A/N: I've never done a story for this particular fandom community before, so please don't hunt me down and hypospray me with unpleasant medicines for any and all mistakes and awkward moments presented herein. I have little to no knowhow for writing these characters beyond the basics gleaned from the movies, original show, and the occasional indulgance in the stories on shore leave here.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything pertaining to the Star Trek universe, and thus unfortunately do not own a certain half-Vulcan Science Officer, or the wonderful Pavel Chekov, whose accent is as charming as a Tribble itself...which brings forth this particular little oneshot.
WARNING: Crack!fic, likely very OOC behavior, lots of fluff, and poor Doctor McCoy (swears and all) being subjected, once again, to the good Captain Kirk messing up somehow and causing problems aboard the beloved Enterprise. In this particular case, the trouble happens to be simple-and-yet-not-simple: someone in the landing party has turned into a Tribble. Light S/K (Spork? Spirk? Kork? Kock? Take your pick). Post-Into Darkness.
We all know what happens when Tribbles get stuck aboard the Enterprise, so I decided to give poor Bones a bit of a break by ensuring that, at the very least, it's someone who won't purposely try to cause mass chaos and madness...just don't feed the poor fellow any chocolate.
"Dammit, Jim, for the last time, I'm a doctor. Just a doctor. Not an scientist, not a bricklayer, not an engineer, not a moon-shuttle conductor, not a physicist, and I'm most certainly not a goddamn alien veterinarian! What the hell gave you the idea that I'm the right person to fix this?"
Blue eyes stared calmly back as the Captain of the Enterprise gave a somewhat rueful smile. "Because you fix everything. But in my defense... it's the plant's fault this time."
"Jim...!"
"C'mon, Bones, just help me with this already, please! I don't think he can go about his duties as First Officer without any arms or legs...or the ability to form consonants."
To his credit during his time aboard the starship, McCoy, rather remarkably, had not yet blown a proverbial gasket and strangled his friend for the most recent of several mishaps involving the dangers of intergalactic plant life.
However, given the completely unrepentant look on the Captain's face, Leonard McCoy could almost feel his already frayed self-control slipping down another half a dozen notches.
"How the hell'd he even get like this anyway? Did the natives offer any strange food or something?"
"No, he was scanning some plant life for his notes, and then one of them suddenly...well, it kind of exploded."
"Exploded? What do you mean, exploded? Did something hit it, or what?"
The sheepish grin he got in response looked designed to be infuriating. "Erm...I might have shot it...accidently? One of the natives wanted a demonstration of Starfleet technology..."
But before his fingers, already trained to be trigger happy with needles and medicines concerning the Kirk family's most difficult member, could reach for the nearest hypospray, a soft, soothing noise, rather like the purring of a contented cloud of kittens, became audible. Tension and frustration began draining out of the room, as well as out of the Doctor, who promptly gave the tiny bundle of fur in the Captain's hands a half-hearted glare.
Damn green-blooded hobgoblin...
But, in the wake of the lovely sound, there wasn't enough heat in the words to fuel a pressing need to stab his commanding officer with medical equipment. Sighing, he held out his hands. "Fine, you damn lunatic. Now give me the hobgoblin already, I need to scan him."
Despite the glimmer of reluctance in his eyes, Jim held out the little ball of dark fur for inspection. McCoy tried very, very hard not to think about the fact that he was literally holding a Tribble-fied version of someone who he didn't often see eye to eye with. God forbid anyone mentions this afterwards...
The mound of fluff would doubtlessly be labelled "cute"...if McCoy had been a five-year-old Terran girl. Spock, who had been a fully grown Vulcan-human hybrid and fully functioning Officer this morning, was currently a palm-sized Tribble with black fur done almost comically in the shape of his preferred bowl cut, sleek and shiny apart from two tiny tufts sticking up in what appeared to be a resemblance to his previously pointed ears.
As McCoy began to pick him up out of the interlocked-fingers cradle of Jim's hands, the Tribble let out what was undoubtedly, despite being very quiet, a mrrrrrr of what could only be discontent, the furry mound vibrating as if upset.
"Yeah, yeah, this isn't a picnic for me either, you know. Now quit your squirming and hold still, I need to draw a blood sample to see if whatever the hell got you like this entered through your bloodstream."
The tiny creature obediently held still in compliance, confirming for a fact that it was indeed Spock. No other being McCoy had met had ever been able to project an aura of polite apathy, yet seem somehow infuriating.
Well, maybe he won't be uptight as hell like this, until we can fix him...if we can fix him. How the hell are we going to explain this to the rest of the crew?
Scans and tests commenced accordingly. Unfortunately for McCoy, said testing was continuously held up by several of the newer ensigns cooing over the current form of the patient, as well as Jim repeatedly switching back and forth between hitting on the prettiest of said ensigns, badgering McCoy with questions about his First Officer's condition, and reaching out to pet the surprisingly soft fur of Spock-Tribble. Despite the somewhat uncomfortable circumstances, no one in sickbay could deny that, even in a new, furry body, the First Officer was the strait-laced model of following rules. If asked for a blood sample, the Tribble-fied officer held himself still and kept quiet, and when attempts were made to see if he could still communicate, he managed to scoot back and forth between a card for yes, and a card for no to answer simple questions.
By the end of the session, Spock had been poked, prodded, pinched, and even hyposprayed, and for all intents and purposes gave off all the readings of a healthy young Tribble. The entire Medical staff was baffled, and McCoy found himself once again in the rather unfortunate habit of wishing for a stiff drink while on the job.
In the end, McCoy decreed that the transformed First Officer was to remain in quarantine in the sickbay, and Nurse Chapel was kind enough to make a smaller, more comfortable version of the bio-beds for him in the form of a nest of soft, clean pillow sheets and a spare blanket put in a box from the last shore leave.
As people began to leave for the next group to take the night shift, McCoy pointedly looked away as Jim reached down to pet the soft black fur, and commenced pretending not to hear anything as a soft, barely audible purring sound floated through the air like a half-forgotten lullaby and goodnight.
Nope, didn't hear anything. Not a damn thing.
Thinking longingly of the stash of alcohol sequestered in his quarters, McCoy waited until there was a "Night, Bones!" and the sound of the sickbay doors closing, before turning to stare at the little bundle of black fur nestled within a thick mountain of standard issue white fabric.
Wait, why's his fur sticking up like that? Chapel combed it down before she left...
A fragment of memory bubbled up from earlier: Jim had petted his Tribble-fied First Officer with only two fingers.
Dammit, Jim.
Rubbing his temples to ward off the suddenly throbbing headache, McCoy sighed, giving a half-hearted glare at the tiny life form, waving a loaded hypospray in his general direction. "I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that. We never speak of this again, got it?"
A soft rumble was the only affirmation.
Walking out of the sickbay, he turned to face the Tribble again. "...I'm not good with this kind of thing, so just...don't do that mush where I can see, okay? Lord knows you and Jim already give me enough grey hairs with all the shit we get dragged into."
Given that there was only so much to discuss without dragging trashy gossip into the conversation, news of the interesting kind never stayed quiet for long. By the next morning, everybody in sickbay had passed it on to those in Engineering, and then to the Science department, and then the mess hall spread the information to the remainder of the Enterprise crew.
Now, to McCoy's inward horror, there was a gaggle of people surrounding the little box holding the former First Officer, with Chekov wide-eyed, Uhara seeming to be fighting the urge to laugh or smile, Sulu looking amused, and Scotty snickering uncontrollably.
The fact that said First Officer's "bed"-box was sitting on the lap of James T. Kirk was not helping McCoy's throbbing headache one bit.
McCoy has not been having a good week. First Spock gets turned into the intergalactic equivalent of a rabbit, then he had to witness the sight of his friend giving a Vulcan smooch to said ball of fluff, there was no decent sweet tea in the mess hall replicators this morning, a half dozen Engineers had ended up with severe burns (how the majority of the redshirts lasted past their first week is a mystery that likely only Scotty knew), and now his sickbay had been invaded by what appears to be a good portion of the people who ensured the ship actually ran at optimum efficiency.
"Dammit, this is a sickbay, not a party! Why aren't you people at your posts?"
"Bones, the ship won't fall apart if we take five minutes to check in on Spock."
Breathe in, Leonard, breathe out. Remember to stay calm, strangling the Captain for being an idiot won't help you...
There was a sudden soft squeak, Spock moving backwards slightly to the opposite end of the box, as Chekov reached out, asking somewhat nervously if he "Could pet zhe Commander Spock, please..."
"My First Officer isn't a house cat for you to pet!"
"Captain, if I may protest, Commander Spock is not an ordinary Tribble, his touch telepathy may be overly sensitive in his current state-"
"Oh lighten up, Uhara, the Captain's been petting him all morning and nothing happened."
"Well, it's the Captain, he invades Spock's personal space so many times this probably seems normal."
"Alright, that's IT! Everyone who isn't sick, dying, works here, or a Tribble, OUT OF MY SICKBAY!"
By the time a week had passed, no progress had been made in finding a cure for Spock's current condition. Calls had been made to Starfleet for assistance, and as Jim bluntly refused to get a replacement for his First Officer for the duration of time that Spock was unable to perform his duties, a compromise had been made: the Enterprise had received a week to get back to the planet where Spock transformed in the first place, and see if there is a cure available on the planet. If not, the orders were to contact New Vulcan, inform Spock Prime and his father of the situation, and see if the Council had any idea how to return Spock to normal. If that didn't work by the end of their week-long time frame, the Enterprise was to report to the nearest inhabited planet with United Federation ties and have Starfleet assign someone to fill in for Spock, despite the Captain's reluctance to agree.
There was one good thing about the situation, however: despite running every available form of non-dangerous testing and scanning on the transformed First Officer, McCoy could not find anything (save the change in body structure) that would deny Spock his right to finally leave the sickbay, and thus the Tribble was released with a clean bill of health and instructions not to obey the Tribble way of procreation like pollen allergies in summertime Terran.
Looking at the tiny mop of neat black fur huddled in the box in his friend's arms, McCoy has the distinctly sinking feeling that Spock is giving him the Tribble equivalent of the Vulcan equivalent of "Really? You're telling me that?"
Sighing, he heads back to his work, praying inwardly that nothing serious went wrong, now that he'd unleashed a Tribble into the hands of one of the most trouble-attracting people in the universe.
The bridge had been facing a distinct sense of lacking something for the past few days, with the crew operating minus their First Officer (and to various degrees of time, their Navigator, their Communications Officer, their Helms Officer, and, of course, their Captain).
Now, order had been (somewhat) restored. Jim sat in his chair and surveyed his domain. Spock, having been unable to fulfill his duties from his chair in his current condition, had taken up a position more suitable to keep an eye on the Captain: his right shoulder, nestled close to the human's pulse point.
The remaining crew pointedly tried not to turn around and blatantly pay attention to the soft, furry bundle of sleek shadow purring quietly on their Captain's shoulder.
"Alright, Mr. Sulu, take it away."