If there was one thing McCoy never was, it was sick. He was a doctor, dammit! Or, well, he was in school to be a doctor. That was besides the point though. He healed people. He wasn't the one that needed healing.
Even he, though, as stubborn as he was, couldn't argue with the obvious signs of sickness when they hit him. Pounding head ache that reverberated through his skull like a drum beat. Being bundled up in his uniform, an extra jacket, and his lab coat and still shaking like a leaf. The tight, icky feeling of phlegm in his throat that caused him to hack and wheezed whenever he took a breath too deep. The final straw, though, was the rolling waves of nausea that settled deep in his stomach and made him dizzy, they were so intense.
At this point, even he had to admit that he was sick.
He was fighting one of those dizzy spells, leaning heavily on a table and half gasping, half coughing for breath, when a nurse in training found him.
"Doctor McCoy, oh god, are you alright?" the young nurse asked frantically, her hands fluttering in the air uncertainly. McCoy couldn't stand it when nurses acted that way, as if they didn't know what to do when faced with an actual sickness or injury. Even sick as a dog, he made the mistake known.
"Nurse, flapping your hands in the air isn't going to do a damn thing to make a patient better. You need to be firm, confident, and quick in your actions and decisions if you expect to be a nurse someday," he ground out, immediately regretting the words as bile rose in the back of his throat.
"Trash!" he croaked before clapping a heavy hand over his mouth. The nurse shook off her stun from being scolded by the older man and immediately turned to grab the metal trash can near the door. She thrust it into the southern doctor's free hand. He proceeded to empty the contents of his breakfast and lunch into the can. Even when he was sure that nothing more could come out of his stomach, he continued to dry heave as the nausea rolled through him.
Gasping for breath, once the heaving calmed down, he set the trash away from him and disgust and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his lab coat. He was about to straighten up and thank the nurse, before excusing himself, when he was abruptly seized under the arm by that very nurse.
"Nurse, what are you do—"
"I'm doing just what you instructed, Doctor McCoy. I'm being firm and confident in my actions. I'm going to firmly escort you to an exam room because I'm confident that you caught the virus that has been floating around the clinic for the last week," she flashed him a dazzling, if not slightly sadistic, grin, "After a few tests, you're being sent to your room."
Leonard shook his head at the words and attempted to pry his arm from the surprisingly tight hold of the nurse.
"No, Nurse, I assure you that I'm fit as a fiddle and can—" He successfully dislodged himself from the nurse's grasp, but upon being freed, was hit with a terrible wave of dizziness that sent him pitching to the side. He thought for sure he was going to fall on his ass before a pair of tiny arms wrapped around his middle and heaved him to an upright position.
"Fit my ass," the nurse muttered before dragging McCoy toward the exam room. This time, Leonard let himself be led.
—
His communicator beeped three times before falling silent. Glancing at it, Jim chose to ignore the transmission. He was in the middle of his theory on warp travel and core designs final; he couldn't afford to miss any of the time he'd been allotted.
One hour and fifteen minutes later, walking out of the lecture hall with books tucked under his arm, James Tiberius Kirk flipped his communicator open to see who would call him in the middle of class. His brows furrowed in confusion when the clinic's number flashed on the screen. Bones knew that he had an important final today, why would he be calling? Deciding that it was probably an emergency, he opened a channel to the clinic. The dialing tone sounded four times before the polite voice of a nurse filtered through the speaker. Kirk ignored his first instinct to flirt.
"This is Cadet Kirk, I received a call from the clinic about an hour ago?" He let the sentence trail off as a question.
"Oh yes, Cadet Kirk. One of the nurses tried to contact you earlier. You are the emergency contact for a one, Leonard McCoy."
Dread seeped into Kirk's stomach and he unconsciously clutched his books more tightly.
"He was discharged from the clinic earlier this afternoon with symptoms of a highly resistant flu. One of the other nurses examined him and sent him back to your shared rooms. We wanted to contact you so that we could not only warn you that Leonard is ill, but advise that you stop by the clinic to receive an immunization for the strain of sickness."
Kirk let his breath out in a huge gasp he hadn't realized he was holding. Okay, it was just a flu. No big deal. After a few more minutes of chatting, Kirk agreed to come to the clinic right away to receive the medication. As much as he hated clinics, hospitals, and sick bays, he would grit and bare it if it meant he could go take care of Bones.
—
He was miserable. The minute Leonard had returned from the clinic, with a bag of hypos under his arm, he'd stripped out of all his soiled clothes and tugged on sweatpants and an old track sweatshirt from his high school days. Once dressed, he looked at his bed and it's single blanket with a look of pitiful disgust before he grabbed the blanket off Jim's bed as well. Crawling under both blankets and curling into a cocoon, he let out a shuddering breath. His head was still pounding and his stomach still groaned uncomfortably, and he was still freezing.
The hypo they had given him at the clinic was starting to kick in, though, and he could feel the gentle waves of unconsciousness tugging at his mind. Squirming a little, in an attempt to get warmer and more comfortable, a huge sigh fell from his lips and the doctor allowed himself to slip into sleep.
And that's how Jim found him. After receiving a hypo (rather uncomfortably considering it wasn't Bones who was administering it), Jim had all but sprinted to their dorm room. He wasn't going to lie to himself and try to say he wasn't worried, because he was. Bones never got sick, ever, in the entire two years they had been living together. Memories of other getting sicks, going hungry, wasting away, filtered through the blonde's mind before he pushed them away. This wasn't Tarsus IV, not even close. This was a simple flu, nothing that wouldn't be cured with a couples days rest.
He still sped up.
When he arrived at the dorm, he opened the door as quietly as possible before peaking his head in. There, in a heap of blankets (include his), Leonard lay sleeping. His cheeks were flushed with color and his teeth chattered quietly. The sight made Jim's heart both melt and clench painfully tight. Sliding the door close, Jim deposited his books on his bed and stripped out of his cadet reds. Slipping into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, he padded over to the small kitchenette that their dorm offered. Getting an empty bowl, a cup of water, and a damp towel, Jim went to sit next to Leonard in bed. On the way, he grabs the abandoned bag of hypos that were dropped near the door.
The doctor had rolled in the time that Jim had returned, sliding over to the far edge of the bed near the wall. This gave the blonde just enough room to sit beside him on the bed.
Jim laid the wet cloth across his warm forehead gently, careful not to wake him. Leonard was a menace to wake up when he felt good, Jim couldn't imagine what it was like to wake him up when he was under the weather. The image of a poked bear popped into his head and he had to smother a chuckle.
Settling next to the doctor, with all his supplies on the floor next to him, he pulls up a book on his PADD and starts to read.
McCoy surfaces some time later, Jim's soft voice talking somewhere near his head.
"Can you believe that they've almost cured cancer. That's amazing, I mean, I can remember reading about the death rate of cancer back in 2013 and— Hey," he paused mid-sentence to look down at the grimacing face of his best friend.
"Hey, kid, what're you doin' in my bed?" His accent was thick with sleep and grogginess. He scrubbed a hand across his eyes in an attempt to force them to focus.
"Well, you stole the blankets off my bed and you look sick as a dog. Thought I'd sit with you and make sure you don't choke on your own puke or anything," Jim teased, setting the PADD down and grinning at Leonard. "I was going to wake you soon, actually, since you have to take some medication."
There was a definite malicious twist in Jim's voice at the mention of giving McCoy a hypo for once.
Ten mintues, one hypo, one bathroom trip, and two waves of dizziness later, and Leo fell heavily into his bed. The short walk to and from the bathroom left him winded and tired. He ignored Jim's hand on his forehead in favor of concentrating on breathing without coughing.
"Well, I think your fever has gone down slightly, which is good. You should probably sleep some more. I'll wake you up later and we'll try eating something, yeah?"
McCoy didn't answer that food would probably just get thrown up. He just clawed his way across the bed to burrow back in the blankets. Jim chuckled somewhere behind him. Once they were both settled, McCoy let himself sigh contentedly. Sleep was calling to him like the sweet song of an angel and he wanted to listen to that music all day.
He was nearly asleep when the quiet timbre of Jim's voice started again, reading some article or story that he didn't recognize. He silently enjoyed the reading and right before falling asleep, felt the gentle tug of Jim's fingers as they ran through the hair on his forehead.
"Sleep, Bones, or you get a hypo for that too."
McCoy grinned beneath the blankets and drifted off to sleep to the sound of Jim reading and the feeling of soft fingers running through his hair.