on him as he grumbled curses under his breath. Damn it! He should be glad Jim was alright. He should be celebrating, in fact! McCoy had lost count of all the away missions that had ended up with a trip to sickbay these past few weeks. He'd had to order twice the usual amount of hypos any other ship on the same mission used. He'd actually been asked to write a report on the reason he needed so many different kinds of meds! His answer had been: "James T. Kirk", but somehow his superiors had deemed it insufficient. They just didn't know the man.
He heard wheels and turned to see Chapel rolling the stretcher to the door. Smart woman, that Nurse Chapel. He was not the only one expecting a disaster.
Jim had come back from his last mission more than half an hour earlier, and the CMO still hadn't been comm-ed to the bridge for an emergency. The Captain had been a bit roughed up and Sulu had been checked for a possible concussion because of the hit to the head he'd received, but none of them had anything serious enough to prevent them from going back to the bridge. Still, something in McCoy's guts was twisting. He hadn't liked what Jim had told him of his mission. Scientists trying to experiment a new drug on Sulu and him? No, he hadn't liked that at all. Jim had assured the drug was still experimental and hadn't worked. He had sworn the scientists told him it only lasted a few minutes before it was washed out of the system. McCoy would have snorted and brought his Captain's ass back to sickbay regardless of those pretty promises... had his tricorder not said the same. Everything looked alright.
McCoy sighed again and passed a hand on his face, trying to wash away his wariness. Maybe he was just so tired it made him paranoid. Maybe he just needed a good night of sleep. Maybe everything was actually alright.
"Bridge to sickbay, bridge to sickbay!"
Then again, maybe not.
"Yes, Lieutenant Uhura?" Nurse Chapel answered right away (she had positioned herself by the nearest wall comm, the shrewd woman).
"Send Doctor McCoy to the bridge. The Captain... The Captain and Sulu, they're-"
McCoy didn't hear the end of that sentence, the door had already swooshed closed behind him as he walked out of the medical bay grunting and swearing.
McCoy always hated it when his guts were right.
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Still, he hadn't expected the sight waiting for him at his arrival. Sulu was trashing by his chair and Jim looked lifeless on his. Lifeless. Bones's heart lurched to his throat, his insides going cold and his neck tingling at the same time. In a fleeting thought he wondered since when he felt like passing out at the sight of limp bodies.
"He's alive, doctor, just unconscious," Spock said, obviously reading him.
And if Spock said it, then it had to be true. Still, McCoy shook himself and glared at the hobgoblin for no reason. Damn it! Leo was not supposed to need reassurances, he was the doctor! So he steeled himself, armed with a tricorder and a bunch of hypos, ready to do whatever he could to bring his friends' asses back to consciousness.
As he bent on the Captain chair, Bones forced himself not to see the paleness or unnatural stillness of his best friend. He didn't realize he was glaring at Jim harder than he ever did as he scanned his body with his instruments. There was a pulse, that was for sure, but it was racing as if Jim was running for his life and the readings on the tricorder said... wait, that had to be wrong.
"Their brain activity indicate that... they're dreaming."
Just as he said it, Jim's body jerked forward and he fell to the ground too. He had clenched his fists in death grips and furrowed his eyebrows as if to confirm that this was a nightmare. McCoy was getting frustrated, the readings on Sulu said the exact same things, the only thing wrong with them was the heart rate, other than that, they seemed to be sleeping.
"I need to bring them down to sickbay to do more tests, this is not enough", he showed the poor material he had managed to bring with him.
Uhura was already comming Nurse Chapel to warn her of their arrival when McCoy tried to pass a hand under Jim's neck and legs to carry him. The sweat made his hand slip right off and he would have tried again but the body of his best friend had reacted immediately by retracting onto itself.
"Maybe I can..." Spock said, drawing closer to Sulu without needing to finish his sentence.
His fingers found the psi points he was looking for and instantly, Sulu's body relaxed under him. Spock didn't move though, still focused, eyes closed and still.
As the First Officer used his telepath skills to do God knew what, McCoy finally noticed that the whole crew was standing up on one side of the bridge, looking alarmed or worried, their eyes going from Spock's ministrations to the Captain, still completely unmoving by McCoy's side. The doctor swore again, this time in his head. He could do nothing to help.
After several seconds, Spock opened his eyes and straightened up.
"I believe you were right, doctor. It appears Mr. Sulu was experiencing a bad dream that I could take him out of. He is now sleeping dreamlessly and should wake up in a few hours."
"The Keptin, do it to the Ketpin now!"
McCoy was surprised to see little Chekov ordering Spock so decisively. He looked up at the kid only to see his attention entirely focused on Jim. The seventeen-year-old genius looked absolutely terrorized. Not worried, terrorized. Leonard could understand why. Though Sulu had been crashing around as if fighting for his life, Jim's stillness was eery and disconcerting for his crew, so used they were to see him bubbling with life, always borderline restless. And Jim's face was far from smiling that cheeky, rascal grin of his. No, his face was completely closed. McCoy's blood was pumping in his ears. He realized he was scared too.
Spock was already squatting to repeat whatever he had done for Sulu to Jim. The Vulcan approached his hand to the Captain's face, nearly touching it when-
He jumped back.
McCoy didn't know if it was just his imagination, but he could've sworn that the first officer was by the bridge's door faster than humanly possible. A moment he was there, ready to help Jim to rest, the next second he was on the other side of the room, panting heavily, his face actually distorted for one of the first times in Leonard's knowledge.
Uhura ran towards him, but Spock walked back, as if drawing away from any potential contact. The communication officer stopped short, startled at his obvious rejection. He closed his eyes and breathed in and out, trying to calm down, and his face regained his usual composure, though Bones was sure the mask was not half as solid as it had been before.
"What the hell just happened?" McCoy yelled. He still had his hands on Jim so he knew it wasn't some kind of energy shock, which meant Spock had reacted that way because he was a touch telepath. This was so not good.
"I- I believe," Spock started, and Leonard wondered if he was going to be the first CMO in history to have to sedate a Vulcan with a hypo. "I do not know what I believe," Spock finally said slowly as his eyes fell back on Jim. "I do think, however, that you should sedate him, doctor."
"He's already sleeping," McCoy snapped back, thinking of all the things that could go wrong if he did try to sedate Jim without knowledge on what he had ingested.
But Spock did not understand. The green hobglobin was not thinking straight, McCoy realized, or else he'd be worried about the allergic reactions too. What the hell had happened to the Vulcan?
"His mind is under – he feels so much- you should sedate him, doctor," Spock repeated, and even Uhura seemed shocked at the state of her boyfriend-or-whatever-they-called-themselves.
"Whatever they did to him, I can't be sure it won't react badly with my hypos. Jim has the worst immune system in the history of Starfleet. He may be having an allergic reaction right now."
"It would have shown on the readings."
"So would whatever poison they gave him. We were wrong thinking their experiment failed and leaving it at that," McCoy said self-reprovingly as guilt made its way into his chest. "He did say the scientists that gave him that shit were sure it wouldn't last long."
"Doctor McCoy," Spock said, and his voice, though controlled, seemed to hold an urgency and a finality that Vulcans weren't supposed to express. In fact, Bones had that feeling that just by saying his name, Spock had just snapped a "Listen to me, dumbass!" at him.
"His mind is undergoing emotions far too strong for the human mind to comprehend or support for too long," the Vulcan resumed, and McCoy could've sworn something twitched in the First Officer's face. "If you do not do something to end it, it is my belief that the Captain will never wake up the same. If he wakes up."
Here it was. The fear again. Leonard McCoy's mouth snapped shut, lips tightly pressed as he made the decision. His heart was beating like crazy and he thanked God he could still think straight enough to look for the right hypo in his bag. He was finding the right vein on Jim's neck and was about to press –
"Goddamn-!" Bones yelled, surprised and hurting like hell.
Jim's eyes had shot open the second the hypo had grazed his neck, and McCoy had realized that two incredibly blue sapphires were looking at him only when an elbow had crashed into his forearm, making him throw the hypo away, and another hand had grabbed him by the neck, choking him with unnatural force.
Bones hadn't even had time to compute what was happening. One second he was trying to help Jim, the next, the very man who had been lying unconscious was sitting on his lap, pinning him to the ground in a death choke, his knees digging in his arms to keep them from trying anything. Leonard didn't even try to understand. The only thing he could see was that face. The face of his best friend, morphed into something he had never seen before in his life. It was cold and lethal. Determined and yet... void of all life.
"Keptain! Keptain stop!"
"Jim, you're going to kill him!"
Leonard saw someone approach, but Jim blocked whoever it was without even looking away. Bones didn't try to plead. He couldn't even think, shocked by that look. There was nothing remotely familiar in it. His best friend was like an animal.
And then he came back.
Jim blinked once, then twice, before his eyes widened and he realized who was under him. He nearly fell on his ass as he stumbled away until his back touched his Captain chair. He looked so shocked that nothing happened for the longest time. Jim, the Captain, was looking at his best friend with his face so openly showing terror that Leo couldn't react for a while. Bones knew, as he breathed deeply and massaged his sore throat, raised up on one elbow to look at Jim, that the only thing his friend was afraid of right now was having hurt someone.
"I'm okay, Jim. We're all alright," he managed to croak.
"You were unconscious, Captain," Uhura said softly, hiding her own shock behind a calm exterior that McCoy envied. "And doctor McCoy tried to sedate you but you woke up in the process."
There was still something dark and remote in Jim's eyes, and as they were still locked on him, Leonard wondered what exactly his friend was really seeing beyond the bridge and its crew.
"You're sure you're okay, Bones?" Jim asked, his voice more hoarse and out of breath than usual. Noticing it, he cleared his throat and passed a hand through his hair, closing his eyes for the first time. "I'm sorry, I really wasn't totally conscious yet," he told his friend, and this time, Leonard believed Jim was really coming back to his usual self. "Why didn't anyone stop me, for God's sake?" he grumbled, looking at Uhura since apparently she was doing the explanations.
"We tried but you- you were really strong."
Jim's face nearly automatically moved to search for his First Officer's excuse (Vulcans were three times stronger than humans, it was only logical for Spock to be the one to try and bring him down), but a flash of something passed in his eyes and his head snapped to the other corner of the room, avoiding the Vulcan's scrutinizing eyes at the last second. What the hell? McCoy didn't miss the way Spock's eyes were glued to the Captain, his expression the one he always wore when trying to solve a new mathematical problem.
"Damn Kirk Luck strikes again I guess, huh?" Jim joked lightly, shaking his head. "Pavel, help McCoy up please, he's just gonna catch a cold, lying on the floor like that." Jim only winked at Leonard's dark glare and protests that he could very well handle himself. Then the blue eyes fell on Sulu's body, still somewhat under his desk, and his attitude switched back onto Captain mode right away.
"Pavel, leave the old man and help me move Sulu. We'll get him to sickbay."
"Jim, in your state, we should be carrying your ass down to-"
"I'm perfectly functional, Bones. Seriously, I feel like I just woke up from a nap or something."
Bones couldn't help his eyes from jumping to Spock as he felt the decidedly quiet First Officer stiffen. What the hell had the Vulcan seen or felt? "The Captain will never wake up the same." Leonard yielded his tricorder again, scanning Jim for the fourth time that day. The Captain rolled his eyes.
"I'm telling you I'm fine, Doctor, your torture instruments seem to agree with me, so can we move on and help the guy who's really unconscious?"
Bones asked Uhura to call for a stretcher instead. Kirk rolled his eyes again, but the CMO didn't give a damn.
"What happened, Keptin. Were you really dreaming?" Chekov finally said from where he was sitting by his unconscious friend, taking his head to place it carefully on his lap.
Jim looked at the kid's movements silently for a few seconds before he smiled again and moved to his chair, sighing loudly as he sat.
"I can't remember, Chekov."
And as the words settled and everyone accepted them, there was only one thing Leonard could think. Liar.
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So, what do you think?